Development of pedagogical design in technology-rich environments for language teaching and learning

Abstract

This study explores the development of pedagogical design for language teaching and learning in increasingly technology-rich environments. More specifically, it focuses on the process of design, enactment and analysis of language and literacy pedagogies in technology-rich environments. Two substudies are reported in five articles, each of which approaches pedagogical design from a different perspective. The first substudy examined (a) what pedagogical choices language students make in regard to learning objectives, working modes, materials and assessment, and (b) what kind of experiences, attitudes and perceptions were behind these choices. The second substudy focused on developing a design-based framework for collaborative pedagogical development and investigating the enactment of pedagogical designs in the context of higher education language teaching. The results show that digital technologies increase the complexity and unpredictability of the pedagogical design in language teaching. Digital environments expand the possibilities for languaging and create spaces for emerging types of literacies to take place. These literacies are social by nature and operate across different languages, spaces, and timeframes. However, to address these emerging language and literacy practices in formal education, the notion of design must be revisited. It was also found that the literacy practices in language teacher students’ pedagogical designs are mainly static and do not meet needs of the contemporary and future society. In these designs, expertise appears as a property of the teacher and the discursive focus is on teaching instead of learning. The use of digital technologies is mostly disconnected from other areas of pedagogical design. Finally, the results indicate that in collaborative pedagogical development, expertise appears as shared and negotiated around different tasks. A structured and design-based development process creates a spectrum of pedagogical questions for further exploration.