Teachers' attitudes to and beliefs about web-based collaborative learning environments in the context of an international implementation

Vassilis Kollias (1) , Nectarios Mamalougos (2) , Xenia Vamvakoussi (2) , Minna Lakkala (3) , Stella Vosniadou (2)

1 Department of Primary Education
2 Cognitive Science and Educational Technology Lab
3 Centre for Research on Networked Learning and Knowledge Building

This paper reports the conceptions of teachers from four European countries of the Innovative Technologies for Collaborative Learning project tools for collaborative learning. Fifty six teachers were interviewed about different aspects of the CLE (Webbased Collaborative Learning Environment) implementations and about their own evaluations of the CLE implementations in their classrooms. Their answers were analysed using categories based on a model from cultural-historical activity theory (Engeström, 1987; Engeström, Engeström & Suntio, 2002) and their conceptions of CLEs were extracted. The teachers' conceptions revealed CLEs as learning environments with possibilities towards initiating pedagogical innovation in the classrooms and enhancing personal professional development. This result was supported even in the cases where there was a great deal of difference between the national school culture and the CLE's design principles. The teachers' conceptions of CLEs also showed that the teachers were aware of the fact that demanding planning was needed for successful implementations of CLEs. Nevertheless, the lack of explicit references to special guiding strategies in the CLE classroom indicates that there is a need for teachers' better understanding of the guidance of student learning and of the social structure of the classroom when CLEs are implemented. Finally, the teachers' felt need for clear assessment of the CLEs was mostly not accompanied by a growing awareness of new student competencies in the CLE classroom. We also report variations in the teachers' conceptions in the different countries.

Keywords: national school culture; evaluation methodologies

Domains: Technology for Human Learning

Vassilis Kollias, Nectarios Mamalougos, Xenia Vamvakoussi, Minna Lakkala, Stella Vosniadou. Teachers' attitudes to and beliefs about web-based collaborative learning environments in the context of an international implementation. Computers and Education, 2005, 45 (3), pp.295-315. ⟨10.1016/j.compedu.2005.04.012⟩. ⟨hal-00190704⟩