Switching perspectives: from a language teacher to a designer of language learning with new technologies

Abstract

Despite abundant research on educational technology and strategic input in the field, various surveys have shown that (language) teachers do not seem to embrace in their teaching the full potential of information and communication technology available in our everyday life. Language students soon entering the professional field could accelerate the process, which highlights the role of teacher education in contributing to the change. The students should see how technology development may change the affordances for language learning, at the same time transforming the teachers’ professional roles and practices. However, taking an active role in designing a new kind of language pedagogy seems to be challenging for students. This study explores an attempt to facilitate the students’ perspective switch from the teacher role to the designer position through participatory design. This effort was to lead the students to envision new practices for language learning and teaching with new technologies. However, initial analyses of the research materials indicated that, despite the support, the students were not fully able to see their role as designers for the future. Cultural--historical activity theory was used to examine the problem more closely. The analysis suggests that in order to position themselves as designers of the future language learning activity, language students need to understand their role as designers, conduct real-life experiments on the evolving visions with their learners, and involve learners as participants in the design activity by sharing visions and collaborative reflection on the experiments. The findings of the study provide tools for language teacher educators to make these activity systems visible and, thus, target for change.

Keywords:

• language teacher education
• CALL
• educational change
• cultural–historical activity theory
• participatory design

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the language students who have participated in the courses actively and as co-researchers provided important perspectives to interpret language learning and teaching in the technology-rich world.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Note

Notes

1. The notion of affordance, originally coined by Gibson (1979), refers here to the reciprocal relationship between the properties of the environment and the active learner as Van Lier (2000) defines it.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Leena Kuure

Leena Kuure (Adjunct Professor) is a University Lecturer in the Faculty of Humanities, University of Oulu, Finland. Her research interests include multimodal and networked literacy practices in technology-rich environments. Her current research leans on mediated discourse theory and nexus analysis, which focus on social action and invite multidisciplinary collaboration.

Tonja Molin-Juustila

Tonja Molin-Juustila is a University Lecturer at the Department of Information Processing Science, University of Oulu, Finland. Her research interests include early phases of design, and multidisciplinary participation and interaction during design in general. She is also interested in the new innovative ways technology may support participation in design.

Tiina Keisanen

Tiina Keisanen (Adjunct Professor) is a University Lecturer in the Faculty of Humanities, University of Oulu, Finland. Her current research interests include foreign language teaching and learning and the practices of everyday language use and social interaction in different settings.

Maritta Riekki

Maritta Riekki is a doctoral candidate in English Philology in the Faculty of Humanities, University of Oulu, Finland. She received her Master's degree in German Philology. Her main interests are developing and improving foreign language learning and teaching practices, on which she has been focusing in her research and work as a language teacher.

Netta Iivari

Netta Iivari (Professor) has a doctorate in Information Systems, University of Oulu, and a Master's degree in Cultural Anthropology. Her research interests include understanding and strengthening participation of various stakeholders in designing ICT in their everyday life. Her empirical work has focused on packaged and open source software development contexts and children.

Marianne Kinnula

Marianne Kinnula (Adjunct Professor) is a University Lecturer at the Department of Information Processing Science, University of Oulu, Finland. Her research interests include children's participation in technology design and adaptation and the genuineness of children's participation.