vocational education approach new tel settings—new prospects for teachers’ instructional activities.pdf

Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (2013) 8:271–291 DOI 10.1007/s11412-013-9176-1 Vocational education approach: New TEL settings—new prospects for teachers’ instructional activities? Raija Hämäläinen Bram De Wever Received: 10 January 2013 / Accepted: 15 July 2013 / Published online: 6 August 2013 # International Society of the Learning Sciences, Inc. and Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013 Abstract This study focuses on vocational education teachers’ instructional activities in a new technology-enhanced learning (TEL) setting. A content analysis is applied to investi- gate teachers’ and students’ interactions in a 3D game context. The findings illustrate that when teachers ’ and students’ interactions are mediated by a game, teachers seem to apply different discussion activities to empower vocational learning than they do in traditional classroom settings. Additionally, the present study shows that teachers spontaneously develop new ways of supporting vocational learning processes. In more detail, two main types of instructional activities were identified: a “knowledge-providing” approach and a “joint problem-solving ” approach. Additionally, findings illustrate how teachers using different types of instructional approaches are followed up with different processes by students. The article is concluded with a general discussion of the emerging challenges regarding the technological and pedagogical development of vocational education and teachers ’ instructional activities in new TEL settings based on a more long-term design- based research project (ongoing since 2004). Keywords Vocational education . Teachers’ instructional activities . 3D game . Design-based research Introduction The role of the teacher is currently a primary concern of CSCL-oriented research and has been much debated within the research community (see