Research – Olli Vesterinen

Twitter and Professional Learning

Professionals spend more and more time on Twitter and other social network sites. They also see that those connect with their productivity. The idea is to investigate the possible effects of social media use (like in Twitter) on professional learning and practice among teachers with online professional networks.

I have been building a research plan on teachers’ professional learning in social networks (such as Kaikkialla.fi by the OmniSchool Project). The OmniSchool Project that develops learning environments with schools has been fortunate to participate in existing networks and support emerging networks. The research plan will focus on a very crucial question in terms of the “connected teacher”: what are the effects of Twitter networking on teaching practice and teacher thinking?

Figure. Filtering research participants for interviews.

Professionals spend more and more time on Twitter and other social network sites. They also see that this connects with their productivity (Microsoft survey 2013). Twitter allows instant idea and information sharing by users to their followers. A tweet is an expression of a moment or idea packed into 140 characters. It can contain text, photos, and videos, usually through a web link. Millions of tweets are shared every day.

The idea is to investigate the possible effects of social media use (like in Twitter) on professional learning and practice. The professional networks will be analyzed through social network analysis. Among other interesting things, this will reveal the teachers who just hold an account on Twitter, or use it for other personal purposes and those teachers who are actually networking professionally (see Figure above).

The plan is to first analyze teachers’ professional connections and networks and process those into a graph. Social network analysis allows contacts and interactions to be analysed easily and fast. The special interest is in the types of online connections and networks that exist between teachers and out-of-school actors. The second part of the research plan focuses on the teachers’ practical reasoning and its relations to professional social networking (in Twitter). The possible effects on practice are analyzed on a micro level at schools. The data will be collected with the stimulated recall interview method (STR), i.e. interviews that make use of the video recordings of teacher’s lessons. The data analysis combines practical argument analysis and data-based content analysis of the interviews.

The research proposal includes a comparative element between Finland and New Zealand. A foreign research context equivalent to the OmniSchool initiative is The Mind Lab by Unitec in New Zealand. The Mind Lab is an important investment to improve teachers’ professional skills and practical knowledge related to learning in the digital age. Their model of in-service training is very different to what is traditionally used in Finland as well as the model that has been developed in the OmniSchool Project (Learning Festival, in Finnish Oppimisfestivaali). Although the research remains descriptive in nature, it will be very interesting to see whether the teachers who are professionally active online also reflect on how student learning should be organized in the digital age.

Some thoughts about media literacy

(Photo from the conference. Venue was Cinema House. The hall ceiling was amazing.)

I was invited to give a keynote in Practical Media Literacy Education Conference in Kiev, Ukraine. My keynote (titled Media Education in Finland) slides are available here:
http://bit.ly/me_in_finland

The conference has been very thought provoking. There are two thoughts that have strike me during my trip and which I want to share.

First, the aim of media education is not only in the individual level i.e. in literacy, competence, etc. It concerns also the level of society i.e. media culture. Hence each of us making better media culture is an informal mode of media education.

Second, media literacy is not a list of areas to be mastered. It is a rhizome of learnings within lived experiences with and through media. With support, i.e. media education, individual slowly learns to reflect on these experiences and learnings, and that way the rhizome is revealed.

“медіаосвіта”

Nordic Scene of Media Education 2013

I was able to participate to a Nordic expert meeting in Stockholm titled Media and Information Literacy (MIL) – a key to democracy and freedom of speech.

The overview by Jon Dunås (Investigator, Swedish Media Council) highlighted Finland in having a special policy paper titled Good Media Literacy National Policy Guidelines 2013-2016. Similar is not in place in other Nordic countries the way we have in Finland. This idea was later opened more in the Finland’s presentation by Leo Pekkala (Director, Finnish Centre for Media Education and Audiovisual Media MEKU).

Pekkala was well illuminating that Nordic countries generally share similar values. However, it was possible to notice that the overall approach to MIL differed between Nordic countries. Even the concepts that are used seem to differ (e.g. MIL vs. Media Literacy).

In Norway’s presentation by Stian Lindbøl and Pia Lang (Norweigan Media Authority, Safer Internet Centre) the MIL work connected with EU initiatives a lot despite of missing EU membership of Norway. In the presentation, similar ideas to Finnish ‘turvataidot’ (safety skills) was emphasized, too.
In Denmark, the background in film education is still apparent but in her presentation Lisbeth Bruneberg Holmegaard (Project Manager, Digital Learning Advisor, Media Council for Children and Young People) emphasized young people’s approach to media literacy issues. This shift was well addressed in her talk about future school.
In Iceland, the MIL questions meet the idea of multiliteracy approach which is suggested for the next Finnish Core Curriculum of Basic Education, too. Elfa yr Gylfadottir (Director, Media Commission) in her presentation also referred to new laws in Island that take in MIL policies more than earlier. According to Alda Joensen (Senior Principal, Ministry of Education, Research and Culture, Faroe Islands) the Faroe Islands are still in the phase of taking new media along.
In Sweden, the discussion seems to stay between media studies research and policies/agencies/offices. Educational aspects were less visible, at least today. However, later Magnus Persson (Professor, Malmö University) did see crucial that teacher education takes a bigger role in MIL issues, an idea heard several times in Finland, too.

In another reflection from research, Sirkku Kotilainen (Professor, University of Tampere) pondered the role of research in policymaking. Today at least, the MIL situation in the Nordic countries was mainly handled as a policy and agency matter. Research (in academia) or higher education aspects were less on the table. In the papers delivered in the meeting, different countries were merely compared through agencies and statistical references.

Although generally the values are shared in Nordic countries, no shared vision of promoting MIL yet exists. I guess this meeting was supposed to be the one step to that direction. Then again, the meeting was having several connections with wider initiatives in the level of Europe for example (e.g. Safer Internet). Even the concept of MIL is in line with UNESCO approach and this connection could be detected many times during the meeting. There are problems, too, in building on UNESCO’s MIL approach (see UNESCO Figure 2). When wanting to have a wide understanding of this area, there is a risk of losing the conception of how these areas intertwine.

Maybe the shared vision in Nordic countries is not even needed. We can just try to map what has worked well in different countries, and each country can learn from this map. For example the Guidelines 2013-2016 built in Finland might not be a fruitful process in other Nordic countries. In Finland, we found it important and less competitive between stakeholders but that doesn’t mean somewhere else the case would be the same.

Good learnings and great people in all. Thank you for organizing and thank you all for participation!

Discussion in Twitter #milexpert

Learning Bridges – it does!

I have moved on to a new project called Koulu Kaikkialla, a follow-on for Learning Bridges project, funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture. This is an extremely interesting project which focuses on ubiquitous learning (oppimisen kaikkiallisuus), its pedagogic implications and support for that certain type of agency. In the context of school learning, we are seriously trying to look beyond short school projects and boundaries of learning.

I am personally interested in what happens after these school projects when an external resource, for example a project researcher, leaves the school and the innovative practice should emerge with a dominant activity in the school (see Sannino, 2008). In addition to research on learning, we are exploring and building many types of support for a teacher agency, one of these supports to be a social network service around topics of ubiquitous learning and pedagogy in line with those ideas. I am sure there is a lot to learn here and, for sure, this learning will bridge me with many new social connections and a better understanding of ubiquitous learning phenomenon

Join us in exploring all this on Twitter.com #learningbridges #oppimisensillat

Defending PhD

I will defend my PhD at the Faculty of Behavioural Sciences on April 29, 2011. What will I defend then? I think there are some important thoughts that are already presented by other (media) educationalists, too. Here are my ideas about these issues.

First, the concept of media education should not be confined any longer to ‘learning about media’ only. A wider understanding is needed and other media contextual aspects must be taken into account, too. This relates to the problem of using information and communication technologies (ICTs) in school. This area should not be left to technological examination only. The focus should be in better study processes and people’s non-institutional media use, too.

Second, media literacy is not just measurable knowledge and skills that can be acquired in institutional settings of education. With the current social media scene, media literacy is most of all about attitude, sometimes critical, towards learning and experiencing the world with and through media. Media literacy should be seen as a process of active involvement with a volition to produce, construct, share and categorize knowledge, opinions and experiences.

Third, media educational situations in school are manifold. A student is using his cell phone during the lesson and what is teacher saying to that? What if the student was using it for his learning task? It is important to gain a wider insight into the levels and aspects that are involved in suddenly emerging but typical situations that involve media educational aspects. It is crucial to understand the complexity of the circumstances as well as teachers’ thinking and reasoning involved media educational situations. This is, what I would call, Episodic Media Education. It can be seen in every situation where media content or tools are present.

The place for the public examination is Psykologia Sali 1, Siltavuorenpenger 1A. PhD summary will be published in ethesis.helsinki.fi. The PhD articles are:

Vesterinen, O., Vahtivuori-Hänninen, S., Oksanen, U., Uusitalo, A., & Kynäslahti, H. (2006). Mediakasvatus median ja kasvatuksen alueena: Deskriptiivisen mediakasvatuksen ja didaktiikan näkökulmia. Kasvatus, 37(2), 148–161.

Kynäslahti, H., Vesterinen, O., Lipponen, L., Vahtivuori-Hänninen, S., & Tella, S. (2008). Towards Volitional Media Literacy through Web 2.0. Educational Technology, 48(5), 3–9.

Vesterinen, O., Toom, A., & Patrikainen, S. (2010). The stimulated recall method and ICTs in research on the reasoning of teachers. International Journal of Research and Method in Education, 33(2), 183–197.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1743727X.2010.484605

Vesterinen, O, Kynäslahti, H., & Tella, S. (2010). Media educational situations and two primary school teachers’ practical reasoning. International Journal of Learning and Media, 2(2–3), 123–139.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/ijlm_a_00047

Media Literacy Conference 2010

Media Literacy Conference 2010 was a great event in London.

Media Literacy Conference 2010 was held in London. Great conference with great presentations and great debates. Great to meet Jenkins, Buckingham, Burn, Potter and many great names in this field. Once more, Great!

I presented a case study related to my PhD. The slides are here.

Conference was held in Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre

Stimulated recall method and ICTs

Data gathering methods such as interview and video observation are employed a lot in research on teaching. Stimulated recall interview method (which is widely used at the University of Helsinki Department of Teacher Education, e.g. Toom 2006) combines video and interview so that when interviewing a teacher, a video of her/his lesson is displayed for closer focus on teacher’s actions during the teaching. However, there is a risk of concentrating too much on teacher and forgetting the most important aspect of all classroom activities – the student learning. Therefore, in addition to video-stimuli, another valuable cue for interview situation can be screenshots from the student desktops.

In a computer lab environment (as partly in my PhD project), some practical advices for data gathering with stimulated recall method were spotted:

The video recording of the lesson gives a good overview of the classroom situations but does not necessarily highlight the students’ learning processes.
Where students are using ICTs, there is special screenshot software (e.g. InstantShot! for Mac) for capturing all the events on the computer screens. However, integrating that data into the interview situation might need quite a lot of data processing on the computer before the data are in a sensible format for stimulated recall purposes.
When the software that students are using, has a playback or recorder function as in CmapTools software, the process is very easy to recall by opening the file saved by the student and playing the recorded steps of the process. With the recorder function, both interviewer and interviewee can ‘play’, ‘pause’, or navigate to particular steps in the recording using the ‘back’ and ‘forward’ buttons.
During the interview, the actual interplay between video and concept map recordings takes place as ‘diving’ into a student’s learning process. The concept map recordings are used to get closer to the student’s learning process when the student is on the video or the interviewed teacher is recalling something from the lesson related to that student.

>> An example of (fast forwarded) CmapTools playback of student’s concept map process.

Vesterinen, O., Toom, A. & Patrikainen, S. (2010). The stimulated recall method and ICTs in research on the reasoning of teachers. International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 33(2), pp. 183–197.

http://bit.ly/c1RFJ7

The dimension of subject didactics revisited

I presented the dimension of subject didactics in the beginning of my PhD project. After five years, it is time to revisit these ideas.

I presented the dimension of subject didactics (in Finnish here) in the beginning of my PhD project. The concept of subject didactics originates from German educational research tradition and it means the subject-specific pedagogy. In the Anglo-American research, the pedagogical content knowledge (some background in Wikipedia) is often used instead of subject didactics. After five years and some more empirical research on schools’ media education, I think it is time to revisit the ideas presented in 2006.

There are many ways to theorize media education. It may have various forms in primary school such as arts education, social studies, child protection or learning technologies. Schools may call their media educational activities among other things magazine time, film education or, for example, learning with social media in which case the used medium is the defining principle.

What I have found important is to have a view based on educational sciences, too. In school context and from the teacher’s point of view, subject didactics covers a large area of what is behind the concept of teaching. The dimension of subject didactics presented in 2006 had two types of approaches, namely ‘subject didactics I’ and ‘subject didactics II’. In addition, the moral form of media education appearing especially in situational ways is opened.

Subject didactics I (media-based approach)

The approach can be seen as traditional subject didactics where the goal is to learn some entity of content, in this case about media. The pedagogical question is: how this subject-like content can be taught “effectively” or “well”. Since in Finland, there is no school subject of media education, the content of learning is usually a small entity in one of the existing schools subjects: in arts education it can be visual communication, in Finnish language types and genres of text, for example.

Subject didactics II (cross-curricular media education)

The second area of subject didactics relates to the integrative role of media education. It is part of learning and teaching of other school subjects. The focus of the media education is in the pedagogical approach and mainly the content to learn is not anymore media educational: for example, playing mathematical online game to learn algebra or watching a movie about climate change in environmental studies. These activities should be seen as substantial elements of media education when there are rarely dedicated lessons for media education.

Moral dilemmas

Many difficult moments of being a media educator relate to general thoughts of children growing up. The German concept of Bildung describes the aims which are in connection with this third form of media education. However, this should not be mixed with the moral defensiveness (Buckingham, 1998) since teachers are not necessarily blaming the media for inculcating “false beliefs or behaviors and for encouraging children to believe that all their problems can be solved through violence or through the acquisition of material goods.” Teachers can reason their actions in these situations multiply and without terror of world falling apart. This came out during the empirical period of my research.

Teacher just faces difficulties in media education with, for example, inappropriate media content. These situations form an area of media education which is surrounding the two earlier forms of media education. There are several issues in media, such as age-limited material, copyrights or child marketing, which can be taught during the dedicated lessons of media education or within other school subjects but mainly just come into play as a matter that needs to be handled outside of lesson plan. Schools also have many rules which create norms for media use and content in school.

>> a draft figure for these three forms of media education in school

In Finland, the boiling discussion around the distribution of lessons in basic education has created a huge competition between existing school subjects and large push from different interest groups to get (their) new school subjects into curriculum. There are rarely winners in this competition. The distribution of lessons haven’t changed too much during the last 100 years. I wouldn’t advice to fight for a subject status for media education. But the problem is that the subject teaching comes first and the rest is rather haphazard.

The relevance of media education is still built in the pedagogical moments that happen in ordinary activities. If the frontier must be set somewhere, the struggle with the strong subject-division-based school system should not be forgotten. There must be space for values, aims and (learning) methods that are set outside of school subjects. The actual life for children is inevitably outside of the Lehrplan and the media literacy is often practiced in the meaning-making and social interaction. All three forms of media education are needed. Only then it can fulfil its place in school education.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/judybaxter/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Visual-Conceptual Representation

A wordle.net representation of the stuff I have been working on lately.

I have been working on the last article of my PhD “package” and I thought I could try to deliver my current thoughts without too many explanations yet. Excluded the ones I have used the most in my earlier posts, I collected some key concepts to wordle.net and here is the result

Meediahariduse seminar Tallinnas

Tallinn University had a media education seminar

Tallinn University had a media education seminar in September 3–4, 2009. Interesting that Estonia is following the way our National Core Curriculum in Basic Education (2004) is taking the cross-curricular themes in.

I participated the sessions on both days. The following presentations (actually first Mac OS X Keynote presentations I’ve done!) are available on SlideShare.

Media Education and Curriculum Design

View more presentations from retsev.

Learning about and Use of Media in Schools

View more presentations from retsev.