Digitized Mediated Praxis: Collaborative and Cooperative Reflection and Development of Theories of Practice

• In Event: Transformative Practices in Higher Education: Promoting Data Literacy, Collaboration, and Criticality Online

Abstract

Objectives or purposes: This paper examines the collaboration practices of undergraduate novice teachers in the new communication ecology of the higher education classroom. This social design-based research project (Gutiérrez & Jurow, 2016) informs the design of a course that, through the use of customized digital collaboration tools, fostered opportunities for enactments of expertise and mediated praxis (Gutiérrez & Vossoughi, 2010) in ways that leveraged everyday digital interconnectivity. In focusing on the role of digital tools in mediated praxis, this paper also documents the learning that occurs by novice teachers as they appropriated core concepts from a hybrid (face-to-face/online) practicum course and then enacted them in their work with young people.
Perspective(s) or theoretical framework: This project leverages scholarship in Actor-network theory (Latour, 1996) and Cultural Historical Activity Theory (Engeström, 2001) in order to gain an understanding of how learning and appropriation (Rogoff, 2008) unfolds in situated practice and is mediated by social interaction and the use of cultural tools (Cole, 1998) in the realms of the virtual and face-to-face. To this end, this study made use of robust data analytics and social interaction analysis (Goodwin, 2000) in order to describe both the phenomena of relationship building (Edwards, 2017) and artifact production (Wertsch, 1997) that occurs at the intersection of the digital and physical terrains.
Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry:
Multiple data sources were triangulated, collected over a semester, and engaged in the following types of data analysis: (1) fieldnotes and semi-structured interviews that were inductively coded (Bogdan & Biklen, 1997); (2) discourse analysis of key events; (3) multimodal analysis (Author, 2005) of digital artifacts; and (5) tabulations on online activities. Through these analyses micro-moments were examined to gain an understanding of how meaning-making was mediated in face-to-face and virtual interactions.
Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials: The study draws from 60 hours of classroom video data, 15 hours of interviews, and 400 digital artifacts produced by 14 undergraduate novice teachers.
Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view: Findings show that a designed learning environment that fosters robust digital collaboration and co-operation (Goodwin, 2018) offered undergraduate novice teachers opportunities to individually and collectively name theories informing practice and engage with held assumptions and histories. As part of the design of the study, teachers engaged in dynamic collaborative inquiry using digitized mediating artifacts such as each others’ documentation of practice, course texts, and multimodal resources (images, videos, etc.). As a result of these collaborations and collective reflections, they generated new local theories (Cortez, 2019) that were then enacted and experimented with in practicum settings with youth.
Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work: This study offers implications that highlight the role of digital collaboration technologies in the training of teachers. Moreover, it presents design considerations for how to leverage everyday digital interconnectivity in the undergraduate classroom.

Author

• José Ramón Lizárraga, University of Colorado - Boulder