Vol 10 No 3 - March 2015

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International Journal
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Vol.10 No.3
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VOLUME 10 NUMBER 3 March 2015
Table of Contents
The Nature of High School Students Experiences at a Great Lakes Biological Field Station ...................................... 1
Marc Behrendt
A Needs Assessment Survey on Teacher Readiness of Science Pre-Service Teachers: Towards a Contextualized
Student Teaching Enhancement Program (STEP) ............................................................................................................ 17
Darryl Roy T. Montebon
The Experience of Hidden Curriculum on Selecting a Supervisor from the Perspective of Students ...................... 27
Fatemeh Robati and Forouzan Tonkaboni and Mohammad Mohammad Bagheri
Lessons Learned from Teaching Teachers how to Teach about World Religions ........................................................ 43
Derek Anderson, Holly Mathys and Joe Lubig
Antecedents of Norwegians Student Teachers' Campus Time on Task ........................................................................ 59

Knut-Andreas Christophersen, Eyvind Elstad, Trond Solhaug and Are Turmo
SPortraits of One-To-One Learning Environments in a New Learning Ecology ......................................................... 78

John K. Lee, Hiller Spires, Eric Wiebe, Karen Hollebrands and Carl Young
The Impacts on the Educational Landscape ahead the Free Internet Offers, Traps and Surveillance that Threatens
the Safety and Privacy on the Web .................................................................................................................................. 102
Rogerio L. Roth
Using Social Network Analysis for Analysing Online Threaded Discussions .......................................................... 128
Roberto C. Rodrguez-Hidalgo,, Chang Zhu, Frederik Questier and Aida M. Torres-Alfonso
1
International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research

Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 1-16, March 2015.
The Nature of High School Students Experiences at

a Great Lakes Biological Field Station
Marc Behrendt
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio, USA
Abstract. The purpose of this case study is to explore how high school
students experienced a four-day field trip at Stone Laboratory Biological
Field Station, from a visiting students perspective, in order to understand
the value of that field station and its impact on science, science education,
and students lives. Chosen from a population of fifty students, six rural high
school student participants attended a four-day field trip, involving of two
days and three nights at Stone Laboratory and excursions to two neighboring
islands. Participants were given cameras to record their experiences during
the field trips to record anything they found significant or meaningful. After
the trip, students were asked to select the five most significant images and
write a paragraph, describing the significance of each image. Each
participant was interviewed three times in semi-structured and unstructured
formats. Analysis consisted of open coding using apriori and emergent
codes. Significant findings included: 1) Stone Lab provided a unique and
novel venue where the equipped laboratories, the managed shorelines, and
the natural areas provided the ingredients for awe and wonder; 2) the field
stations unique setting inspired curiosity and motivation among students; 3)
in reference to science education, the payoff for these experiences was
increased interest in science; 4) three of the six participants redefined their
career goals after their four day immersive Stone Lab field experience;
5) students developed a sense of appreciation for the Lake Erie environment.
Keywords: Stone Laboratory; Biological Field Station; Informal Learning;

Experiential Learning; Photovoice
Introduction
Biological field stations create a uniquely positive learning environment for students,
where each student is able to explore, discover, and reflect over the things that they
personally find interesting (Malinowski and Fortner 2011; NRC 2009; NRC 2014;
Organization of Biological Field Stations 2014; Woodhouse and Knapp 2000).
Students in preschool through graduate school find biological field stations
interesting and motivating. The field station experience can be life changing. Many
biologists and environmental scientists proclaimed a field station experience
strongly influenced their decision to pursue biology as a career (Arvey and Riemer
1966; NRC 2014).
2015 The author and IJLTER.ORG. All rights reserved.

2
For the purposes of this article, the definition of a biological field station (henceforth
to be called a field station) will be a facility located in an isolated, natural area. The
field station may be focused on research, education, community outreach, or
conservation, with a focus on that regions habitats, ecosystems, flora and fauna, and
environmental issues (Arvey and Riemer 1966; NRC 2014; Organization of Biological
Field Stations 2014). A field station is typically a college or university satellite
facility. In the early 1900s, most field stations focused on nature study. Arvey and
Riemer (1966) recognized that research was a primary mission for roughly half of
existing field stations, the other half focused partially or entirely on student
education and field experiences. Field stations were often the entry point where
scientists performed and honed their research.
Arvey and Riemer (1966) recognized that little information was published about
field stations, although field stations provided a significant service connecting
students to authentic science experience. A literature search yielded research
illustrating that field stations are recognized as a venue of research, but the
pedagogy and methodology is barely explored. In 2014, National Research Council
(NRC) published an extensive document that examined the value and sustainability
of field stations and marine laboratories in the 21st century (NRC 2014). The
committee encountered a significant challenge to empirically demonstrating the
value of field stations due to the lack of aggregated data on their activities and
impacts on science and society (NRC 2014 p. 8). The lack of research concerning
field stations extends to outcome and impact of field station pedagogy (NRC 2014).
Science Education and Learning
Environmental education is affectively learned through personal, hands-on

experience in the field (American Institutes for Research 2005; Organization of
Biological Field Stations 2014). Experiential learning may encompass direct
encounters with a specific topic being explored, such as through vocational training,
or more commonly and in this studys prevue, learning gained through every day
lived experiences (Smith 2001). Kolb (1983) described the four stages that must occur
for experiential learning to occur: concrete experience, reflective observation,
abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation, and the cycle continues
through concrete experience and beyond.
Because a major goal of any field trip is to create student learning, a brief look at
learning will connect the functions of field stations to the students experiences. Kolb
and Kolb (2005) identified six key factors concerning learning:
1. Learning is a process, not an endpoint. It requires feedback, reconstruction
and reflection of the experience;
2. All learning is relearning, which is maximized when student beliefs and
ideas are included to develop assimilated, new refined ideas;
3. Learning requires understanding an experience through opposing methods
of experiencing, feeling versus thinking, or doing versus watching;
4. Learning consists of feeling, thinking, doing and watching;
5. Learning occurs from an experience between the person and environment;
6. Learning creates knowledge (Behrendt 2014, p. 38).

3
Learning can be formal or informal. Formal learning is obligatory, planned, assessed,

and teacher-centered, has a predetermined curriculum, and allows minimal social
interaction (Saylan and Blumstein 2011; Wellington 1990). Formal education is the
interaction between a teacher and a student within a systematic framework of
standards, tests, and a fixed curriculum (Zandstra 2012, p. 25). In contrast, informal
learning is not confined to a classroom, but is voluntary, loosely organized, not
assessed, student or learner-centered, has an open-ended curriculum, and allows
social interaction (Falk and Dierking 2000; Hofstein and Rosenfeld 1996; Rennie 2007;
Wellington 1990). The learning is controlled by the learner. Informal learning
experiences can be broken down into three significant components or contexts, the
physical, social or personal, and cognitive (Falk and Dierking 2000; NRC 2009).
Informal learning is individualized to each persons reality, to their motivations, past
knowledge, interests, beliefs, and expectations. Friends, and any associated social
group, teachers, guides, and bystanders influence the learning. The physical context
is determined through the venue or setting. There may be a program or organized
activity, but the informal learning determines what the student will learn, which
very well may be a topic not intended by the program organizers (Falk and Dierking
2000). Education programs at field stations are by definition, informal learning.
Therefore, students may participate in the activities, but each experience will be
unique, defined by each individual student.
Learning has also been defined through the use of an ecological framework, the term
ecological meaning the relationship between the physical environment with the
cultural environment and its associated individuals. Each involved individual
possesses unique personal development and differences in his or her background
due to finances, education, family traditions and beliefs, and associations with peers
(Bronfenbrenner 1977; NRC 2009). The ecological framework recognizes three
different lenses in which to analyze informal science learning: the cognitive/affective
or people-centered lens, the place centered lens, and the culture centered lens (NRC
2009).
The cognitive/affective or people-centered lens focuses on the development of

interest, knowledge, affective responses, and personal identity, including prior
knowledge and experiences Behrendt 2014; NRC 2009. NRC (2009) proposed the
term people-centered lens because it focused on an individuals affective and
cognitive response to an experience. The term cognitive/affective lens will be used
to clarify the intent of the lens.
The place centered lens focuses upon the physical aspects of the informal science
experience, including the setting, resources, tools, and equipment being utilized. The
place-centered lens will vary depending on the venue. Individuals will respond
differently depending on the physical setting and the equipment available (NRC
2009).
The culture centered lens focuses on the relationships the individual has with the
community of friends, teachers, and other individuals directly or indirectly involved
in the experience. The community may provide values, skills, knowledge and
personal identity to the individual, and the individual may provide values, skills,

4
knowledge and personal identity to the community. An individual will act, perform,
experience, and learn differently depending on the composition of the community
(NRC 2009). These lenses were significant and were utilized during transcript
analysis to determine apriori codes.
Stone Laboratory Biological Field Station
An informal learning venue is any non-school location where learning might take
place, including museums, science centers, zoos, and field stations (Falk and
Dierking 2000). A venue is defined by its purpose. Visitors at a zoo will observe
animal exhibits in a manipulated setting, visitors at a science center will experience
interactive stations in a manipulated setting, and visitors at a field station will
encounter both formal learning through classroom lectures and informal learning
through hands-on, personal experiences while immersed in a natural setting (Falk
and Dierking 2000).
Biological field stations may be associated with general habitat types, including
freshwater, saltwater, terrestrial, and wetland (Arvey and Reimer 1966). Field
stations are also differentiated as research-based, instructional, or both. Marine
biological field stations tend to be larger and more instructional because aquatic
habitats are not as overwhelmed by constant student usage. Inland biological field
stations are often research-based, fearing that an influx of humans would alter the
terrestrial environments.
For this study, a field station with a goal of student instruction was desired. The
Ohio State Universitys Franz Theodore Stone Laboratory (henceforth to be called
Stone Lab) was the primary option for this study due to convenience as well as
having met the needs of this study. Stone Lab is a freshwater marine biological field
station located on Gibraltar Island, a six-acre island located in western Lake Erie,
owned by The Ohio State University and managed by the Ohio Sea Grant College
Program. To support and implement its mission of promoting research, education,
and community outreach, Stone Lab is equipped with three large research boats and
several motor boats (Ohio States Stone Laboratory 2013). The classroom building
has two large laboratory workrooms on the first floor and smaller workrooms on the
second and third floors, equipped with instrumentation and tools ranging from high
quality microscopes, digital equipment, binoculars, nets, and boots.
Of particular concern to this study is Stone Labs commitment to provide quality,

hands-on educational opportunities for middle and high school students. Up-to-date
equipment utilized by researchers and the summer college courses becomes
available to the fall and spring workshop programs. The equipment and
opportunities a Stone Lab workshop program offers to students is not possible in a
school classroom.
The spring and fall workshop curriculum has been crafted and shaped over decades
of workshop programs. Instructors, typically recent environmental science or
biology graduates or upper level environmental and biology major college students
gaining work experience, give a short classroom presentation, and then take the

5
students outside to explore and discover what was just taught. Workshops are
usually one or two days in length, although some schools opt to extend the stay. The
visiting schools teacher preselects the workshops that the students will experience,
and occasionally, the teachers will do much of the initial classroom teaching, leaving
the Stone Lab instructors to lead the field and laboratory experiences. There may be
up to five different workshop classes going on at one time. Attending students
separate into cohort groups, and then rotate between different workshops. Each
workshop class lasts a maximum of two hours in length, but usually ends 15 minutes
early to allow students some personal time between workshop classes. In this study,
the student group thatconsisted of 50 high school students, divided into four cohort
groups that participated in the immersive courses: ornithology, aquatic invertebrate
biology, island botany, plankton biology, fish biology, and activities on BioLab,
one of the large research vessels.
The study originally intended to examine biological field stations in general.

However, it was realized that each field station was unique and presented unique
experiences for visiting students. It was decided to focus this study specifically on
Stone Lab, rather than the more generic biological field station.
Materials and Methods
This reported case study is a small segment of a larger case study that investigated
how high school students experienced an extended and immersive field experience.
This study specifically explored how high school students experienced a field station
during a field trip. A case study design was utilized, a format suitable to explore
real-world situations, cultures, and programs, to investigate and understand what
goes on there and how participants perceive things (Creswell 2013; Stake 1995; Yin
2009). The case study was bounded by participants (the student participants
attending a single rural high school), setting (Stone Labs specific program; Stone
Labs geographical location on an island), and time (a four-day immersive field
experience). The case study utilized interviews, photovoice, and observations,
leading to analysis searching for patterns of common meaning derived from the
student participants experiences during the field program, culminating with a final
case description (Creswell 2013) .
Participants
Participants in this study consisted of students ranging from ninth through twelfth
grade at Rural Ohio High School (ROHS) (pseudonym), which was selected because
biennially, a group of students traveled to Stone Lab for a four-day immersive
science experience. All students in the school science club were invited. Although
expected to pay for their experience, students could participate in fund raising
events to pay for the field trip. For this study, the two cooperating teachers made
their classrooms and students available for interviews. The participant pool
consisted only of students who planned to attend the field trip and provided
parental permission forms to participate in the study. Six students were purposefully
selected to participate in a case study, stratified by gender and interest in science,
resulting in four female and two male students, three self-identified as high interest

6
and three as low interest in science. All other participants in the pool participated in
focus group discussions. Internal Review Board permission was sought and granted
by Ohio University.
Credibility and validation were important priorities. The rationale for the decision of
type and quantity of participants was defined by the question and by the available
sample pool (Patton 2002). Sample size is an issue in which little consensus is found
throughout the literature (Onwuegbuzie and Leech 2007; Patton 2002). If
interpretations and theories remain strictly localized, then the size of the sample is
not as crucial (Onwuegbuzie and Leech 2007, p. 115). The context within the current
study was very narrow, bounded by location, time, event, and participants. The
sample sizes needed be large enough to achieve data saturation in which no new
emergent themes are uncovered with further data collection, yet small enough to
develop depth. Guest, Bunce, and Johnson (2006) suggested that data saturation
occurred with twelve interviews, illustrating that 92% of codes developed from a
series of transcripts were created after twelve interviews in one study, and 88% of
the codes developed in another study. However, the overarching themes in those
same studies were thoroughly established after six interviews, suggesting six
interviews may be sufficient to develop meaningful themes and interpretations
(Guest et al 2006, p. 78). In this study, there were six participants, and each was
interviewed three times, for a total of 18 interviews.
Site selection
As described earlier, the study explored the students four-day immersive

experience. The first two days students participated in experiential classes at Stone
Lab on Gibraltar Island. On the third and fourth days, students travelled to Kelleys
Island and South Bass Island, but ate breakfast and dinner and slept at Stone Lab.
Procedure
The goal of this study was to gain insight to how high school students experience a
field station during a field trip. Qualitative research methods were utilized,
specifically semi-structured interviews, observations, and photovoice with essays
and unstructured interviews. Semi-structured interviews were conducted at the
school prior to and following the Stone Lab field trip. Unstructured interviews were
conducted after the field trip, to allow each participant an opportunity to comment
on the photographs that they had taken during the field trip as part of the
photovoice activity.
Photovoice is a method that allows the researcher to see an experience from the
viewpoint of the participant (Wang and Burris 1997). An image is powerful when
associated with the participants explanation or purpose for the photograph.
Photovoice also helps students to relive their experiences, to help them remember
their experiences. In this study, each participant received an Olympus VR 310 digital
camera with an 8 GB graphics card. They used photovoice to show what they
thought was significant as they participated in the four-day field experience.

7
Participants were asked to take photographs from the moment they left the school
until they arrived home again four days later.
To gain context and understand the students perspectives of the field station
experience, it would assist the reader to understand the general field trip experience
at Stone Lab. To set foot onto Stone Lab, a student first must ride a school bus, then a
ferry, to South Bass Island, a bus to the opposite side of the island, and then boats to
Gibraltar Island. Once students arrive, they cannot leave the island; they are
immersed in a science culture for the duration of their stay on the island.
On this field trip, students arrived at the island on a sunny, 70F day. The first
evening included an organizational meeting, followed by evening activities,
including volleyball and a bonfire. Student free time occurred whenever they were
not obligated to classes, meetings, or curfew. During free time, students were able to
explore or socialize as they chose, within the rules.
The next day began with heavy rain and strong north winds with the temperature
around 40F. Students participated in four 2-hour classes, with an evening program
about Stone Labs history and past research. The third day started with periodic
downpours and strong winds and temperatures around 45F. Students completed
their fifth workshop class, and then rode a large jet boat to Kelleys Island, where
they hiked approximately two miles to a wildlife area to explore the glacial grooves,
island geology, the Lake Erie shoreline, amphibians and reptiles within the wildlife
area, plants, fossils, and unique habitats in the region such as a local alvar. The
students had the option to explore on their own, in self-determined groups, or with
one of the teachers. The evening meeting at Stone Lab consisted of two scientist
guest speakers, and then a cat dissection for interested students. The final day began
with warmer temperatures and sunshine. Students traveled to South Bass Island,
where they visited Perrys Monument commemorating the Battle of Lake Erie. When
the program concluded, the students hiked and explored a wildlife museum, a
crystal cave, and the South Bass Island State Park shoreline to look for Lake Erie
watersnakes.
Back at school the Monday after the field trip, each participant was asked to select
five images from his or her own camera that best captured what he or she considered
were significant or meaningful experiences. Then the participants were asked to
write a paragraph or short essay for each image, describing why the photograph was
meaningful for them. Once completed, the researcher conducted unstructured
interviews, asking each participant to slowly scan through the full collection of their
field trip images and explain or discuss the images, why they took the image and
what it meant to them.
Observation methods were utilized before, during, and after the field trip. The
researcher was the sole observer and spectator in the science classroom before and
after the trip, where participants were observed during lab activities with the goal to
understand the behavior, activity engagement, and interactions with other students,
all providing evidence of participant interest. The observations provided an
additional benefit by allowing the participants to become familiar with and
comfortable around the researcher, which created open communication during the

8
interviews. At Stone Lab, the researcher was a participant observer, observing the
participants during the activities.
Each participant was asked to fill out a short survey, which solicited their
demographic information, and concluded by asking the participants to list their
favorite and least favorite subjects, activities, describe their future plans, and finally
to identify his or her level of interest in science on a Likert-like bar. The survey was
created to understand each student, and was not used in any data analysis.
Credibility and validation was an important priority throughout the development

and implementation of the larger study, from which this smaller, more focused
study was drawn. Method triangulation was employed using interviews,
observations, and photovoice. Other methods included independent peer review,
member checking, and rich description of the Stone Laboratory program generated
from a pilot study and multiple observations. A daily journal was maintained, with a
full audit trail to back up the research.
Analysis
Data focused on the participants experiences during the field trip, and was cross
analyzed with the other participants experiences to illustrate themes, and common
and unique experiences. The data were broken down with the research questions in
mind to direct the analysis. Questions explored in this study included, how did high
school students experience the Stone Lab Biological Field Station during a four-day
field trip? What aspects of the experiences led to development of interest? The
observations and interviews were transcribed, coded using apriori codes derived
directly from the ecological framework, and emergent codes derived from the
participants words or actions. Codes specific to the physical lens of experience dealt
primarily with setting. Codes specific to tools were usually implied.
Photovoice images were linked to the accompanying essays, and were coded
together. Each essay was treated as an interview transcript since it was the
participants personal voice, or photovoice. Since the participants selected these
images and essays due to the photographs meaningfulness, all coding of photovoice
transcripts was considered significant.
Observation requires researcher interpretation and inference of feelings,

engagement, and behavior. However, the observational inferences were
strengthened when combined with the interview and photovoice data. Field notes
were transcribed, and emergent data were recorded for patterns or themes.
Results
All themes and patterns from the larger, original study connected to Stone Lab in
some way. The purpose of this study was to explore how high school students
experienced a field station during a field trip, from a visiting students perspective in
order to understand the value of that field station and its impact on science, science
education, and students. Because the data are entirely from the students
perspectives, supportive evidence to the major themes will consist of the students

9
words. Only representative quotes have been presented to limit the length of this
section. The names are pseudonyms, followed by the students level of science
interest, H(igh) or L(ow). To further protect the students identities, the dates of the
interview comments are not included. It should be noted that all three aspects of the
ecological framework are represented through the students statements. The physical
aspect is the primary focus of this study, however, also of interest are the portions of
the cognitive/affective and cultural frameworks that integrated with the physical.
Focus on Learning
The three students with high interest in science enjoyed the learning opportunities at
Stone Lab. I like [that] the focus is all on learning, it is fun learning, and I like the
location because I love Lake Erie (Janessa-H, interview). Janessa-H saw the
experience as purposeful learning. It is all applicable, it really helps, it is real
science, not just here, take notes on this, you will never actually use it in life - this is
an actual career, this is actually happening every day (Janessa-H, interview). The
three students with low interest in science participated in and enjoyed the
experiences, but did not reveal the passion for the program topics. David admitted,
Unless you are an important scientist, you are not going to need to know the
birds (interview).
Affective Responses
The significance of affective responses was evident throughout the interview and
photovoice data. Although this study was not designed to examine emotion, the
prominence of the affective comments provides insight to how students experienced
the field station field trip. Among the six participants, 39 different affective
responses were identified. Fun, like, and happy constituted a majority of the
responses, but awe and wonder, and boredom required a deeper examination. Awe
and wonder included feelings of amazement, admiration, or surprise. All six
participants revealed a moment when they saw something and were amazed.
Rainbows and sunsets promoted many comments.
I went out on Alligator Bar and saw this beautiful rainbow behind Perrys
Monument. I was amazed because I hardly ever see them and when I do, theyre
really faint or small. This one is clear and pretty big, which really excited me (Willa-
H, photovoice).
And it was at sunset, that is where I got that really cool sunset picture, too. That
was amazing (Willa-H, interview).
Willa-H had strong negative feelings about snakes during the pretrip interview, but
her feelings changed after finding and holding a snake. I love snakes. I think they
are so cool. And they are cute and cuddly (Willa-H, photovoice). This statement is
significant, illustrating a new understanding while her affective response changed
from fear to wonder.

10
David-L had never seen the Great Lakes before this trip. He expressed his wonder as
he watched the storms move across the lake, We sat there and watched it, and then
there was a big storm off in the distance, so we came in and it went from dry and
slightly warm to just pouring down rain, that was kind of a, that was a neat thing.
During the post-trip interview, David-L discussed the memory of the moment he
looked out over the lake, And just the vastness. It looks like the seathe way the
water moved, the way you could see the water had been going in the same pattern
for like, a hundred years, it dug a circular shape into the rocksSometimes it made
you feel warm inside, like even though it was cold, it just felt like, something was
really neat about it, like it was different, you cant really explain it, but it was
different.
Lucas-L had little interest in science. His focus was on relationships with peers. He
photographed an image at night and wrote, I love the night because everything is
calm and relaxing. I saw how the moonlight just reflected so perfectly and needed a
picture (Lucas-L, photovoice).
Not all comments were positive. It is noteworthy that the three participants who
made comments about being bored were the three students who were least
interested in science. David-L spoke about his feelings after the plankton lab failed to
collect specimens to examine, I did not get anything. After that, I was really bored
(interview).
Lucas-L regularly spoke of boredom throughout the interviews. Concerning the

wildlife area hike, he stated, We were just screwing around and it was a lot of fun. I
dont know, I was kind of bored with it Concerning the hands-on botany class
Lucas-L admitted, To be honest, I think I was really bored and I completely checked
out of the class, I just started taking pictures of pretty much anything. Pause yeah,
he loves Batman... Lucas-L admitted that he was usually bored in science class,
After 20 minutes, I am out of it, I just dont pay attentionI like to kind of move
around, so you are not sitting in one place, drool is coming out of your mouth
(interview).
Interest
Students identified moments when they were engaged and interested. Willa-H
talked about the surprises and unexpected activities during her trip to Stone Lab,
Going to Stone Lab, I didnt know what to expect in the first place. So everything
was, you turn around and there was something new. And you are, oh, I didnt know
that was going to happen. When I first stepped onto [the beach], I didnt expect it
to be gravel, it was weird, I am used to sandy beaches, like even on Kelleys [Island],
it is sand. It was weird (Willa-H, interview). The novelty of the setting grabbed her
interest and her curiosity motivated her to explore.
Paige-H described triggered interest concerning this trip, Just being able to explore
that and see all the different formations nature has made around it, was pretty cool.
And then you get to see all the plants and animals, mostly plants, all the way back

11
there and have different teachers point out to you, that is this, and it does this. Thats
kind of cool (interview).
Lauren-L experienced the same activities as the other participants, yet she exhibited
little interest, in spite of the new environment and island activities. On the first day,
she took only four digital images. During the post-trip interviews, Lauren-L did not
discuss anything concerning her experiences of that first days activities. During the
botany class, Lauren-L did discover an interest in plants, and said that while she was
not inspired to take more science classes, she did crave to go out into nature and look
for new plants.
Willa-H-s final comments in her final interview defined her experience at Stone Lab:
It was really intense, I just felt, very curious, but also, [pause], I dont know
how to explain it. Amazed. Because I had never been put into a situation
where you were like in depth, going into all this stuff, it was like, it wasnt in
a classroom, like you were there learning, and it wasnt like learning, you
were exploring, you were doing all this stuff, I was like this is awesome. It
was also very exhausting, you are doing so much and even though it was
like, I was cold and wet and muddy, through all of that, it was just
wonderful, it was great, and I just remember, not when I was at Stone Lab,
but after, when I came home, I just missed it so much, it kind of hurt a little
bit. I just want to be back at Stone Lab. For one more day.
Willa-H was intrinsically motivated. She was curious. She was excited. She wanted
to continue exploring and discovering.
Interest Influenced Future Lifeplans
Three students acknowledged that this field trip had affected their career and life
paths. Most profoundly affected was Willa-H, It made me sure of what I want to
do, to go into a science career. I realized there is so much that I wanted to learn and
do and I wanted to be the one who was figuring things out and telling people about
it, so when we were exploring and learning, I really want to be the one exploring and
learning all the time. That is just what I want to do with my life (interview). Paige-
H said that because of her time at Stone Lab, she was changing her major from
American Sign Language to environmental science.
Culture
Codes connecting culture and Stone Lab as related to this study were minimal. Stone
Lab was the setting for social interactions. Many images and comments involved
peers, including during exploration and activities. New bonds formed among the 50
students. Willa-H voiced sadness when she was discussing her gallery of
photographs, and came to the final image of the group photo taken moments before
all the students loaded onto the buses to head home, here we are, now I will never
forget any of you (interview).

12
Island Setting Facilitated Class or Activity
Most participants did not make direct, relevant comments concerning the setting,
but regularly inferentially acknowledged the Stone Laboratory and island settings.
Kaylie-H recognized that the Stone Lab setting created a mystique or ambiance that
could not be recreated in the classroom. It has been there so long and so many
students have come there, and have had life changing experiences and learned so
much. I like that it has that feeling of age and that feeling of knowledge in it
(interview).
Most comments focused upon experiences and not the setting, although it was the
unique setting that accommodated the experiences, as illustrated by the following
comment, I liked the macroinvertebrate walk on Alligator Bar. We saw several
[species of animals] that I had not seen before, we found a water beetle that is
actually kind of rare and we dont usually find it, and we found it, and we were kind
of excited about that, laughing really geeky things, that was pretty cool (Paige-H,
interview).
Participants did not initiate any comments concerning tools used on the field trip,
but mentioned tools as a means to explore or discover. Tools were essential to the
experiences and seemed to be considered part of the experience. We were trying, all
of us, tried into the microscope to get pictures (Kaylie interview). Paige used the
identification keys to identify macroinvertebrates, plankton, and plants, I knew it
was Dutchmans breeches, because I had seen it before, but trying to get it to key
(interview). Paige-H and Kaylie-H were able to explore the wetland because they
had the foresight to bring along boots, We had to go into this back area that was
almost too deep, it hit the top of our boots (Paige, interview). During his interviews,
David-L acknowledged using tools on the research vessel to determine water clarity
and depth. The most common tools that participants recognized were microscopes,
identification keys, nets, binoculars, and hammers.
Discussion and Recommendations
Literature describes biological field stations in general as venues where education

and research occurs. Field stations themselves are rarely the focus of research (NRC
2014). This study examined the role a biological field station played in relation to
students lived experiences. As demonstrated through students statements, the field
stations setting played an important role in the students experiences by providing a
new, stimulating setting where they could safely direct their personal interests into
explorations and discoveries. Student participants identified two important aspects
of field station settings. First, Stone Lab provided a unique and novel venue where
the students attended environmental science workshop classes. The field station
provided equipped laboratories, managed shorelines, landscaped and natural areas,
and an environment where students were able to explore safely. Stone Lab could not
construct the awe and wonder, but it provided the ingredients for students to
experience awe and wonder. Second, Stone Labs unique setting inspired curiosity

13
and motivation among students, who became extrinsically and intrinsically

motivated, depending on the depth of their interest, compelled them to explore the
new environments.
Stone Lab is a modern, high tech research facility for researchers. The high school
students enjoyed using the tools and equipment that is not typically available for use
in traditional secondary school science rooms. Although tools enabled exploration,
discovery, understanding, and knowledge, the participants did not recognize tools
as a source of interest or excitement. Students expected and accepted the presence of
the tools. Tools held no special place in the participants memories.
There was a great divergence in what the students found interesting and significant.
Students already interested in science were excited to participate in the activities, to
explore, discover, and try out new skills. Students with less interest in science
became excited about the novel setting of the big water Great Lakes ecosystem,
where each activity was an entirely new experience. Biological field stations might
consider creating two tier programs that may provide high-science-interest students
activities focused on new skills and knowledge, and providing low-science-interest
students activities focused on experiencing, exploring, and discovering the novel
setting, and how that novel setting is relevant in their lives.
Impact on Science Education
In reference to science education, the student participants unanimously related

increased interest in science because of the field station experiences. The immersive
science environment and Stone Labs setting provided authentic, hands-on activities
and opportunities for exploration and discovery that engaged the students and
triggered interest at some level. Learning requires interest. Interest, especially
intrinsic interest, will lead to increased learning, scientific literacy, and promote
interactions and persistence within the STEM fields (Hidi and Renninger 2006; NRC
2014).
Impact on Students lives
Three of the six high school student participants redefined their career goals after
their four-day immersive Stone Lab field experience. Students may read, study, and
learn about wildlife, botanical, and environmental career paths, but an authentic
experience provides the knowledge and motivation to realize the reality of such a
career (NRC 2014). Not all student participants were so deeply affected by the Stone
Lab experience. Lucas-L attended the field trip to be with his friends and disclosed
he had little interest in the planned activities. After the trip he admitted, Everything
out here was really cool to do, but I just do not like science. On the other hand,
Lucas-Ls photovoice images, which illustrated what experiences he thought were
meaningful or significant, included animals, activities, and poignant landscapes. To
determine a truer level of impact a four-day field trip at a field station may have on
students lives, a study is needed to examine the long-term effects on low and high
science interest high school students.

14
Effect on Society
The student participants experienced Stone Lab as a new and exciting environment.
What may have seemed ordinary for teachers and Stone Lab staff was a first time
experience for many students. Lucas-L discovered the tranquility of the moonlit
night while listening to the waves lapping the shoreline, Willa-H saw a rainbow,
David-L saw big water for the first time in his life. Seeds for new consciousness and
appreciation for the environment were planted.
For students not interested in science, Stone Lab provided knowledge and personal
connections to the Lake Erie ecosystem and to environmental science. As future
adults, these students may possess a stronger scientific literacy that will guide their
decision making at home, at work, and in the voting booth. Field experiences
associated with inquiry based learning have been shown to improve a students
science scores, self-esteem, conflict resolution, problem solving, motivation to learn,
and classroom behavior (NRC 2014 p. 13.) A positive field station experience may
later lead to participation in citizen science, or as a volunteer in the community
(NRC 2014). The student participants admitted that this Stone Laboratory field trip
indeed altered their perception of Lake Erie, of environmental science, and for some,
the reality that a STEM-related career pathway might be right for them.
Conclusion
American science education is in crisis and people are needed to solve the crisis.
Students need to be prepared for things that have not been invented yet. Students
need knowledge and impactful experiences that will equip them as adults of
tomorrow with the tools necessary to solve these problems. Classroom lecture alone
will not get the job done. Students go into drone-mode and become uninterested and
unmotivated (Behrendt 2014).
The classroom must be taken somewhere new, to where the students are able to
become interested, a place where doors open to intrinsically motivated learning and
deeper knowledge. Students need to understand the interconnectedness between the
fundamentals of science, the environment, and everyday life. Quality experiences
impact student learning through increased interest, increased motivation to learn,
increased knowledge and a broader perspective that will help them to apply their
knowledge to the world around them (Behrendt 2014).
Through the words and lived experiences of the student participants, there is
agreement that the four-day experience at Stone Lab was beneficial in multiple ways.
The students explored, discovered, and reflected over the things that they personally
found interesting. The students developed and discovered interest in many aspects
of biology, environmental science, geology, and the geography of the region. Some
students admitted that the field station experience might have redirected their lives
to a career in the environmental sciences. The students recognized the value of Stone
Lab, and ostensibly any biological field station that provides a focus on student
exploration, discovery, education, and applied knowledge to the STEM fields.

15
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17

Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 17-26, March 2015
A Needs Assessment Survey on Teacher Readiness of

Science Pre-Service Teachers: Towards a
Contextualized Student Teaching Enhancement
Program (STEP)
Darryl Roy T. Montebon

Philippine Normal University
Philippines
Abstract. This research aims to evaluate the level of need of the pre-
service teachers in different areas to design a contextualized student
teacher enhancement program. The respondents of this research are the
one hundred thirteen (N=113) science pre-service students taking up
field study courses at the Institute of Teaching and Learning of the
Philippine Normal University. A qualitative research design was utilized
in this study. A journal analysis procedure was also done to determine
the student perception in different areas asked in the survey
questionnaire. The survey results showed that pre-service teachers have
a moderate level of need in seven out of ten items in the survey (M
2.0).The level of need of the pre-service teacher does not significantly
vary when categorized per major (p 0.05 at sig. 0.05) except on the
teaching strategy (X2(2) =12.453, p = 0.02) area. When grouped per
gender, the mean ranks do not significantly vary on the different areas
being surveyed (p 0.05 at sig. 0.05). Respondents also revealed that they
need to improve themselves to possess good teacher qualities. Thus, it is
recommended that a contextualized student teaching enhancement
program be implemented to help the pre-service teachers with their
needs.
Keywords: Needs Assessment; Pre-Service Teacher Education;

Contextualized Student Teaching Enhancement Program; Pre-service
Teacher Training
1. INTRODUCTION
The Philippine Normal University has been assigned as the National Center for
Teacher Education in the Philippines (R.A. 9647). Thus, it is the institutions
responsibility to produce quality and excellent teachers. The present curriculum
for the bachelors degree program in the Philippines include Field Study (FS)
courses that enable students to relate the theories and concepts they learned in
their professional education courses with real classroom experiences. In these
courses, pre-service teachers are exposed to various teaching experiences such as

18
designing effective instructional materials, conducting demonstration teachings,

and making valid and reliable assessment tools.
To ensure that pre-service teachers experience the desired trainings inthe
Philippine Normal University, the Institute for Teaching and Learning (ITL) is
tasked to design innovations that will help equip the pre-service teachers with
concept, skills, and attitude to become an excellent teacher. Prior to deployment
to public schools where they will have their formal immersion of the learning
environment, known as off campus practice teaching, ITL serves as the avenue
for baseline experiences. It is in ITL that pre-service teachers begin to observe,
experience, and explore the teaching profession. A university supervisor is
assigned to make sure that pre-service teachers get the necessary training and
experiences in the classroom before they get deployed to public schools. In some
cases, their university supervisor in the field study, are also the ones that
supervise them in their off-campus trainings.
The results of this research can be a baseline data for designing a program that
will help pre-service teachers be prepared for the challenges of the newly
implemented K12 Curriculum. It is also the aim of this research to provide
meaningful learning experiences for pre-service teachers by exposing them to a
program designed for their specific needs. Thus, such programmed is
contextualized. The results of this research can also be utilized by other teacher
training institutions to create a similar training that of the STEP or even adapt it.
2. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Education programs in the Philippines offer professional courses that discuss
theories of learning, educational technologies and teaching strategies. In terms of
the respective discipline in science, rigid concept based courses are offered. The
Philippine Normal University offers a variety of science major courses such as
General Science, Biology, Chemistry and Physics. Each majorhsip program is
designed for pre-service teachers to be developed in the content knowledge of
their respective disciplines. Moreover, to prepare them with the theories,
techniques, and strategies in teaching science, different professional courses are
also offered. These professional and major courses are designed to reinforce each
other to help pre-service teachers as they prepare to become professional
teachers. However, these courses are not sufficient to equip pre-service teachers
for the field of work. According to Young, Grant, Montbriand, and Therriault
(2001) applying theories into practice is a must. Thus, practice teaching courses
are required. In this regard, practicum in teaching, known as off campus training,
is a major requirement for the courses in the bachelor education.
The pre-service teaching trainings offer best experiences that promote
professional development among pre-service teachers (Howitt, 2007; Lougrahn,
Moulhall, and Berry 2008; as cited by Cheng, 2013). Exposing pre-service
teachers to real classroom activities and allowing them to handle the class
themselves are important experiences for teacher institutions to produce
effective, excellent, and professional teachers. Student teaching experiences
allow pre-service teachers to develop positive self-efficacy beliefs, instructional
materials beliefs, and classroom management beliefs (Yilmaz and Cavas, 2008).
Such positive beliefs on taking on the role of a teacher ensure the affectivity of a
pre-service teacher when he or she becomes an in-service educator.

19
The call for teacher-training programs that are responsive to the growing
diversity of learners is high. The 21st century learners need teachers who are not
only experts in their own field but also are knowledgeable in other disciplines
(Queensland College of Teachers, 2012). This claim has been supported by
Cheng (2009) that the need in teacher education has shifted from effective
movements toward the global movements. He described the paradigm shift to
be waves of change from just merely delivering the content knowledge, to
stakeholder satisfaction, multiple and sustainable development as change in the
society arise. With these changes, university training must be able to prepare
those who are going to be teachers. Teachers should be prepared to handle
situations inside and outside the classroomsthat will effectively promote change
and solve conflicts in the present times (Young, et. al, 2001). Moreover, teachers
should not only be locally competitive but globally as well (Cheng, 2009).
While the practicum program is a good way of inducting pre-service teachers, it
is imperative to look for alternative ways to prepare them. Craig, Kraft, and du
Plessis (1998) suggested that research based programs should be done to address
the call of the changing time. Thus, this research is set to explore ways to that
will help science pre-service teachers in the Philippines respond to the K12
curriculum challenges.
Grossman et al (2009) described that a professional practice with the goal to
develop expert practitioners should prepare a program that orchestrates
understanding, skill, relationship and even the identity of the practitioner. In
practicing a certain profession, it is not easy to identify the practice from the
practitioner. With Grossman et als (2009) idea in mind, it is essential to design a
program that will help practitioners in their field of work. In this case, this
research aims to design a program that will help pre-service teachers as they
prepare themselves to become expert practitioners of education.
The aligned theoretical and pedagogical academic preparations in teacher
education are thought to promote meaningful and worthwhile pre-service
experiences (Ziechner, 2010; as cited by Cheng 2013).To identify the different
factors that pre-service teachers really need, and support them with those needs
can enhance the teacher education programs.
In the Philippines, curriculum change has drastically happened. The former
Basic Education Curriculum has been made into Enhanced Basic Curriculum or
the K12 Curriculum by virtue of the R.A. 10533. The new curriculum calls for the
revision of teacher preparation in the universities. In effect, Teacher Education
Institutions (TEIs) have to reconstruct their existing bachelors programs that
will help meet the demands of the new curriculum. However, the science pre-
service teachers which are still about to graduate are not prepared for it since
their course works are designed for the old curriculum. Thus, enhancement
programs are really needed.
As a response, the Institute of Teaching and Learning of Philippine Normal
University initiated a Student Teacher Enhancement Program (STEP) that will
help assist the outgoing pre-service teachers with their need in adjusting to the
K12 program (Agustin, 2014). A seminar type training was done to deal on the
different areas of the K12 like orientation on the new content standards, mode of
instruction, and methods of assessment. The professors at the institute prepared
lectures that will help pre-service teachers with the K12 challenges.

20
The participants in the program are the pre-service teachers who are in line for
off campus pre-service training. Based on the evaluation, the STEP initiated by
the ITL department was successful. Thus, this research serves as a follow up to
the STEP program. It is deemed necessary that the STEP be conducted in field
study pre-service teachers to help them not only in their practice teaching within
the institute itself but also as they go out to take their formal off campus pre-
service teaching.
2.1 Research Problems
In view of the literature reviewed, this research aims to design a contextualized
STEP for the pre-service teachers to prepare them for the pre-service teaching
program. Specifically, this research aims to achieve the following objectives:
1. Assess the readiness of science pre-service teachers in the different
areas to be developed
2. Evaluate if teaching readiness varies by
a. Major or Specialization or,
b. Gender
3. Design a contextualized Student Teaching Enhancement
Program(STEP) that will help science pre-service teachers with their
needs based on the needs assessment survey
3. METHODOLOGIES
3.1 Demographics of the Respondents

The respondents of this research are the one hundred thirteen (N= 113)
purposely chosen science pre-service students of the researcher taking up field
study courses at the Institute of Teaching and Learning of the Philippine Normal
University. The respondents are the pre-service teachers supervised by the
researcher. Their ages range from 19 to 21 years old. Table 1 shows the
demographicsof the respondents.
Table 1
Demographics of Respondents
Majors Male Female Total
Biology 8 35 43
Biology for Teachers 17 28 45
General Science 6 19 25
TOTAL 113
3.2 Research Design and Instruments

This research is qualitative in nature. It utilized survey and journal
analysis method. To find out the level of need of the science pre-service teachers,
a survey questionnaire adapted from the Teaching and Learning International
Survey (TALIS) of the Organization for Economic Co-operation Economic and
Development (OECD) was utilized. The survey contains questions that allow
pre-service teachers to self-assess their level of need in the different areas given
using a scale of 1 to 4, 1 as the lowest and 4 as the highest level of need. Upon
subjecting to the reliability test, a Cronbachs Alpha coefficient of 0.878 was
obtained.

21
To interpret the mean obtained in the different areas being surveyed, the
following scale has been set:
Scale Interpretation
0.1 to 1.0 No need at all
1.1 to 2.0 Low level of need
2.1 to 3.0 Moderate level of need
3.1 to 4.0 High Level of need
For the journaling method, pre-service teachers are allowed to write on their
journal on the topic of readiness to be a teacher. They were encouraged to identify
which aspect of teaching they need help the most. The survey was administered
to the respondents after the general orientation in the field study course was
held.
4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
4.1 Needs Assessment Survey Result

Table 2 shows the results of the analysis of the needs assessment survey of the
respondents (N=113) in general.
Table 2
Survey Results on the Needs of Pre-service Teachers
Areas of Concern Mean SD
ICT 2.52 .94
Concept Readiness 2.83 .84
Communication w/ Students 2.86 .81
Standards 2.88 .71
Lesson Planning 2.91 .73
Classroom Management 2.95 .77
Assessment 3.00 .73
Teaching Strategies 3.13 .73
K12 Implementation 3.17 .83
Questioning Skills 3.18 .77
Note: respondents used 4 point Likert scale ranging 1 (no need) to 4 (high need)
The survey results showed that pre-service teachers have a moderate level of
need in seven out of ten items in the survey (M 2.0). When ranked, the areas
that ranked low (M 2.91) are ICT, Concept Readiness, and Communication with
students, standards and lesson planning. Though it is still in the range of the
moderate level of need, the item that scored the lowest mean is the integration of
computer assisted instruction or ICT (M=2.52).
Upon the analysis of the data gathered in the survey questionnaire, it can be
inferred that the area where most of the pre-service teachers have the highest
level of need is the ability to facilitate classroom discussion using inquiry based
instruction where questioning skills is a must (M=3.18). A number of forty one
percent (41%) respondents havea moderate level of need and thirty eight (38 %)
percent with a high level of need.

22
The mode of instruction in the new K12 Program will be inquiry-based

and the role of the teacher is merely a facilitator. Thus, a good
questioning skill is really important. Such strategy will enable students
to show their understanding and allow teachers to gauge their
learning. (Female, General Science Education)
The next area identified to be of high level of need is the implementation of the
K12 program (M = 3.17). This area showed the most respondents that indicated a
high level of need (40.7 %). The new K12 program has been an issue in the
Philippine education system, particularly with the science teachers since science
will no longer be taught by specific discipline for each year but will be an
integration of all the sciences with the competencies arranged in a spiral
progression.
The K12 curriculum is my concern because when I get into the field, I
must be flexible in teaching the different branches of science so I can
execute the curriculum successfully. Therefore, I need to find ways to
improve my concepts on the different branches of science and
understand how they are related to each other. (Female, Biology
Education)
Another concern of the pre-service teachers is teaching strategies (M=3.13). Most
of them are concerned on how to run a classroom and deliver their lessons to
students with ease and appropriate methods of instruction (48.7% for moderate
and 32.7% for high level of need). As a beginning teacher, it is understandable
that such concern will really arise.
I have a need to focus on learning different learning pedagogies to be
used in my class. I believe that an effective teacher is one that promotes
efficient teaching and learning process using appropriate methods and
strategies. (Female, General Science)
In the new K12 program, one of the major challenges is the way to assess
students learning. Aside from the paper and pen test, authentic assessment is
encouraged. Further, a new way of classifying test items through KPUP was
introduced (DepEd order 73 s. 2012). Maximo (2014) in his blog described KPUP
as various levels of assessment. KPUP stands for Knowledge, Process,
Understanding, and Performance/Product. Each level of assessment has a
corresponding percentage to allocate its distribution in the evaluation material
prepared.
One factor to a successful teaching and learning process is classroom
management, and the key to it would be pedagogical and content knowledge.
Jann Joseph (2010) in her research reiterated that pedagogical methods and
concepts should be linked to produce a science teacher with high self-efficacy.
Teachers with high self-efficacy can stand in front of the classroom with
confidence since he/she has the determination to overcome classroom
challenges. The respondents also realized such importance of the classroom
management skills as shown in the results of the survey (M=2.95).
Upon the analysis of all the journals written by the respondents, a great number
of them are concerned with one area that is not part of the survey instrument
which is the way to carry themselves as a teacher (65 %, N=113). Most of them
are not confident standing in front of the class and facilitate classroom
discussion due to several reasons. Their anxieties vary from the way they look,
dress up, and speak English.

23
Self-confidence is one of my personal issues. Though I mastered the topic

to be discussed, I still stutter due to nervousness. (Male, General
Science)
Honestly, I have a problem communicating with a large group of people.

Its not easy for me to talk in front of people I dont know because I am
scared to commit mistakes and be judged by others. (Female, Biology)
4.2 Mean Comparisons on Major and Gender

The data has been subjected using Kolmogorov Smirnov Test to find out if the
scores are normally distributed or not. Upon the analysis, all factors have
recorded below the significance level (p 0.000 at sig = 0.05) for both gender and
major differences. This means that the scores are not normally distributed, thus a
nonparametric test should be utilized to compare the means based on majorship
and gender, and in this case, Kruskal Wallis was utilized.
Table 3
Kruskal Wallis Test for Majorship
Lesson Planning
Communication
Implementation
Management
w/ Students
Questioning
Assessment
Classroom
Standards
Readiness
Strategies
Teaching
Concept
Skills
K12
ICT
Chi- 12.45
1.975 1.058 .263 2.381 1.900 2.183 1.570 .235 .144
Square 3
df 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
Asym
.373 .589 .877 .304 .387 .336 .002 .456 .889 .930
p. Sig.
*Note: Grouping Variable: Major
The Kruskal Wallis test of the respondents as categorized per major shows that
nine out of ten factors show no significant differences (p 0.05 at sig. 0.05) except
on the teaching strategy (X2(2) =12.453, p = 0.02) area. Among the different
majors, general science has the highest mean rank of 75.10 compared to biology
education majors (M=48.84) and biology for teachers (M=54.74).
This difference in teaching strategy may have been a result of having the general
science majors observe the teacher-researcher in the classroom longer than the
other two other majors. Also, the said difference may have been the result of
course content difference. Biology majors are more concern with the different
teaching strategy on the different branches of science since most of their content
courses are focused on biology when compared with the General Science majors
who are exposed to the different branches of science. Thus, they recorded a
lesser need for teaching strategies.

24
Table 4
Kruskal Wallis Test for Gender
Lesson Planning
Communication
Implementation
Management
w/ Students
Questioning
Assessment
Classroom
Standards
Readiness
Strategies
Teaching
Concept
Skills
K12
ICT
Chi-
3.264 1.383 .703 7.612 1.269 .010 .996 .236 2.697 2.333
Square
df 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Asymp.
.071 .240 .402 .006 .260 .920 .318 .627 .101 .127
Sig.
*Note: Grouping: Gender
The Kruskal Wallis test for gender revealed that there are no significant
differences on the different areas being surveyed (p 0.05 at sig. 0.05). The
differences in mean ranks do not necessarily vary from each other.
5. CONCLUSION
Based on the data gathered and its analysis, it can be concluded that pre-service
teachers have a moderate to high level of need to the different items asked in the
survey. The area with the highest level of need is the ability to facilitate
classroom discussion using inquiry based instruction (M=3.18), while the area
with the lowest level of need is the integration of computer assisted instruction
or ICT (M=2.52).
The level of need of the pre-service teacher does not significantly vary when
categorized per major (p 0.05 at sig. 0.05) except on the teaching strategy (X2(2)
=12.453, p = 0.02) area. When grouped by gender, the mean ranks do not
significantly differ on the different areas being surveyed (p 0.05 at sig. 0.05).
Respondents also revealed that they need to improve themselves to possess the
qualities of a teacher.
5.1 Contextualized Student Teaching Enhancement Program (Context-STEP)

Based on the results of the needs assessment survey, pre-service teachers
manifested that they have high to moderate levels of needs on the different areas
asked in the survey. Such concerns are assumed to affect their performance in
the practice teaching program. Thus, it is the aim of this research to address such
concerns.
To do so, this research adapts the STEP to be implemented on pre-service
teachers who are in their field study courses. The field study courses allow pre-
service teachers to practice their teaching skills in the classroom such as lesson
planning, facilitating learning, and conducting evaluations.
In the original STEP program, a seminar type was utilized. In the proposed
contextualized STEP, there will be an incorporation of coaching before
demonstration, observations during demo, critiquing the plan and its
implementation, and assistance in preparing assessment materials.
Their application of the concepts, strategies, methods and insights gained in the
contextualized STEP will be evaluated during class observations and output
processing. Continuous monitoring will be done to check on how pre-service are

25
doing as they apply their learnings from the contextualized STEP. Below is a
program outline on how the contextualized STEP will be implemented.
Among the ten categories in the survey only the five areas that recorded the
highest level of need were considered since the time that the pre-service teachers
will spend with the institute is limited. It is necessary for the designed program
to be accomplished on time. Further, some areas were clustered since they are
integrated with each other naturally.
Area Objective Method

K12 Implementation Familiarize oneself Seminar
with different Workshop
features of the K12 Curriculum
program analysis
Teacher interviews
Class observations
Enhance teacher Seminar
Teacher Personality personality skills Workshop
Teaching Strategies Identify effective Lesson planning
Classroom teaching strategies Simulation of
Management Facilitate the class demonstration
Questioning Skills using principles of Class
good classroom demonstration
management Critiquing of
Ask effective demonstration
questions that will
promote inquiry
on students
Assessment Prepare valid Seminar
assessment tools Workshop
Output processing
Item analysis
To evaluate if the objectives of the program are met, the pre-service teachers will
be subjected to a teaching achievement test. The questions will be taken from the
areas included in the contextualized STEP. Open ended questions will also be
provided to analyze how the program affected them.
REFERENCES
Agustin, M. (2014). Student Teaching Enhancement Program 2014 Guidelines. Institute of
Teaching and Learning, Philippine Normal University.
An investigation of best practice in evidence-based assessment within preservice teacher
education programs and other professions. (Queensland College of Teachers) 2012.
Retrieved from
http://www.qct.edu.au/PDF/PSU/BestPpracticeEvidenceBasedAsessmentPre
serviceReacherEdPrograms.PDF
Aypay, A. (2009) Teachers Evaluation of Their Pre-Service Teacher Training. Educational
Sciences: Theory & Practice. pp. 113-1121. Retrieved from

26
https://www.edam.com.tr/kuyeb/pdf/en/158ed1df960f59116fd2b27d2e9b66c
eENTAM.pdf
Cheng, E. C. (2013). Enhancing the Quality of Pre-service Teachers Learning in
Teaching Practicum. Retrieved from
http://nevelestudomany.elte.hu/downloads/2013/nevelestudomany_2013_1_
6-16.pdf
Cheng, Y. (2008). Paradigm Shift in Pre-Service Teacher Education: Implications for
Innovations and Practice. Innovative Practices in Pre-Service Teacher Education an
Asia-Pacific Perspective. Retrieved from
https://www.google.com.ph/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2
&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCkQFjAB&url=https%3A%2F%2F
Craig, H.J., Kraft, R. J., du Plessis, J., (1998) Teacher Development Making and Impact,
Retrieved from
http://people.umass.edu/educ870/teacher_education/Documents/Craig-
book.pdf
Grossman, P., Compton, C., Igra, D., Ronfeldt, E., Shahan, E., Williamson, P. (2009)
Teaching Practice: A Cross Professional Perspective. Teachers College Record.
Vol. 111. No. 9. pp. 2055-2100. Retrieved from
https://cset.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/files/documents/publications/
Grossman-TeachingPracticeACross-ProfessionalPerspective.pdf
Joseph, Jann (2010) Does Intention Matter? Assessing the Science Teaching Efficacy
Beliefs of Pre-service Teachers as Compared to the General Student Population.
Electronic Journal of Science Education, Vol. 14 No. 1, 2-14. Retrieved from
http://ejse.southwestern.edu/article/download/7332/5620
Maximo, A (February 7, 2014) Grade Conscious. The Construct. Retrieved from
http://www.alexmaximo.com/deped-k-12-kpup-grading-assessment/
McCawley, P. (2009). Methods for Conducting Educational Needs Assessment
Guidelines for Cooperative Extension System Personals. Retrieved from
http://www.cals.uidaho.edu/edcomm/pdf/BUL/BUL0870.pdf
Teacher Questionnaire. (n.d.) OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey Retrieved
January 10, 2015 from http://www.oecd.org/edu/school/43081350.pdf
Survey Analysis Guidelines (n.d.) Retrieved January 4, 2015 from
http://plus50.aacc.nche.edu/documents/publications/6_SurveyAnalysis.pdf
Ylmaz, H. and ava, P. H. (2008). The Effect of the Teaching Practice on Pre-service
Elementary Teachers Science Teaching Efficacy and Classroom Management
BeliefsEurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science & Technology Education, 4(1), 45-54.
Retrieved from http://ejmste.com/v4n1/Eurasia_v4n1_Yilmaz_Cavas.pdf
Young, E., Grant, P., Montbriand, C., Therriault (2001). Educating Pre-Service Teachers,
The State of Affairs. Retrieved from
http://www.learningpt.org/pdfs/literacy/preservice.pdf

27

Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 27-42, March 2015
The Experience of Hidden Curriculum on Selecting

a Supervisor from the Perspective of Students
Fatemeh Robati and Forouzan Tonkaboni*

Department of Educational Science,
Payame Noor University (PNU), Tehran, Iran
Mohammad Mohammad Bagheri

Kerman Medical University, Bahonar Hospital,
Department of Infectious Diseases
Abstract: Hidden curriculum is a new topic presented by the experts of

curriculum during the recent years. In this study, the criteria for selecting a
supervisor were studied through the experiences gained by the graduates of
PhD. courses. This research is a qualitative and a phenomenological study. In
this study, all participants were graduated PhD students. The research tools
include semi-structured interviews and a sampling method of usual and
ordinary cases; and for data analysis, subject Open Coding and Selective
Coding (optional) were used. This paper was the result of interviews with 54
Ph.D. students from medical and non-medical universities and also State and
Azad Universities. Moreover, the hidden experiences of PhD. students
regarding the selection of a supervisor were studied. In this study, 12 main
categories were extracted from 123 common factors found in our investigation
that include: behavioral and ethical characteristics, executive positions,
scientific positions, being well-known or famous, access to supervisors, having
skill and mastery in research and statistics, having specialty and expertise in a
specific field, limitations and constraints, senior students, gender, supportive
ability of supervisors and the futurism or anticipating the future. Results
showed that the hidden factors such as ethical and behavioral characteristics of
supervisors or professors, their academic and scientific ranks, governed laws
on the universities, rules and regulations of the universities, informal networks,
and the possible supports and limitations can affect the selection of students
(regarding the selection of a supervisor). Also, some of the guidelines and
regulations issued by ministries might be effective. Many of these regulations
are not implemented and therefore require more profound thinking on this
subject.
Keywords: Hidden Curriculum, Supervisor, Students Experience
2015 The authors and IJLTER.ORG. All rights reserved.

28
1. Introduction
Hidden curriculum is a relatively new topic which was presented by the related experts
during the recent years. According to Eisner(1995), schools are teaching three lesson-
plans simultaneously including explicit curriculum (formal), hidden curriculum
(explicit) and ineffective or invalid curriculum. This issue is against the current belief on
the curriculum of schools which is presented as a one-dimensional phenomenon and
considers the schools as a place like kindergarten in order to execute explicit
curriculums.
Mehrmohammadi (2008) believed that hidden curriculum is nothing except taking

steps into deep-thinking toward teaching and training flows and preventing simple-
thinking. Also, he believed that learning and teaching the invalid and hidden
curriculum means that both affect the students in order to form and shape their
experiences and their presence in the learning and teaching system. Trying to present
the learning results or experiences of students without considering these two concepts,
or these two curriculums along with a formal one, is an incomplete and ineffective
attempt and never presents this field completely.
In most cases, the effect of hidden curriculum is more than the formal curriculum as
some individuals do not observe these principles while learning the related principles
and norms. Selecting a supervisor during the researching process and its effect on the
referential valuation of subjects and titles of thesis and also its place in the curriculum
of learning centers is one of the important issues in the curriculum of universities
(Yarmohammadian, 2007).
Occasionally, PhD. students consider some criteria for choosing the professors,
which potentially affect their research course. Highlighting the characteristics of
some professors by PhD. students give an especial value to this course and increases
its significance. The presented paper was done by considering this presumption that
the universities are centers of science and most scientific studies require guidelines;
and also, the students make hard efforts to select a supervisor though different ways.
For this reason, this paper tries to determine the effective hidden factors on selecting
a supervisor during the research course. According to Benson and Snider, there are
no high schools and kindergarten in which the hidden curriculum had been imposed
on the students and the learning boards, but in fact, it affects the whole process of
education (Maleki, 2012).
Ghourchin (2010) allocated the hidden curriculum to teaching the informal texts of
value systems, norms and perceptions, the non-academic beliefs and the informal

29
aspects of High Educational Centers which result in a training system toward the
governed philosophy, structure and texture of a society.
In other words, the hidden curriculum refers to a set of learning(s) in High

Education System which resulted in a governed philosophy in the educational
environment (universities and the institutes of higher education) without informing
the members of scientific board and the students. The hidden curriculum includes
implicit, informal and intangible teaching of values system, norms, beliefs and the
informal aspects of universities and high educational centers which affect the
training system and the society texture. The hidden curriculum basically is not
approved by the formal experts of schools but it can serve as an effective method to
the formal and executive curriculum (Fathivajargah, 2007).
In any case, there are various hidden factors within a research course which affect
the values and aims of this course and also decrease the validity of PhD. degree and
the students success in this course such as in selecting the supervisor. Therefore, in
this paper the experiences of PhD. graduate students from selecting the supervisor
were studied and also the effective hidden factors in this domain were examined.
Since there are various factors which are not related to the formal curriculum and
the experts of education ignore them (do not consider them), but these factors affect
the thoughts, emotions and the behavior of learners and also they are mostly
effective on the explicit curriculum in most cases. Therefore, the hidden curriculum
determines an extent which is the basis of value and self-confidence of participants
significantly and this hidden curriculum affects the selection of supervisor more
than the formal one.
Certainly, these kinds of hidden curriculums considerably affect the whole process
of the research course. And also, ignoring the negative effects of hidden curriculum
makes the accomplishment of research course aims hard and difficult. Although the
conditions of selecting the supervisor within the explicit curriculum (pre-designed
curriculum) of universities were presented in brief but there are effective hidden
factors in order to select a supervisor which affect the research course.
In a study by Tonkaboni (2015), she found that a high percentage of students

believed in the scientific weaknesses of some of the teachers and its first rank among
other hidden learning shows the effects that the professor teaching has on students.
Therefore, the planners and experts must consider the hidden curriculum in all
educational and research fields within PhD. courses. The writer of this paper, by
reading the books and journals related to the training and learning (education) area,

30
in particular educational planning, as well as searching the internet and Persian

information banks such as Scientific Information Bank of Jahad Daneshgahi, Noor
Journals Base and IRANDOC website, SID, etc. did not find any research named
studying the effective hidden factors on selecting the supervisor in the research
course, but other studies related to this topic were found.
In a study by Safaeemovahed and Attaran (2013), they found the especial dynamics
of supervisor student relationships in doing the research projects and also
investigate the incorrect norms that the students consider them when selecting their
supervisor. Based on the obtained results from an interview with 6 M.A. students of
Planning Curriculum who were in the stage of selecting a supervisor, the related
norms (for selecting a supervisor) were classified into six groups: behavior and
characteristics of the professors, academic and non-academic norms, possible
support, and limitations. The results showed that the students will access to these
norms through observing the performance of professors in class and defense
sessions and also the informal network such as the former students.
In another study by Attaran, Zein Abadi and Tulaby (2009) relationships between
supervisor and students toward PhD. thesis, they have found that more than 50%
of PhD. learners were unhappy with their supervisors and on the other hand, if the
level of satisfaction from (happiness with) supervisors increases, the students
relationship with their supervisors becomes more satisfactory; it must be mentioned
that there is a positive relationship between the quality and efficiency of thesis with
the students satisfaction regarding their relationship with their supervisors.
This paper was done by an integration of two methods i.e. qualitative and
quantitative methods. At first, by studying the related literature and interviews
with the supervisors or professors who had experiences in completing thesis and
also interviews with PhD. students, 20 indices or indicators as the criteria of a
desirable relationship between supervisors and students were extracted, the most
important ones are: easy access of students to the supervisors, the assistance of
supervisors in order to compile and edit the previous literature and the other parts
(Attaran et al., 2009).
The aim of another paper by Fathivajargah, Arefi and Jalilinia (2009) was to
recognize and study the hidden curriculum in M.A. theses in Shahid Beheshti
University. Based on the definition of Portly (1993) toward hidden curriculum, four
main dimensions were defined in order to shape and design the hidden curriculum
of thesis. They are presented in the following:

31
- Hidden curriculum as the informal expectation except expected plans in the

thesis;
- Hidden curriculum resulted from the unintended learning(s);
- Hidden curriculum resulted from thesis structure; and
- Hidden curriculum by students
The present qualitative paper was done using an ethnography method and it was
conducted on 20 students (in M.A. degree) in three groups of (A): Human Science,
(B): Engineering and Technical Sciences and (C): Basic Sciences by the researcher.
The related findings which were obtained by using various qualitative tools such as
autobiography, observation, image or pictures, semi-structured interviews and the
content analysis done by the researcher indicate that the students gained negative
and positive experiences during the time of writing thesis.(Fathivajargah, 2009)
Stevenson & Evans (2009) reviewed the related studies of the relationship between
students and supervisors during 1990-2009 and found that the quality of
experiences resulted from these relationships was affected by these factors: 1- the
clarity of expectations and 2- the level of support of supervisors from their students.
Vilkinas (2008) in a study on 25 supervisors in Ireland has found that the

supervisors use 6 styles in guiding the students:
- Developer (participating the student in making decisions toward their

thesis);
- Deliverer (determining and delivering the expected results to the students);
- Monitor (continuous monitoring on the performance of students through

reviewing their work);
- Broker (establishing the communicative network between students and the

other social sources);
- Innovator (creative ideas about thesis);
- Integrator (taking the desirable response toward the created situations in

guiding the thesis).
Bradbury et al. (2007) studied the communicative process between students and
supervisors by using critical discourse analysis. Based on his viewpoint, the
evolution process was associated with features such as responsibility and

32
independence; also the center of control and relationships is gradually being

changed from supervisors toward the students. He defined this gradual
independency as weaning the babies.
The related study from the hidden curriculum in higher education was done by
Margolis et al., in 2001 in which the factors such as educational counseling,
relationships of supervisors and students and the role of professional learning(s) in
re-producing the social inequalities were studied. One of the most important parts
of this project was to study the relationship between supervisors and students
which was conducted by Sandra Acker, who extensively studied the hidden
curriculum within the relationships of supervisors and students in USA, Canada,
Australia and New Zealand. The results show that these relationships are under the
effect of factors such as the culture of major, the culture of educational group, the
rules for accepting students, gender and the unequal position of supervisor and
students in the organizational hierarchy of universities (Margolis, Eric et al., 2001).
Tawnsend (1996) in a case study studied the structural elements which result into a
hidden curriculum in the High Education, and pointed out that elements such as
social structure of a class, the authority of supervisors, the governed rules on the
relationships between supervisors and students and also the structural obstacles
within universities are playing a role in the formation of hidden curriculum in the
Higher Education. Based on his viewpoint, if the support networks and their rules
do not exist in the universities for selecting the supervisors and the manner of their
relationships with the students, therefore, the rule of Survival of the Fittest will be
governed and everyone tries to guarantee his / her position by using the
availabilities.
2. Methods and Materials
This paper was done during the academic year 2011-2012. In this paper, all
universities of Iran which have access to the acceptance conditions of PhD. students
and the students who have passed their research course in PhD. degree were
interviewed. In this paper all students of state and non-state (Azad) universities were
participated and all participants were graduates of PhD. degree.
This paper is a qualitative study and 54 individuals were interviewed. Of 54

participants in this study, 35, 15 and 4 individuals were from the state universities
of Science and Technology Ministry, Medical Sciences Universities and Islamic
Azad Universities of Iran in different educational majors, respectively. The
researcher interviewed with the participants directly and in-depth for 8 months, and

33
to complete the interviews for studying their experiences research course, telephone
and e-mails were used during the research course.
The sampling was based on purposeful sampling selected as a logical sampling

method of phenomenological studies. In this paper, Typical Case Sampling (one of
the kinds of purposeful sampling) was used. The instrument was semi-structured
interview. The extracted findings and information were analyzed through
classifying the interviews, making prominent the main cases/points, organizing the
documents, interviews, and interpreting the information. In data analysis, coding
method was used; it means after doing the interviews with the informants (as these
interviews were recorded by the recording system) and transcribing them, Open
Coding (such as reading the lines based on data lines, extracting the main sentences
and concepts, forming the principle categories) and Axial Coding (classifying data,
determining the sub-classes, forming the final classes) were done.
In order to examine the validity of research instruments, the researcher sent the
guideline form of interview to 5 professional professors during the research course
and asked their idea about the selected questions in this form, after receiving their
feedback and revising some questions, the researcher used this form to complete the
interview. To assure the validity of data and results, the following measures were
done.
In order to make sure about the validity of coding(s) and the named categories by
the researcher, they were sent to two researchers for review, and then by using the
viewpoints of these two researchers, the final categories were formed. These final
categories were presented to the interviewees and their ideas were asked. Their
responses indicated that these categories and the extracted results are relatively
accurate reflections of their viewpoints. Also in this paper, in order to measure the
reliability of this study, the method of kirk & Miller as the Noting Rules was used.
3. Results
One of the main problems of students is to select their supervisor during their
research course. This issue is one of the serious problems for PhD. students as the
researchers must consider and pay attention to their implications in spite of the
above mentioned points in the instructions and the regulation of universities.
Based on several studies and the results obtained from interviews with 54 graduate
students in this paper, 12 secondary themes were found as the effective hidden
factors on selecting the supervisors, which are classified into other subgroups:
3.1 Ethical and Behavioral Characteristics

34
The ethical and behavioral characteristics of professors were one the most important
criteria that the interviewees considered for selecting their supervisor. The
interviewees will access to these characteristics within different situations such as
classes, university campuses, and professors offices and also the situations outside
the universities. Within these situations, the professors themselves will show certain
behaviors to different individuals among their students. Based on the interviews in
this paper, it is possible to determine the behavioral characteristics through three
ways as:
- How to behave with the colleagues;
- How to behave with the students and
- How to behave with the individuals outside the university
3.2 Executive Position
In some interviews, the interviewees selected their supervisors due to his/her major
executive position in the university. They believed that by selecting this person
(such as the head of university and faculty) as their supervisors, they will find
access to an indirect power and nobody will reject their views and if a fault is
observed in their works, all of the instructors and professors will ignore it and they
will be more cautious when giving a mark to these students.
The interviewee named H.A. stated that: I preferred, at first, to select a supervisor
who had a major position in the university because the experience of my M.A.
course proved this issue for me and due to its significance, I successfully passed my
thesis course. [Interviewee no.: 23].
3.3 Scientific Position
In all interviews, it became clear that all interviewees paid more attention to the
scientific position of their supervisors in their PhD. course as they used any
situation in order to select a supervisor who had a high scientific degree and
possessed more articles, books, etc. Certainly, in the universities of Iran, the number
of these supervisors is less and it is not possible for all PhD. students who want to
pass this stage of their education completely.
Based on the view of S.Z. about his/her supervisor: in our university, there was
only a supervisor who received his/her professor position and others were assistant
professors and they did not have access to an international degree; for this reason,

35
this professor can only accept the thesis of one PhD. student and the other students
cannot [Interviewee no.: 43].
3.4 Being Famous and Well-Known
Based on the interviews, it became clear and obvious that most PhD. students prefer
to select a supervisor who is a well-known professor and when someone asked
them who is your supervisor, they showed the cover of their thesis and replied that
Professor proudly. Some students are proud of a professor who is well-known
and they could not hide their happiness.
In this case, H.M. 'graduate of educational management' said: the fame and credit
of a supervisor was so important for me, [] when someone asked me who your
supervisor is, I replied Professor X, loudly and proudly. I liked to hear the feeling of
others to this issue or see his / her name in my article and the other things .
[Interviewee no.: 50].
3.5 Access to the Supervisor
All PhD. students request their supervisors to help them in completing their thesis
in spite of their problems and they (PhD. students) want to have access to them
(supervisors) easily until they can solve their problems. Based on the related
interviews, it became clear that PhD. students are in contact with their supervisors
in three ways: e-mail, phones and face to face interaction. M.Sh. (interviewee of
general psychology) stated that: when I required the assistance of my
supervisors, it was possible for me to have a meeting with him/her and nothing
was useful for me except having a face to face contact, because I think he/she reads
my work accurately and also I can observe my work, my problems, carefully.
[Interviewee no.: 48].
The other PhD. graduate in industry engineering from [X] university stated that:
issues such as studies outside country, internal and foreign conferences or seminars
of my supervisor were not useful for me because accessing to him / her was not
possible for me. [Interviewee no.: 9].
3.6 Proficiency in Research and Statistics
Based on the related interviews, it became clear that each PhD. student prefers to
select a supervisor who has proficiency in the study, research and statistics and also
can help in different fields of study. A.S. a graduate in philosophy from [X]
university stated that: [Oh] my supervisor did not have enough information

36
about the method of my study and for this reason, I asked other ones in order to
help me [Interviewee no.: 41].
3.7 Skill in an Especial Scientific Field
Having skill and knowledge in an especial field is the other factor mentioned and
considered by some PhD. interviewees in order to select a supervisor. Sometimes, a
student has an interest in an especial field but all professors do not have any
knowledge about it or they did not do any such study or this is not their educational
major, therefore these students must select someone who has information about this
topic as their supervisor.
In this field, one of the interviewees who was a pediatrics student stated that: [] I
looked for a supervisor who has information about a rare disease among children,
although there are prominent professors in our faculty, they did not do any
scientific study about this disease; due to this reason, I decided to ask the other
professor named B.A., who worked in field of rare diseases in children, to cooperate
with me and guide me in completing this work [interviewee no.: 2].
3.8 Limitations in Selecting a Supervisor
Based on the obtained data from these interviews, their limitations in selecting a
supervisor were grouped into three categories as:
- The direct force of educational group and faculty,
- The indirect force of educational group and faculty,
- The force and persistence of facultys professors.
* The Direct Force of Educational Group and Faculty
In some cases, the faculties inhibit the students from selecting a supervisor directly;
hence, the faculty of their educational group imposes an especial supervisor; it
means that they deprive the students from this right (to select the supervisor).
An interviewee who was graduated in Electric Engineering (in PhD. degree) stated
that: [] selecting the supervisor during our educational course was same as this
way the student was being invited to an interview after passing the written test,
then, based on his/her interest to the intended subject of the professor and also the
interest of professor to his/her acceptance, the name of student was registered as a
person who got accepted, so the supervisor was being chosen from the beginning of

37
PhD. course based on the view of university. ... We did not have any right in this
regard. [Interviewee no.: 21].
* The Indirect Force of Educational Group and Faculty
Based on the views of some interviewees, the force and imposition of universities or
faculties on the students is indirect; which means that occasionally, the students are
being put in some situations as they are deprived from their freedom to select their
supervisors and finally they must accept the viewpoint of educational group and
faculty.
An interviewee named F.Z. said: [I] know why they did not accept my thesis, [it
was my supervisor who was not from our faculty and university] I decided to
select my supervisor someone who is in our city since my university was far away
of my city but the university rejected this view [although he was a well-known
professor] and asked me to change the title of my thesis; it was clear that the
main reason was not the title of my thesis but my supervisor. [Interviewee no.: 37].
* The Force and Persistence of Faculty Professors
Based on the view of some interviewees, sometime the students are put in some
situations that they have to select their supervisor by force; for example, the
students are being forced to select someone as a supervisor without any interest to
him or her because they are friends with each other, they know each other or he
(she) was his (her ) supervisor during the M.A. course and sometimes, the
professors ask their students to select them as their supervisors due to some reason
such as giving them best marks.
In this case, an interviewee stated that; [] when I spoke with him (the supervisor)
about my proposal, it resulted into an ending that I selected him as my supervisor.
Although I hid myself from him, he asked about my work from my friends and sent
me a message to work with him. Therefore, I selected him by force. [Interviewee no.:
52]. Based on the viewpoints of most participants, you may be put in a situation to
be forced to select a supervisor although you are not interested to work with him /
her.
3.9 Senior Students
Usually, the students try hard to find the required information for selecting a
supervisor such as informal networks of senior students or friends. For example,
F.R. the specialist of emergency medicine [Interviewee no.: 1]: A.L. PhD. in
physiology [Interviewee no.: 28]; M.M. PhD. in medical microbiology [Interviewee

38
no.: 27]; H.SH and F.S. PhD. in Pedology [Interviewee no.: 44-45]; A.S. PhD. in
especial pharmacology [Interviewee no.: 33]; etc. used the views of friends and
former students among other methods in order to select their supervisor.
A.S. PhD. in pharmacology [regarding selecting a supervisor though senior

students] stated that: [] based on the viewpoints of senior students, if you select
R.F. professor for your thesis, he does not read your thesis and you can copy and
paste some points as a whole thesis, and in addition, he writes your proposal it is
better to select M.S. professor all of his works are as the same as the others, if
you are in a laboratory for 10-15 days, it is enough! all of students and colleagues
are afraid of him and they do not ask you questions pharmacology group is very
good, you kill 20 mice and change the previous marks of thesis; when you are
graduated, the instructors and supervisors publish your article and their ranking
will change into a professor [Oh] the head of our faculty participates in all
seminars and conferences [Interviewee no.: 33]. The above mentioned points
refer to other factors for selecting a supervisor which was considered by the
interviewees.
3.10 Gender
The finding of this paper shows that most supervisors for completing the PhD.
works are male and the females' role is less in this field. As a result, the supervisors
of most theses are male. Based on the whole interviews about the gender, of 40
interviews, 35 thesis projects were under the guidance of male supervisors.
In addition, the interviewees pointed out the gender difference (inconsistency)

between supervisor and student and they considered it as problem; but they believe
that the gender similarity between supervisor and student leads into a convenient
discussion, easiness in various travels, meeting with the university colleagues,
providing facilities in typing and publishing the articles and the other issues. One of
the interviewees in PhD. urban planning stated that: [] the female supervisor is a
great endowment although they are few in number in our universities and also their
opportunities [Interviewee no.: 43].
F.Q. stated that: [] all professors were men but if the number of female
supervisors were more, I would certainly select a male supervisor because I have a
good feeling with them; the female supervisors are hardworking, more serious
toward works and also they are strict [Interviewee no.: 25].
In accordance with the aforementioned points, it became clear that most students
are very serious regarding selecting their supervisor and their gender and also they

39
consider it as a criterion during their research course; in this regard, a study was
done by Margolis (2001) on the relationship and cooperation of supervisors with the
students (based on their gender) and he mentioned gender as one of the effective
factors on such relationships [Margolis, 2001].
3.11 Supportive Ability of Supervisors
In general, all students who take step in the research course (before the proposal
acceptance) are seeking a capable supervisor who guides them in order to complete
their thesis, defend them in the defense session and also support them. A.A. PhD. in
mechanics [Interviewee no.: 18], M.Sh. PhD. in general psychology [Interviewee no.:
48]; M.J. PhD. in criminal rights and sociology [Interviewee no.: 34] believed that the
supervisor must be able to defend their students. A.A. said that: [] M.Z.
supervisor defended and supported one of the senior students in a way that I was
surprised. [Interviewee no.: 18].
3.12 Futurism (Anticipating the Future)
In some interviews, it became clear that most interviewees selected their supervisors
in order to have a good job in the future, and do most of their research projects with
them and also participate in publishing different scientific books; in addition, some
others expected a good communication with the global scientific society through
their supervisors.
Certainly, some students would ask their supervisors to employ them in the
universities or be their references in order to have a good job. H.KH. specialist in
emergency medicine said that: one of the reasons [for me] to select a supervisor is
that I find access to a good executive position in the ministry because my supervisor
was in contact with the authority individuals or characters. [Interviewee no.: 1].
4. Discussion
Since experience is a description of a real situation, it includes a decision and its

effect on a problem, opportunity or an especial subject. Therefore, the previous
experiences are not excluded from this norm and in fact, it is a description of that
period in which the individuals face a complex problem and they are forced to
make a decision. So, the obtained results from the experiences of PhD. students in
order to select a supervisor were presented as following.
This paper showed that the students did not have access to accurate information for
selecting their supervisor during their research course in PhD. degree and they
related this issue to some points such as the negligence of students in order to select

40
a supervisor, lack of skillful supervisors in an especial field and also the persistence
of universities for selecting a supervisor from their own universities. The students
did not know which factors are effective on selecting a supervisor and how they can
communicate with their supervisors in order to solve their problems easily.
Also this paper pointed out the selection of supervisors as imposed directly or
indirectly from the universities on the students. Other points which were
considered by the students for selecting a supervisor indirectly are as the following:
- Behavior and ethics of supervisors,
- Executive position;
- Having knowledge in an especial scientific field;
- Futurism (anticipating the future) in order to have a good job in a near

future by using the knowledge of supervisors;
- Access to the supervisor without any intermediation;
- High scientific capacity of supervisors in the field of statistics and research;
- Selecting the supervisor based on gender;
- The supportive ability of supervisors in order to defend the students and
- Asking the views of senior students.
5. Conclusion
The results of this paper are consistent with the results of other papers which
studied the effective role of supervisors during the research course [Heinrich, 1991;
Conrad and Phillips, 1995; Donald et al., 1995; Margolis, 2001; Drysdale, 2003,
Fazeli, 2004, Attaran, 2009]. Furthermore, the results showed that among all
effective factors on the research course, selecting the supervisor has a considerable
effect on facilitating the trend of research course and its final quality. This finding is
in relation with the study of these researchers: Ives & Rowley, 2005; Lindgreen et al.,
2002; Ray, 2007; and Grevholm et al., 2005. In fact, more satisfaction of students
from their supervisor makes their relationships with their supervisors more
desirable which affect the research course indirectly.
Regarding the ethical considerations, first a session was held for introducing the
researcher and the research. In this session the participants were informed that they
can leave the meeting at any time they felt unwilling to cooperate without any

41
explanation, and their information will remain confidential. Finally the study
approved by ethics committee consist of professors.
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43

Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 43-58, March 2015
Lessons Learned from Teaching Teachers how to Teach

about World Religions
Derek Anderson, Holly Mathys and Joe Lubig

Northern Michigan University
Marquette, Michigan, USA
Abstract. This quasi-experimental comparative case study compared 22

elementary pre-service teachers (PSTs) 7th-grade lessons on world religions
to the lessons developed and taught by a cohort of 26 PSTs. The PSTs from
Cohort 1 received no instruction or course readings related to teaching
about world religions; whereas, the PSTs from Cohort 2 were assigned six
articles to read and spent one hour of in-class time learning about teaching
world religions. Lesson plans, teaching observations, focus group
interviews, and reflection journals served as data sources, which were coded
for core themes. Classical content analysis was used to tabulate incidents of
PST behaviors related to the core themes. PSTs from Cohort 1 exhibited
greater lack of knowledge and awareness of world religious, used biased
language, lacked solemnity and sensitivity, made more assumptions and
generalizations, and even exhibited outright promotion of Christianity. This
study suggests that elementary social studies teacher educators, by
spending only an hour of methods class time on the topic, can help their
PSTs to avoid common missteps in their teaching about world religions.
Keywords: World Religions; Teacher Education; Field Experiences;

Elementary Education
1. Introduction
Diversities relevant for pedagogical missions transcend demographic traits
and include less discernible, but equally consequential, differences in
ideological perspectives, social class, values, religious beliefs, and the like
(Tienda, 2013, p. 471)
Nearly all states include world religions in their social studies standards, typically
at the upper elementary or middle-school level (Douglas, 2000). Recently, a
collaboration of 15 professional organizations working on national social studies
standards released The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies
State Standards: Guidance for Enhancing the Rigor of K-12 Civics, Economics, Geography,
and History (www.socialstudies.org/c3). The C3 Framework is part of the Common

44
Core Standards movement, which despite ongoing controversy, has been adopted
by more than 40 states. Unlike previous national and state curriculum frameworks,
the C3 Framework does not specify the teaching of world religions, but neither does
it specify the teaching of any topics, including particular wars or time periods.
Instead,
The C3 Framework is centered on an Inquiry Arc. By focusing on inquiry,
the framework emphasizes the disciplinary concepts and practices that
support students as they develop the capacity to know, analyze,
explain, and argue about interdisciplinary challenges in our social
world. (p. 6)
Throughout the C3 Framework, world religions is included in suggested examples

for teaching boundaries and conflict, diffusion, socializing agents, and limits of
government. Understanding world religions is integral to the rise in globalization
and is still very much a necessary element of schools social studies curricula.
Ones education is not complete without a study of comparative religion or the
history of religion (School District of Abington Township, PA v. Schemp, 1963).
2. Purpose of the Study

Globalization, curricular pressures, and general consensus compel teachers to teach
students about world religions (Anderson, 2004; Passe & Wilcox, 2009).
Consequently, if learning about world religions helps to foster tolerant and
knowledgeable students who can reason intellectually about world events, our
schools must have teachers who are competent at teaching world religions (Wexler,
2002). Furthermore, if we desire effective classroom teachers of world religions, we
must adequately prepare new teachers for the task.
Despite the consensus among social studies educators that world religion should
have a place in the curriculum, there is little published research on how teachers
actually approach the topic and even less research on how PSTs learn about
teaching world religions. A need exists to learn more about how emerging teachers
plan for and deliver lessons on world religions. Whats more, it is imperative that
teacher educators better understand how to prepare teachers for a curriculum and
society that demands young people who comprehend the history of world religions
and their role in the world today.
This study is a follow-up to a previous study (Anderson, Cook, & Mathys, 2013)
that investigated how 22 elementary pre-service teachers (PSTs) at a mid-sized
Midwestern public university designed and taught lessons on world religions to 7th-
grade students. This paper compares those PSTs with a subsequent PST cohort
whose elementary social studies methods course addressed the findings from the
initial study. In contrast to the first cohort, the 26 PSTs in Cohort 2 were provided
with specific readings and guidance on how to teach about world religions. This

45
study sought to determine if designating a nominal amount of time during a

methods course specifically toward addressing the teaching of world religions
would impact the PSTs Christian bias, lack of solemnity, and preparedness for
student questions and comments.
3. Teaching About Religion

Religions place in public schools has been both contested and established. Issues
like school prayer, teachers and students expression of their religious beliefs,
religious artwork and signage, as well as preferential treatment of student religious
organizations are just some of the disputes related to the Establishment Clause,
which requires separation between church and state. On the other hand, the courts,
as well as professional education organizations, have long maintained that teaching
about religion should be part of the standard public education curriculum.
Institutions serve a vital role in society, and religion is arguably the most influential
institution in history. The National Council for the Social Studies (2009)
recommended that schools teach students how institutions were formed, extended,
governed, and changed over time. Guidelines for teaching about religion issued in
1995 by the US Secretary of Education noted that the institution of religion may be
studied from historical, comparative, literary, and artistic perspectives. Passe and
Willox (2009) recommended that social studies teachers take an anthropological
approach to teaching about world religions, with an emphasis on comparative
religion in order to promote global harmony and economic progress. Others have
suggested that religion can be used as a springboard for teaching about past
indiscretions such as nationalism, imperialism, and colonialism (Risinger, 1993).
Despite the potential for study of world religions to provide students with insight
into our cultural differences and common values, the topic receives scant coverage
in US classrooms. One reason is that social studies has become marginalized over
the past decade due to increased emphasis on mathematics and English-Language
Arts (Anderson, Cook, & Mathys, 2014; Boyle-Baise, Hsu, Johnnson, Sierrere, &
Stewart, 2008; Burroughs, Groce, & Webeck, 2005; Center on Education Policy, 2008;
Good et al., 2010; Leming, Ellington, & Schug, 2006a, 2006b; Lintner, 2006; Rock et
al., 2006). More specifically, mandatory testing in math and ELA has implored
teachers in states without standardized tests in social studies to spend substantially
less time on social studies instruction (Au, 2009; Fitchett & Heafner, 2010; Heafner,
Lipscomb, & Rock, 2006; Wills, 2007).
Another reason why so many teachers choose to avoid the subject is simply that
teaching about religion is hard. Teachers are expected to remain neutral and
unbiased, while also tolerating their students varied religious views, including
students right to express their religious beliefs in their writing, art, and other school
work (Black, 2003). Teaching about religion must be academic and in no way

46
devotional, yet a daily glance at the news will reveal tensions between teachers
free-exercise claims and violations of the Establishment Clause. From teaching
Intelligent Design in science classes to teaching the Bible as historical fact, teachers
commonly struggle to balance personal ideologies with constitutional obligations
(Schaeffer & Mincberg, 2000).
Researchers have uncovered a number of missteps teachers make in teaching about

religion, though separating missteps caused by lack of teacher knowledge from
those stemming from teacher bias is not easy (Anderson et al., 2013). Ample
research suggests teachers knowledge of religions is insufficient (Anderson et al.,
2014; Oldendorf & Green, 2005; Prothero, 2007; Ribak-Rosenthal & Kane, 1999;
Subedi, 2006; Waggoner, 2013). Lack of knowledge not only keeps teachers from
teaching the subject, it often leads to improper or insensitive treatment of world
religions. Religious illiteracy is not only widespread, it fuels prejudice and
antagonism (Moore, 2010, p. i).
Often teachers biggest mistakes in teaching about religion come not from acute
classroom incidents but rather from grand curricular oversights where teachers are
left with such limited time to teach about each world religion that students gain
only ephemeral perspectives on each religion replete with stereotypes,
oversimplifications, and the impression that religions are ancient relics (Douglass,
2002). Whats more, teachers often exhibit syncretism, or the combining of multiple
religious beliefs and practices, often with the intent of promoting inclusion (Passe &
Willox, 2009). Despite their best intentions to show students that many of them
share similar existential and philosophical beliefs, teachers should focus on
awareness of others religions, though not necessarily acceptance (Douglass, 2002).
4. Teaching How to Teach About World Religions

Even though world religions is well-established in state and national standards for
social studies, teachers tend to avoid the topic (Black, 2003; Evans, 2007, 2008;
Graves, Hynes, & Hughes, 2010; Oldendorf & Green, 2005; Passe & Wilcox, 2009;
Wexler, 2002; Zam & Stone, 2006). PSTs lack attention to world religions is
attributed to their lack of knowledge (Ayers & Reid, 2005), as well as to their lack of
preparation from their university coursework (Douglas, 2001). Overall, it appears
as though elementary and middle school teachers are ill-equipped to teach about
world religions (Passe, & Wilcox, 2009).
The type and number of methods courses offered by teacher education programs
vary widely, nearly all of which merely scratch the surface of what teacher
educators would like to cover as they help to prepare future teachers. Social studies
methods instructors, like teacher educators in other disciplines, lack the desired
time to teach their curriculum thoroughly. Arguably, social studies methods courses
have even more relative scarcity of time compared with other content areas since
social studies encompasses four pillars: history, geography, civics, and economics.
Consequently, it is likely that PSTs will not receive specific instruction on teaching

47
world religions during their methods courses. Whats more, the vast majority (94%
of 342) of social studies teacher educators reported that they should not include the
topic of teaching about world religions in their social studies methods courses (Zam
& Stone, 2006). In short, teachers are not likely to be taught how to teach world
religions during their teacher education nor are they likely to see colleagues
teaching world religions effectively, if at all, throughout their careers.
5. Methods
5.1 Background of the Field Experience

The PSTs in this study were in their final semester prior to student teaching. As
part of a field-intensive undergraduate cohort model, the PSTs were required to
work in teams to create and deliver lessons to classrooms of public 7th-grade
students over a four-day period. Each PST was the lead teacher for at least one
lesson in each subject. This study focused on the PSTs social studies lessons.
As this field experience has become enculturated for both our teacher education
program and our partner middle school over the past several years, the cooperating
teachers have identified the specific Grade-Level Content Expectations, or
standards, they want the PSTs to teach each semester. For each Fall semester over
the past few years, the cooperating teachers have assigned our PSTs to teach three
(of the 83 total) standards related to world religions, which fall under the following
theme: Explain how world religions or belief systems of Hinduism, Judaism,
Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism and Islam grew and their significance
(http://michigan.gov/documents/mde/SSGLCE_218368_7.pdf (p. 62).
Incidentally, conversations with the cooperating teachers have revealed that they
have asked the PSTs to teach those particular content standards because they would
rather not teach world religions themselves.
5.2 Comparing Cohort 1 and Cohort 2
This quasi-experimental comparative case study compared how two cohorts of PSTs
taught lessons on world religions. The cohorts, who participated in the field
experience in successive semesters, were demographically similar; and, with the
exception of instruction on teaching world religions, both cohorts learned the same
curriculum during the course.
The comparative case study allowed us to examine the PSTs in an authentic context,
using multiple forms of data to increase the breadth and depth of our
understanding (Merriam, 2009; Stake, 1995; Yin, 1994). By observing developing
teachers practice their craft of whole-classroom teaching and by interviewing them
about their experiences afterward, we were able to gain thorough and holistic
insights. Case studies allow for a detailed and contextual analysis (Cohen, Manion,

48
& Morrison, 2011). When teaching can be studied in authentic classroom contexts,
richer description and analyses are possible (Yin, 1994).
As described in an early paper (Anderson et al., 2013) on the lesson planning,

teaching actions, and reflections of the 22 PSTs from Cohort 1, very little time or
direction was given to the PSTs during their social studies methods course in order
to help them teach world religions to 7th-grade students. There several reasons why
course time was not designated to preparing PSTs for the task. In a grand sense, the
three-credit elementary social studies methods course leaves too little time to
address most social studies topics PSTs will teach when they become in-service
teachers. Second, the methods course contains several field experiences, so time
spent in preparation for those episodes would come at a cost of having to reduce the
number of field experiences. Third, the course is designed to focus on teaching K-8
social studies generally, integrating the four pillars of history, economics,
geography, and civics. Finally, it is important to note that the course is a methods
course, not a content course. Accordingly, course concepts include pedagogical
skills such as writing objectives, differentiating, scaffolding, higher-order
questioning, and assessment.
After studying how the Cohort 1 PSTs planned, delivered, assessed, and reflected
on their world religions lessons, we wanted to see if providing another Cohorts
PSTs with some guidance about teaching world religions might reduce their
number of missteps. Time constraints were still a barrier, so we limited Cohort 2s
instruction about the teaching of world religions to one hour of class time and one
hour of assigned outside-of-class reading.
First, the 26 PSTs from Cohort 2 (12 and 14 PSTs per section) were assigned to spend
60 minutes reading from a list of six articles about teaching world religions (see
Appendix 1 for links to the six articles). The PSTs were then asked to come to next
weeks class with three take-aways and one question derived from reading the
articles. During the following weeks class, 20 minutes were allocated to PSTs
working in groups of 3-4 to share their take-aways and questions. Next, 10 minutes
were allocated for whole-class discussion. Finally, we spent approximately 30
minutes going through a PowerPoint presentation of our initial study, complete
with findings and recommendations.
5.3 Data
For Cohort 1 we collected an exorbitant amount of data, including pre- and post-
interviews of the PSTs lesson-plans, one or more lesson observations of each PST,
their students written work, their reflection papers, and post-teaching focus-group
discussions.
For Cohort 2, we (in conjunction with three other faculty members) observed each
PST teach at least one social studies lesson. Each observer was given a list of the
common errors made by the PSTs from Cohort 1 (see Table 1). Observers were

49
directed foremost to look for incidents of the PSTs making similar errors and to
document those instances on a form provided. Additionally, we lead post-lesson
focus group interviews with the PSTs, and we analyzed their required reflection
papers.
Our primary data source consisted of our observations of the PSTs lessons, and we
used a phenomenological approach to situate the researchers as participant
observers (Moustakas, 1994). Because the observers were themselves experienced
teachers and certainly harbored their own personal religious beliefs in some form,
we used note taking, member checks, and iterative conversations to bracket our
assumptions and to challenge each other about our suppositions and interpretations
(Cresswell, 2012; Merriam, 2009).
The common missteps identified from the previous study served as first-cycle codes
from which we sought to develop further conceptual understanding through
second-cycle coding methods (Saldana, 2009). Using the core themes from the initial
study, we tabulated the frequency of PST incidents of each theme using classical
content analysis (Titscher et al., 2000). Next, we associated each corresponding
incident with its text excerpt. Finally, we used elaborative coding to refine and
expand on our preconceived constructs until all of the PSTs actions, comments, and
reflections were represented a theme or subtheme (Auerbarch & Silverstein, 2003).
6. Results
Through this study we sought to determine if PSTs who received a small amount of
specific instruction and readings about teaching world religions exhibited fewer
mistakes in their lessons when compared with a previous cohort of PSTs who
received no specific instruction on teaching world religions. A previous study
(Anderson et al., 2013) found that PSTs from Cohort 1 used biased language, made
assumptions and generalizations, and lacked solemnity and sensitivity.
Furthermore, those PSTs failed to explain to their students that the topic of religion
stemmed from mandated state content standards. Students in Cohort 2, however,
portrayed far fewer of the behaviors of their predecessors (see Table 1).
Table 1. Incidents of Religious Insensitivity
Incident: Fall 2012 Fall 2013

Language Subtleties 25 6
Assumptions 10 1
Generalizing 10 2
Lack of Solemnity 8 1
Lack of Awareness/Sensitivity 3 0
Proselytizing 2 0

50
6.1 Language Subtleties

The most common incidents of religious awareness for Cohort 1 were the
most subtle. We counted 25 incidents of PSTs making slight, yet distinct verbal
differences between how they referred to Christians and how they referred to non-
Christians. The PSTs regularly prefaced their references to religious adherents with
Followers of . . . for non-Christians but did not for Christians. For example, one
PST said, Followers of Judaism use a religious text called the Torah. That same
PST went on to say, Christians have the Bible.
During the second cohorts lessons, however, we observed only 6 incidents of PSTs
referring to Christians differently from non-Christians. The PSTs regularly used the
plural proper names such Hindus and Buddhists. Interestingly, all six of the
incidents from Cohort 2 under this category involved PSTs failure to use the term,
Jews when they referred to other religious adherents accordingly. For example,
in one lesson on religious symbols, a PST asked, Who can tell me what the Hindu
symbol is called that represents the three worlds, the three major gods, and the
three scriptures? Later in the lesson, the PST asked, Who can tell me one of
the main symbols of Judaism?
During post-teaching debriefing sessions, the PSTs commented on how maintaining

language consistency was difficult for them. One PST commented, I remember
from the PowerPoint in class about how last years group only used Christians
but not the other religions regular names, and I wanted to make sure I didnt do
that, but it was hard. One PST addressed specifically her discomfort over using,
Jews: I cant really explain it, but I have such a hard time saying Jews.
6.2 Outright Assumptions

Cohort 1 made a number of presumptive statements related to students knowledge
of Christianity. For example, PSTs made statements like, You guys know a lot
about Christianity, right? and, You already know a lot about this. Our
observations of Cohort 2 revealed only one such incident, a PST who, when going
over a timeline of the six religions, stated, Well this one will be easy for you: When
did Christianity begin?
Related to this theme was the prevalence of 7th-grade students who made Christian-
centric comments and the PSTs general disregard of those comments. For example,
during the first year, one PST was showing a short online video about the diffusion
of religion when several students cheered as the geographic footprint of Christianity
grew. In her post interview, the PST recognized the students bias but dismissed
their actions as normal, stating, Its just what they know. In several other
instances with Cohort 1, we observed students dominating class discussion with
information about Christianity while the PSTs did not limit their comments, which
clearly created a Christian-dominant atmosphere. During year 2, students still
attempted to share information and biblical stories, but the PSTs were, for the most
part, willing and able to limit conversation and to keep student comments directly

51
on topic. During a focus group interview with PSTs from Cohort 2, one PST
remarked, I am glad we learned how to stop kids from rambling, and not just
because of talking so much about Christianity, but in general. Thats a good skill to
use when kids ramble about anything.
6.3 Generalizing
PSTs lack content knowledge about world religions (Anderson et al., 2013, 2014;
Ennis, 1994; Oldendorf & Green, 2005; Subedi, 2006). Associated with that lack of
knowledge is a corresponding lack of nuance, which often presents through
stereotyping and generalization. Because many PSTs know little about religions
other than Christianity, they often make generalized statements about followers of
other religions. For example, at least 10 times a PST from Cohort 1 made blanket
statements like, Buddhists meditate and Followers of Hinduism dont eat meat.
Cohort 2 learned that fewer than 50% of Hindus are vegetarians and that many
Buddhists do not meditate daily, just like many Christians do not pray daily.
Accordingly, we witnessed PSTs making comments such as, Meditation is a central
component of Buddhism, and Hinduism teaches compassion for animals, which
is one reason why a lot of Hindus dont eat meat. Likewise, after explaining how
she tried to avoid using the collective pronoun they, one PST commented, I
remembered how we read about trying not to portray that all people of a particular
religion are the same. Just like how there are so many different types of Christians,
there are that many different types of Hindus and Muslims.
6.4 Lack of seriousness and solemnity

Despite the prioritization of the National Council for the Social Studies principles
for powerful and purposeful teaching into their social studied methods courses,
PSTs who want to avoid the boring recall-based teaching for which social studies is
known, often take a food, festivals, and fun approach to their social studies
teaching (NCSS, 2009). We observed eight times during Cohort 1 where PSTs
trivialized world religions into a study of surviving rituals, customs, and dress,
and cookery (Douglas, 2001, p. 10).
With the best intent, eight PSTs used skits and simulations in attempt to engage
students with the topic they were teaching. For example, one PST had her students
make paper boats that they connected to a slanted string to simulate the Buddhist
procession of Boun Awk Phansa, during which celebrants send lighted and
decorated banana ornaments down rivers to pay respect and to ask for blessing. In
another instance, a PST lead the class in a skit of the Islamic Festival of Sacrifice, Eid
al-Adha, during which the students simulated the sacrifice of a cow and the
distribution of 1/3 of its meat to friends and family and 1/3 of the meat to the poor.
Those PSTs sought to make their teaching enjoyable for their students, but as a PST
from Cohort 2 remarked after reading an assigned article on teaching about world
religions, None of us would ever consider doing skits on some Christian event like

52
communion or Jesus rising from the dead, so we shouldnt act out scenes from other
religions either. We categorized one Cohort 2 PSTs lesson as lacking seriousness
and solemnity because she lead the students in a meditation exercise during which
the students were acting quite silly. Although the PST mentioned how Buddhism
teaches that meditation is part of the path toward Enlightenment, she never
corrected the students flippant behaviors or explained how meditation is a solemn
spiritual practice.
On the other hand, four of the eight PSTs who taught lessons on Hinduism lead
students in yoga simulations, which we did not place under this theme. There has
been much debate nationally lately about whether yoga is considered an
unconstitutional religious ritual when teachers lead their students in yoga exercises,
either through physical education classes or in the regular classrooms. The PSTs we
observed using yoga as part of their lessons simply used yoga as energizers and
transitional activities, which they did not connect to the Hindu religion, other than
to make a brief statement that yoga originated in ancient India and has roots in
some early branches of Hinduism and Buddhism.
6.5 Lack of Awareness and Sensitivity

Another byproduct of the PSTs lack of knowledge of world religions, as noted
above, were the PSTs lack of awareness of some fundamental customs. Two PSTs
from Cohort 1 cluelessly included pictures of Muhammad in their PowerPoint and
Prezi presentations on Islam. When this was pointed out to each PST during their
post-lesson conference, neither one had any awareness that many Muslims consider
the visual representation of Muhammad to be a violation of Islamic law. In another
instance from Cohort 1, a PST made a glib comment about Jewish dietary
regulations, stating:
In the Jewish religion many people still follow these old rules about food.
Their leaders have determined that certain foods based on what they contain
or how theyre made are called, kosher. They foods arent really any
different than regular food, but they follow their religious teachings.
None of the observations of Cohort 2 revealed any such example of a lack of
awareness or sensitivity.
6.6 Blatant proselytizing

In two instances during Cohort 1, we witnessed PST exhibit a Christian bias that
extended beyond mere ignorance and subtlety. One PST, who told us in his post-
conference that he taught Sunday School at a Protestant church, admitted that his
lesson on Christianity was a little be on the preachy side. At one point, while the
students were taking notes on his lecture, he told them, Christianity was founded
when Jesus died for your sins. Another PSTs lesson extended beyond teaching
about Christianity into teaching how Christianity might improve students lives. He
had students search through local newspapers to locate and explain how the Ten
Commandments shaped the functioning of our civil society. It might be worth

53
noting that both PSTs who blatantly promoted Christianity in their lessons were
male, even though only 6 of the 43 PSTs were male.
6.7 State Content Standards

As we mentioned earlier, most states, including Michigan, have state-level social
studies content standards that explicitly include teaching about world religions.
Even though all the PSTs derived their specific lesson objectives from Michigans
Grade-Level Content Expectations, none of the PSTS from Cohort 1 shared the state
standards with their students. Consequently, students questioned the PSTs about
the lessons, at times challenging the PSTs about the legality and appropriateness of
their lessons. For example, one PST remarked, Several kids asked if it was legal for
us to be teaching religion in school. Several PSTs admitted that they did not handle
it well when confronted by students. One PST said, I didnt really know what to
say. I just told them that this is what our professors told us to teach.
Three PSTs noted that the atheist students were the most vocal about their lessons.
One PST commented:

This one kid said, I dont believe in god and dont really want you trying to
teach me religion, so I just told them, We arent preaching to you or trying
to get you to convert to any religion. Were just trying to expose you to life
outside of (this city).
During their social studies methods course in the lead up to the field experience,
Cohort 2 PSTs learned about the critical comments from students during Cohort 1s
experience, and they were advised to post the Grade-Level Content Expectations
they would be teaching in each subject throughout the week. Only one PST from
Cohort reported any negative comments from a student, to which she told the
student, Look up at the sheets we posted. The State says we have to teach about
this.
7. Limitations
There are a number of limitations of this study. Foremost are the threats to
reliability and construct validity due to the number of different observers of the
PSTs lessons. We do not know if each observer accurately documented the PSTs
words and actions. In addition, we lack assurance that two or more observers
would have documented the same phenomena. Though we did not conduct
interrater reliability checks, there were a few instances when two or more observers
sat in on the same lessons, which allowed for discussion leading to informal
interrater agreement. Furthermore, because we compared the lessons and teaching
actions of two different cohorts of PSTs who taught different 7th-grade students, we
do not know the extent to which other variables impacted the phenomena.
Certainly, we intend for this study to be descriptive but not generalizable.
8. Discussion and Conclusion

54
Omitting study about religions gives students the impression that religions
have not been, and are not now, part of the human experiences. Religions
have influenced the behavior of both individuals and nations, and have
inspired some of the worlds most beautiful art, architecture, literature, and
music (http://www.socialstudies.org/positions/religion).
Learning about each others religious beliefs and orientations deepens our respect
for and understanding of one another (Douglass, 2002).
Yet, despite what is to be gained from studying how religions originated, grew, and
influenced society, teachers regularly avoid the subject (Ayers & Reid, 2005;
Glanzer, 1998; Marty & Moore, 2000; Rogers, 2011; Wright, 1999; Zam & Stone,
2006). Without specific instructions or readings on teaching world religions, the
PSTs in our study exhibited their lack of knowledge and awareness of world
religious in several ways from biased language, lack of solemnity and sensitivity,
assumption-making and generalizing, and even some instances of overt promotion
of Christianity. Because there is little research on how teachers actually teach world
religions in their classrooms and even less on how PSTs construct and realize
lessons about world religions, this study holds potential to help teacher educators
prepare future teachers for a vital topic that is found in nearly all states social
studies content standards.
Our previous research (Anderson et al., 2013) revealed that elementary PSTs, who
were predominately Christian, exhibited a number of biased actions in their
teaching of world religions as a result of their lack of lack of world religions and
their lack of awareness of how their personal beliefs and culture might bias their
teaching. Recognizing that teachers lack knowledge of world religions and tend to
avoid teaching the subject is an essential step, but does not solve the problem,
however.
Complicating the issue is teacher education programs avoidance of teaching future

teachers how to teacher about world religions (Zam & Stone, 2006). We have much
to learn about why teacher educators avoid preparing their PSTs to teaching world
religions, even though many of PSTs will get teaching positions that include social
studies content standards about world religions. Certainly, one reason includes
elementary social studies teacher educators daunting task of preparing PSTs to
teach history, geography, civics, and economics for grades kindergarten through 8th
(Adler, 1991). Methods instructors teach pedagogical knowledge, content
knowledge, and pedagogical-content knowledge (Grossman, Wilson, & Shulman,
1989; Gudmundsdottir & Shulman, 1987). Consequently, methods instructors have
time only for a small fraction of the subject-area content and methods that the PSTs
will be certified to teach. In this study, a minimal amount of course time spent on
general advice and pitfalls to avoid related to teaching world religions had a notable
impact on the amount of insensitive and biased comments and actions in teachers
lessons. Further research should be conducted with other teacher education
programs.

55
Teaching about world religions is not easy. Teachers should present historical and
contemporary information in a way that is accessible to adolescent learners without
oversimplifying (Norton, 2001). While most students come to school with some
construction of religious teachings, comparisons between different religions and
their prophets and leaders is unfeasible and ill-advised (Douglass, 2001). Whats
more, due to the deep personal connection between religions and students, teachers
should avoid simulations and role-playing activities when teaching about world
religions (Nord & Haynes, 1998). Instead, teachers should use primary source
documents when teaching about world religions (Douglass, 2001; Nord, 1990). Most
importantly, teachers need to aware of their inherent biases most of which are
unconscious.
This study suggests that social studies teacher educators can have an impact on how
PSTs teach world religions, even if the teacher educators devote a relatively small
amount of methods course time to the topic. Certainly, more research in this area is
needed, but this study suggests that an hour of time in a methods course and a few
assigned readings might eliminate many of the pitfalls of teaching world religions --
a topic that is regularly avoided and marginalized, at societys peril. As
Haynes and Thomas (2001) proclaimed:

Failure to understand even the basic symbols, practices and concepts of the
various religions makes much of history, literature, art and contemporary
life unintelligible. Moreover, knowledge of the roles of religion in the past
and present promotes cross-cultural understanding essential to democracy
and world peace. (p. 90)
And, as Douglass (2002) asserted, All of us as citizens have the responsibility to

learn about one another so that we can unite in positive social conduct (p. 32).
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Appendix 1
1. Black, S. (2003). Teaching about religion: Where schools sometimes go

wrong is ignoring that little word 'about'. American school board journal, 8(1),
retrieved from http://paws.wcu.edu/churley/8_1_black.pdf
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59

Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 59-78, March 2015
Antecedents of Norwegians
Student Teachers' Campus Time on Task
Knut-Andreas Christophersen
Department of Political Science,
University of Oslo, Norway
Eyvind Elstad
Department of Teacher Education and School Research,
Trond Solhaug
Norwegian University of Science and Technology,
Trondheim, Norway
Are Turmo
Norwegian Centre for Science Education,
Abstract. Many evaluations have shown that Norwegian student

teachers spend little time studying. In this research, we investigate the
influence of selected antecedents of student teachers' time on task,
based on survey data and structural equation modelling. The main
finding is that student self-discipline and the level of external academic
pressure stand out as significant predictors of student time on task. This
is particularly evident regarding the time on task in individual studies
and student-led colloquiums. The type of teacher education programme
also appears to be of significance. This is mainly explained by a higher
reported average time at lectures and teacher-led seminars at university
colleges than at universities. If a low level of time on task is regarded as
a problem, a tightening of work requirements in the campus-based
elements of teacher education could be a possible remedy.
Keywords: time on task; student teachers; self-discipline; motivation;

teacher education.
Introduction and the context of Norwegian teacher education

All teacher education in Norway during recent years has been criticised in
expert assessments (The Panel for Teacher Education Reform, 2014; The
Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education, 2006; Haug, 2008; Lid,
2013) and through newspaper articles penned by student teachers. The criticism
in evaluations has emphasised low time on task among students (Lid, 2014), a
2015 The authors and IJLTER.ORG. All rights reserved

60
lack of relevance in the campus-based part of the course and a lack of continuity
and connection between the campus-based course and practicum (Lid, 2013).
Time on task in this article denotes the sum of the students' activities devoted to
their studies in the campus-based part of the teacher-education programme:
lectures, student-led colloquiums, teacher-led seminars and individual studies.
Thus, educational authorities put pressure on teacher education (Ministry of
Education and Research, 2014). Within the upper-level education course and
practical-pedagogic training, students typically rank the practicum significantly
higher than campus-based teaching (Finne, Mordal & Stene, 2014). The criticism
is directed especially towards the education course entitled Pedagogy and Pupil
Understanding.1 Many students believe that the integration between campus
teaching and practicum is weak. Lid (2013) also finds the same patterns.
Students following the primary and secondary-school teacher education also
value the practicum elements more highly than the campus-based education; in
comparison with earlier measurements, the Pedagogy and Pupil
Understanding subject is less favoured than the teacher-education subject
formerly known as Pedagogy (Finne, Mordal & Stene, 2014). We thus cannot
isolate the question of a low degree of time on task from that of relevance.
Criticism of Norwegian teacher education is not a recent phenomenon. It crops

up regularly in newspaper articles and blogs (e.g. Vedeler, 2010; Barbogen, 2011;
Vasli, 2011). In one newspaper article, a teacher education student described
how he gained the next-to-the-highest grade by only reading one book and
attending only one lecture (Vassli, 2010). Another reader comment advised a
student to give up the pedagogic part of the university teacher education course
because it was inadequate (Moen, 2014). One aspect that has received criticism is
a lack of unity and connection in the course (Lid, 2013; Hammernes, 2013).
Teacher education institutions have replied that measures have been
implemented to create a stronger connection between theory and practice
(Vedeler, 2014), including the use of an examination structure based on video
cases using practical teaching situations and more frequent alternation between
theoretical teaching and school-based practice (Lund, Bakken & Engelien, 2014).
However, it does not appear that these changes have so far led to significantly
higher time on task.
How much student teachers learn from their own studies depends, amongst
other things, both on how much time is actually spent on studying and how
much effort student teachers put into their studies. The relationship between
time on task and performance is complex (Rosenshine & Berliner, 1978; Brophy,
1986), but there is a widespread acknowledgement that it is not a linear
relationship (Gettinger, 1986). If the student teacher does not work in an
effective and efficient manner, there will not necessarily be a clear relationship
between time on task and performance. But it is difficult to envisage progress in
learning without the student in question spending sufficient time studying. Time
on task is a prerequisite for learning in campus-based teaching. For this reason,
1 Bronkhorst et al. (2014) have identified similar resistance to pedagogy courses in many
countries.

61
we argue that a reasonably high time on task in the campus-based part of the
teacher-education course and learning intentions is an important prerequisite for
the proper functioning of a campus-based course. In other words, it should: (1)
equip the student teacher with skills and tools to teach academic subjects and to
lead pupil learning and (2) contribute to future adaptability, so students will be
able to relate to changes in the mandate for professional teaching activities
(Darling-Hammond, 2006).
Society will expect that student teachers during their time on campus will work
on their studies to an extent that more or less equates to a normal work week for
a full-time employee. In general, Norwegian students spend less time on their
studies than students from other Nordic countries (Statistics Norway, 2014).
What studies of teacher-education programmes are silent about explains the
student teachers' time on task. Conversely, there are isolated accounts of time on
task amongst students in a large number of courses, including different kinds of
teacher education courses.
The purpose of the present study is to explore the impact of selected factors on
student teachers' time on task.
Teacher education programmes in Norway

Teacher education in most national systems is a rather complex programme
consisting of a degree in an academic subject (such as mathematics, chemistry,
physics etc.) and pedagogic education, which in a more direct sense prepares the
student for professional life in a school context (Darling-Hammond &
Lieberman, 2012). In Norway, there are two types of programmes typically
offered by university colleges and three university programmes in teacher
education. University college programmes qualify students for teaching in either
grades 1 through 7 or 5 through 10. Both these programmes are based on a
campus-based teacher education model: theories are met on campus and
afterwards applied in schools. These programmes are also offered by some of
the newer universities, which used to be university colleges. However, for
simplicity, we refer to them here as university college programmes. Until 2017,
these programmes will be four-year integrated academic degree programmes
(planned to be re-shaped as five-year masters degree programmes in 2017).
Universities mainly have three teacher programmes. In the first, students apply
for a five-year integrated programme, where students specialise in a subject (i.e.
history, mathematics, science), which is taught over the five years. In the second,
students take a one-year teacher education course after finishing subject-
oriented bachelors and masters degrees. Third, Teach First is a two-year
specially designed programme for carefully selected candidates (Nesje, 2014).
Campus-based teaching is reduced in this programme, and the schools
responsibility for the practice-based element of teacher education is
correspondingly increased. Student teachers take full responsibility for a
classroom after a six-week summer course. However, they have ongoing and
close supervision during their practicum.
Time use regarding students learning in Norway

62
Table 1 shows the average total time use on studies reported by students
attending different types of full-time programmes in Norway, according to the
Norwegian quality assurance agency for education (Lid, 2014). The survey was
conducted in the autumn of 2013 and sent out to all bachelors and masters
students in Norway. The table shows a large variation between the different
categories of study programmes. Architecture and medicine are found at the top,
while teacher programmes are found below the average. However, the survey
also shows a large variation among the different teacher education programmes.
The highest value for a teacher programme is approximately at the level of
medicine in Table 1. Therefore, it is of much interest to study antecedents of
student teachers time on task. The normal full-time work week in Norway is
37.5 hours; i.e. only a few of the reported averages in Table 1 are at or above this
number.
Table 1: Total time use (hours/week) for study programmes in Norway. Source: Lid
(2014).
Study programme Time used
Architecture 43.1
Medicine 37.0
Civil engineering 35.6
Arts, design, music 33.7
Engineering 33.1
Science and math 32.6
Law 31.5
Nursing 29.8
Psychology 29.2
5-year teacher programmes 28.0
Economics/business 27.3
Political science 25.9
Humanities 25.4
Kindergarten teaching 25.3
Primary teacher 25.2
Languages 23.7
General education 23.1
All programmes 29.0
The raison dtre of teacher education is that student teachers should qualify for
the work life of teachers (Darling-Hammond & Lieberman, 2012). To a large
extent, the quality of the education will depend on the quality of the student
intake and on the progress made by the student teachers during the course of
their studies. Learning progress induced by the education programme (value
added) is dependent on the quality of the campus-based courses, the personal
talent of the student teachers for carrying out the tasks associated with the
teaching profession, the quality of the supervision received by students in their
school-based practicum and not least their own learning activities. It is
difficult to isolate the significance of any one individual factor in a way that will

63
give unambiguous information about the quality of a teacher education

programme (Calderhead, 1991). Nevertheless, in this article, we will restrict the
scope to focus on student teachers' time on task on campus, and we will explore
factors that may be of significance for inducing time on task.
Theoretical framework and research hypothesis

Lectures, student-led colloquiums, teacher-led seminars and individual studies
(time on task in the campus-based part of the teacher-education programme) are
important to attaining the goals promoted by the campus-based programme.
Various kinds of explanations exist regarding why student teachers like other
groups of students study. The motivation of student teachers regarding their
studies is considered an important topic (Roness & Smith, 2009). Motivation
entails having goals for one's own actions. Motivational researchers divide
motivation into a continuum of various categories such as intrinsic and extrinsic
motivation. Intrinsic motivation denotes the inner drive to carry out a task (Deci,
1975; Ryan & Deci, 2000), for instance a desire on the part of the student teacher
to become a teacher because he or she has a desire that pupils should learn or
due to a feeling that the profession itself is exciting. This line of thinking forms
the basis of our first hypothesis: intrinsic motivation in study situations predicts
a student teacher's time on task.
Self-determined extrinsic motivation is also of interest for time on task.

Achievement goal motivation is a concept that is concerned with comparing
one's own performance with that of others (Pintrich, 2000). In teacher education,
the student teacher's performance during his or her practicum is judged
according to the grades pass or fail. In connection with education-based
activities on campus, Norwegian student teachers are assessed in several exams
according to a six-stage graded scale in which A is the highest and F, the lowest.
Grade statistics indicate that the majority of grades awarded clump around the
mid-range. Achievement goal motivation, however, can also be of significance
during the course of study rather than just at the end of it (Ashton, 1984). For
instance, seminar leaders may indicate an implicit evaluation of student
performance at the same time, as fellow students will draw conclusions about
the skills of a student on the basis of their own interpretations of the student's
behaviour in formal and informal contexts. In such situations, achievement goal
motivation can be significant even if no explicit grade is awarded at that stage of
the study (Roness & Smith, 2009). Many studies have shown achievement goal
motivation to be significant in terms of behaviour (Senko et al., 2011). Therefore,
an evidently interesting hypothesis no. 2 in this study is: achievement goal
motivation in study contexts predicts student teachers' time on task.
Many studies document that self-discipline is of great significance for the

completion of studies, study performance and so on (Baumeister & Tierney,
2011). Self-discipline can be understood as a more or less permanent personality
feature of an individual. No one, however, is completely locked into a
personality; with the exception of quite extraordinary situations, everyone has
options, and as such, the opportunity to change their own patterns of behaviour.
Self-discipline can, thus, be regarded as a force within each individual that is

64
significant for his or her ability to complete the course of study. Our third
hypothesis is: the actual personality feature of self-discipline predicts time on
task in on-campus teacher-education studies.
So far, the factors that we have taken into consideration can be regarded as
qualities of an individual student: motivation and self-discipline. Time on task
on the part of student teachers can, however, also be understood as a response to
the demands and tasks imposed by the course on student teachers as a part of
the study programme (Darling-Hammond & Lieberman, 2012). For instance,
some sections of the teaching programme can consist of submitted activities that
will be marked and assessed by the academic staff of the university or college.
The lecturers can specify their demands regarding effort by means of comments
on student performance and compulsory submissions. These demands represent
the institution's expectations expressed through the curriculum, requirements
and tasks to be completed. To identify aspects of the teacher programme that
generate effort in the form of time on task, we investigate how this is seen in the
teaching course's self-determined activities (private study) and activities that are
laid down by the university/college as compulsory activities. Our fourth
hypothesis is: external academic pressure will predict study effort and, thus,
time on task.
Previous evaluations have indicated that there are certain differences in quality
between the teacher-education variants offered by the universities and the
university colleges (Roness & Smith, 2009). These evaluations form the basis to
explore whether there are significant differences between universities and
university colleges regarding student time on task.
Empirical survey methodology

Samples and procedures
The reported analysis is part of a research project in which Norwegian student
teachers' preferences (such as motivation, self-discipline, perceived support from
supervisors etc.) are examined. A questionnaire was distributed to Norwegian
teacher students in selected institutions (university colleges and universities).
The surveys included the following (table 3):
1. One-year undergraduate teacher education programme for candidates
with a vocational or general academic educational background
2. Integrated five-year senior-teacher education programme at university
3. Primary teacher education programme (for teaching in grades 17)
4. Primary/secondary teacher education programme (for teaching in grades
510)
5. General teacher education programme (for teaching in grades 110), i.e.
the old model
The survey was carried out during spring and autumn 2013. Data collection was
carried out in the following two ways:

65
(1) Students following the senior-teacher programme and the teacher

education programme at a university, as well as primary/secondary/general
teacher students at a university college, were given the paper-based
questionnaire during obligatory seminar teaching. The students were
informed that participation was voluntary and that they could withdraw
from the survey at any point. None of the students who were present
declined to take part in the survey. The response rate was 100%.
(2) The other part of the sampling procedure was based on an electronic
survey. Students at four Norwegian university colleges with
primary/secondary/general teacher programmes took part in an electronic
questionnaire run by the firm Advicia. The researchers were given the e-mail
addresses of the student teachers by the teacher-education institutions, and
Advicia sent the electronic questionnaire to these email addresses.
It is not possible to estimate the exact response rate within this sample
because many students were not users of the institutionally allocated e-mail
addresses at two schools. A comparison of gender and age shows that this
sample is well aligned with the characteristics of the general population of
student teachers at the university colleges. A further validation was done via
the comparison of measures of time on task in our investigation. A similar
investigation of time on task was undertaken by the Norwegian Agency for
Quality Assurance in Education in the survey previously mentioned (Lid,
2014). The average measures are quite similar. These validation efforts
indicate that some characteristics of our sample from the electronic
questionnaire are well aligned with similar characteristics of the reference
population among Norwegian student teachers. In total, 635 students
responded. The analysis is based on 432 responses (311 women and 121 men)
after the removal of missing values. University college students contributed
270 responses, while 162 responses were from university students.
Measurement instruments
A questionnaire was constructed based on measurement instruments previously
reported in the literature, as well as new developments (table 2). In the survey,
student teachers responded to items on a seven-point Likert scale in which the
middle numeral four represented a neutral midpoint. The concepts were
measured with two to three single items. The analysis reported in the following
is based on five measurement instruments. The internal consistency (Cronbachs
alpha) for each of the concepts is satisfactory; Cronbachs alpha is between .71
and .82. In addition, the mean inter-item correlations indicate the measurement
error (the reliability) of one single item for each concept. The indicators,
Cronbachs alpha (c) and the item reliability for each concept, are as follows:
Table 2: Overview of constructs, items, Cronbachs alpha and item reliability

Cronbac Item 1)
hs
Concepts and indicators
reliabili
alpha ty

66
Intrinsic motivation, IM .71 .55
I want to be a teacher because:
I want others to be interested in working with children because teaching

young people is meaningful
Achievement goal motivation, PM .78 .65
It is important to me:
to be looked up to by the other students.
to be described as the best in the study group.
Self-discipline, SD .81 .58
I generally complete assignments with plenty of time before the deadline.
Even though I allocate time for studying, I dont manage to get it done. 2)
I often put off the things I have to do until the last minute. 2)
External academic pressure, HE .82 .70
Compared with high school, study requirements are greater in teaching

classes.
Compared with high school, I have to use more time to keep up with my
teaching classes.
Institution category, w1
University: 0 and University College: 1
Time on task, TT
Lectures
Student-led colloquiums
Teacher-led seminars
Individual studies
1) Mean inter-item correlations 2) Reversed
Analysis
Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to analyse the relationships
between the variables. SEM is suitable for confirmatory factor and path analyses.
Assessments of fit between model and data are based on the following indices:
root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), normed fit index (NFI),
goodness-of-fit index (GFI) and comparative fit index (CFI). An RMSEA of <.05
and NFI, GFI and CFI of >.95 indicate a good fit; an RMSEA of <.08 and NFI, GFI
and CFI of >.90 indicate an acceptable fit (Kline, 2005).

67
The measurement and structural models were estimated with IBM SPSS Amos
21. The values of the RMSEA, NFI, GFI and CFI indicate that the structural
models in figures 1 through 4 have an acceptable fit.
Empirical results
Figure 1 shows the distribution of total time on task (tt) at the student level. The
figure shows that the average time use in the sample is close to the average for
student teachers in the previously mentioned Norwegian Agency for Quality
Assurance in Education student barometer survey (See Table 1). This means that
the average is rather low, with a value of only 26.1 hours per week. As
previously mentioned, the normal full-time work week in Norway is 37.5 hours
per week.
Figure 1: Distribution of total time use (hours/week), N=432

68
Figure 2: Antecedents of student teachers' total time on task: im=intrinsic motivation,

pm=achievement goal motivation, sd=self-discipline, he=external academic pressure,
tt1 = total time on task in studies, w1=institution; 0=university and 1=university
college. Significant path coefficients and correlations are in bold italics, N=432.
Figure 2 shows antecedents of student teachers' reported total time use

regarding their studies. The figure shows the strongest effects of external
academic pressure (.30) and self-discipline (.27). A moderate effect concerning
the institutional category is also found (.22).

69
Figure 3: Antecedents of student teachers' total time use regarding lectures and
teacher-led seminars: im=intrinsic motivation, pm=achievement goal motivation,
sd=self-discipline, he=external academic pressure, tt2 =time on task on lectures and
teacher-led seminars, w1=institution; 0=university and 1=university college.
Significant path coefficients and correlations are in bold italics, N=432.
Figure 3 shows antecedents of student teachers' reported time use regarding

lectures and teacher-led seminars, i.e. activities directly initiated by the
institution. The figure clearly shows the strongest effect in the institutional
category (.38). A moderate effect concerning external academic pressure is also
found (.19).

70
Figure 4: Antecedents of student teachers' total time use regarding individual studies
and student-led colloquiums: im=intrinsic motivation, pm=achievement goal
motivation, sd=self-discipline, he=external academic pressure, tt3=time on task on
individual studies and student-led colloquiums, w1=institution; 0=university and
1=university college. Significant path coefficients and correlations are in bold italics,
N=432.
Figure 4 shows antecedents of student teachers' reported time use regarding

individual studies and student-led colloquiums, i.e. student-initiated activities.
The figure clearly shows the strongest effects concern self-discipline (.30) and
external academic pressure (.25).
Table 3: Gender, type of institution and year of study.
Number and Number and Number Number Number

(%) (%) and (%) and (%) and (%)
Gender Male: 126 Female: 306
(29.2%) (70.8%)
Institution University: 158 University
(36.6%) college: 274
(63.4%)
Year of 1st year: 162 2nd year: 42 3rd year: 4th year: 5th year:
study (37.5%) (9.7%) 102 96 (22.2%) 26 (6%)
(23.6%)

71
Discussion and implications

A main finding of this study is that student self-discipline and the level of
external academic pressure stand out as significant predictors of students time
on task (table 4). This is particularly evident regarding time on task in individual
studies and student-led colloquiums.
The type of teacher education programme also appears to be of significance for

the total time on task. This is mainly explained by a higher reported average
time use regarding lectures and teacher-led seminars at university colleges than
at universities. University college courses seem to demand a bigger workload
from student teachers, regarding the submissions and seminar presentations that
form part of teacher-education programmes. However, the difference between
university programmes and those of university colleges is not significant in the
self-initiative part of teacher courses. University college programmes make
greater demands of student teachers than university courses do: the higher time
on task in university college programmes is a response to the extent of the work
demand.
To give an overall perspective of what we term antecedents of time on task, self-

discipline is the personal factor that is most strongly associated with time on
task. This finding, however, does not apply to all study activities. Self-discipline
and motivation (both intrinsic and achievement goal motivation) are only
weakly associated with time on task in the case of institutionally initiated
learning activities. One interpretation of this is that it is the demands of activities
on the education programme itself that has the greatest catalytic effect for
actually completed time on task. In the case of self-study activities, the picture is
different. In this case, self-discipline is moderately strongly associated with time
on task, while achievement goal motivation has a rather weaker association with
time on task. Intrinsic motivation, by contrast, is not associated with time on task
in the case of self-study. Primarily, self-discipline stands out as a significant
factor in connection with self-studies. For many believers in the primary
significance of intrinsic motivation, it may seem surprising to find that intrinsic
motivation does not appear to be a significant driving force regarding time on
task. This result is in contrast to a number of other studies describing the
significance of motivation in teacher education, meaning that we need more
research on the significance of motivation concerning study effort (e.g. Roness &
Smith, 2009).
There are obvious and clear weaknesses in the self-reporting on which our
measurements rely. An objective confirmation of time spent studying (such as
electronic registration of when people actually are occupied with studies) could
have improved measurements of time on task. However, self-reporting is the
dominant approach in time-use studies in general. Irrespective of this question,
however, the particularly low estimate of time on task in teacher education
when compared with other study programmes represents a clear challenge for
universities and university colleges. Despite its flaws, self-reporting does
express estimates that can be regarded as relevant indicators of time on task.
Our estimate for the teacher-education courses as a whole and for the individual

72
teacher-education variants corresponds very closely with equivalent

measurements made by the Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in
Education (Lid, 2014). There is no reason to believe that student teachers in the
Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education's survey would
understand the questions that were put to them differently from any other
group of students (However, these estimates are contested: See Martinussen &
Smestad, 2011). We, therefore, place a reasonable degree of trust in the
measurements of time on task being an acceptably valid and reliable indicator of
study input.
As indicated before, a normal work week in Norway consists of 37.5 hours. The
estimated measurements of time on task for the various teacher programmes are
lower than those that society should expect. Our study suggests that teacher-
education institutions ought to place an emphasis on more external academic
pressure on the students, make more demands in terms of coursework and
provide feedback to assignments so poor achievement will not be tolerated.
Student teachers, in fact, receive better grades than nursing students and
engineering students but have lower time on task (The Panel for Teacher
Education Reform, 2014). The possibility of failure may be a necessity to ensure
that students take their studies sufficiently seriously. Such a conclusion,
however, is controversial and runs counter to some core results in motivational
research. We need more research in this respect to arrive at a conclusion
regarding this question on a better qualified basis than we are able to do here.
Raising demands in a way that can lead to failure (or drop-out) is, however, a
strategy that, within the Norwegian educational financing system, would
potentially punish teacher-education institutions in the short term (Only
successfully completed student exams generate variable income for teacher-
education institutions).
It is an open question whether measures that generate greater time on task

actually contribute to solving actual challenges of relevance in terms of teacher-
education institutions, as mentioned in the introduction to this article. Even the
teacher-education programme with the highest average time on task (for
teachers in years 1-7) has encountered strong criticism in public evaluations (The
Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education, 2006). In other words,
greater time on task is not a magic formula to solve the many and considerable
challenges facing the teacher-education programmes. We, nevertheless, focus on
a limited aspect of teacher education here because study input is an important
prerequisite for attaining results. Study input itself does not guarantee that a
student during the course of his or her subsequent working life will ever
actually make use of the skills with which their studies have provided them.
The field of educational science is influenced by shifting trends. One powerful

trend over the last few years has been the so-called situated learning model
(Korthagen, 2010), which assumes that learning takes place in the same context
in which it is experienced. The socio-cultural theory (Brown, Collins & Duguid,
1989) assumes that that the learner should be enculturated by more experienced
professionals. These theoretical models suggest that practicum is a particularly
valuable arena as an introduction to teaching culture, while campus-based

73
teaching is often regarded as an artificial arena in which to acquire teaching

skills. It has been suggested that exams in which the candidate is not allowed to
take in resources or aids are an artificial situation, while exam preparation can
lead to an intensification of study activity that has no benefit to learning for real-
life situations. The claim is that exams based on authentic working situations are
a better examination form than those in which brought-in resources are not
permitted. A number of innovations have taken place in the field with the
purpose of attaining a better coupling between theory and practice, such as a
more frequent alternation between campus-based and school-based teaching,
case-based examinations, MOOC etc. (Jahreie & Ludvigsen, 2007; Rasmussen &
Ludvigsen, 2009). Reconfiguring teacher education in such a direction has its
supporters in the Norwegian teacher-education debate. From a standpoint of
this sort, our proposal of higher external academic pressure as a means of
increasing time on task amongst student teachers can appear unconvincing. It
may appear that giving exam takers a video case situation, permitting all
available resources for help, can be regarded as insufficiently challenging to
make student teachers realise that they need to make more effort during the
course of their educational studies. This is a question that must be resolved in
future research projects. Our evidence makes it difficult to avoid the conclusion
that the examination ought to seem sufficiently demanding to ensure that the
study effort will match society's expectations regarding study input in a full-
time course. For this reason, we regard an increase in demands and external
academic pressure in terms of the examination and of the course as a whole
as an essential element in a turn-around operation for teacher-education
programmes in Norway.
For some individuals, criticism of Norwegian teacher-education programmes

will raise the question of whether universities and university colleges are the
correct institutions in which to operate such programmes (e.g. Paulsen, 2014).
We are aware that the Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities
regards local authorities and county councils as being equally capable of
running teacher-education programmes as educational institutions (the
Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities, 2013; the Norwegian
Association of Local and Regional Authorities/Ministry of Education, 2014).
This concept is not without its grounds in real life: the Oslo city council is an
active partner in the Teach First Norway teacher-education programme,
together with the University of Oslo and Statoil. It is not a law of nature that
universities and university colleges must occupy the teacher-education role in
the future. Other models that tone down the role of academic institutions are as
conceivable as future solutions (Lunenberg & Korthagen, 2009). Alternative
teacher certification programmes are increasingly implemented in several
countries (Consuegra, Engels & Struyven, 2014). However, in those countries in
which campus-based teaching has been reduced and the responsibility of the
schools for the practice-based element of teaching education is correspondingly
increased, a number of problems and challenges have arisen (Grossman, 1989;
Edwards & Protheroe, 2003; Kwakman, 2003; Ball & Forzani, 2009; Consuegra et
al., 2014). These experiences do not so far provide an empirical basis on which to
claim that schools or local authorities would be capable of operating teacher-

74
education programmes more successfully than universities or university

colleges.
Limitations of the Study

There are several limitations to this study. This type of analysis has limitations
from a conceptual perspective (parsimonious modelling) and in terms of its
methodological (cross-sectional) approach. We acknowledge these limitations
and argue that they can serve as a point of departure for future research. One
limitation of this study is the use of self-reported questionnaire data. The
subjective component of such data is undeniable. Only a limited number of
concepts were examined. A final limitation is the sample of student teachers. The
exact response rate of the e-mail survey was difficult to determine because of the
inactive use of e-mail addresses. Due to this shortcoming, we cannot be sure that
our sample is representative for the whole population of student teachers in
Norway. In sum, these shortcomings provide a direction for future research.
Future studies could also include other, or a broader spectrum of, explanatory
variables than we have done in the present study.
Conclusion
Despite its shortcomings, this study may contribute to our understanding of
antecedents of student teachers time on task. If the associations represent causal
relationships, the conclusion regarding this question must be that both the
campus-based teaching and the teaching-practice element within the schools
face challenges respecting the ambition to professionalise teaching (table 4). In
our opinion, one of the requirements must be to increase the external academic
pressure with the purpose of increasing time on task. Study input will, in any
event, be an important prerequisite for legitimising society's use of resources in
teacher-education programmes. One implication of this study is that, if a low
level of time on task is regarded as a problem, a tightening of the work
requirements in the campus-based elements of teacher education would be a
possible remedy. The self-discipline of student teachers is the personality factor
that is most strongly associated with time on task, whilst the motivation of
student teachers is relatively weakly associated with time on task. Self-discipline
appears to be of considerable significance to student teachers self-managed
study. An unanswered question is whether teaching self-discipline strategies or
other institutional arrangements would sustain time on task.

75
Table 4
Overview of results related to the hypotheses and the exploratory question (T=total time-o-
task; L=lectures and teacher led seminars; I=individual studies and student led
colloquiums)
Wording Supported?
Hypothesis 1 Intrinsic motivation in study situations predicts T,L,I: no support

student teacher's time-on-task
Hypothesis 2 Achievement goal motivation in study contexts T, I: supported
predicts student teachers' time-on-task L: no support
Hypothesis 3 The actual personality feature of self-discipline T,I: supported
predicts time-on-task in the on-campus teacher- L: no support
education study
Hypothesis 4 The external academic pressure will predict study T,L,I: supported
effort and thus time-on-task
Exploratory Are there are significant differences between I: no difference
question universities and the university colleges regarding T,L: difference
student time on task?
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78

Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 78-101, March 2015
Portraits of One-To-One Learning Environments

in a New Learning Ecology
John K. Lee, Hiller Spires, Eric Wiebe, Karen Hollebrands and Carl Young
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, North Carolina
Abstract: This research reports on four teachers in a new learning ecolo-

gy prompted by one-to-one computing. The new learning ecology in-
volves unique conditions for teaching and learning including:
(a) immediate and constant access to information; (b) intensity, relev-
ance and personalization of learning; (c) highly developed student dis-
positions; and (d) advanced teacher capacities. The study utilizes a mul-
ti-case method approach with four high school core subject classes, in-
cluding data from classroom observations, interviews, and teacher ma-
terials. The findings suggest that teachers searched for ways to situate
one-to-one computing in their teaching through a variety of negotiated
actions: (a) using digital technologies as learning tools, (b) supporting
existing pedagogical strategies, and (c) establishing the computer as a
hub for learning activities. Additionally, important consistencies regard-
ing the nature of the learning ecology emerged in the classrooms. These
findings are an initial attempt to create a robust theoretical frame for
one-to-one computing within a new learning ecology.
Keywords: One-to-one computing, learning ecology, technology, peda-

gogy
Introduction
"The digital age is creating an information and communications renaissance. But
it is not serving all Americans and their local communities equally. It is not yet
serving democracy fully. How we react, individually and collectively, to this
democratic shortfall will affect the quality of our lives and the very nature of our
communities."
-- Knight Commission, 2009
The Knight Commission (2009) suggests that we have entered an information

and communications renaissance in the current digital age. One area that exem-
plifies this dynamic transformation has been the effort to put computers in the
hands of every student in a school, which has become a reality for some com-
munities across the nation. One-to-one laptop computing has emerged as one of

79
the most important contexts for educational innovation (Lei, Conway, & Zhao,
2007), with several states within the United States (i.e., Indiana, Maine, North
Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, and Virginia) having implemented large-scale
one-to-one computing initiatives. Research points to the impact of one-to-one
learning environments and their potential learning benefits (Bebell, Clarkson,
Burraston, 2014; Donovan, Green, & Hartley, 2010; Grimes & Warschauer, 2008;
Mouza, 2008), technology literacy and writing (Penuel, 2006), and the advantag-
es of cognitive tools (Weston & Bain, 2010). A recent study by Zheng, Arada,
Nilya, & Warschauer (2014) provided the much needed perspective of student
voices relative to personal computing in K-12 schools. Despite an abundance of
activity, we still know very little about how the introduction of one-to-one stu-
dent laptop computing impacts the classroom and the overall ecology of learn-
ing in schools, especially in terms of whether the initiative is affecting communi-
ties evenly as the Knight Commission warns.
Research presented herein sheds light on teaching and learning in one-to-one

computing through an investigation of multiple classrooms in a single high
school. Specifically, we investigated the practices of four academic teachers in a
high school where every student was issued a computer and all teachers were
expected to incorporate computer use in their instruction. The research reported
here is an extension of a larger body of work in which we defined a new learning
ecology (Spires, Wiebe, Young, Hollebrands, & Lee, 2012) related to one-to-one
computing. The new learning ecology is a dynamic environment that extends
learning contexts for students as they utilize technologies with the careful guid-
ance of teachers.
Theoretical and Conceptual Underpinnings of the New

Learning Ecology
Ecology as a metaphor for learning is widely used across a spectrum of discip-
lines, including but not limited to biology, psychology, linguistics, and educa-
tion (Bronfenbrenner, 1986, 1989; Lier, 2004). Specifically related to the role of
technologies and learning, John Seeley Brown (1999) defines knowledge ecology
as an open system, dynamic and interdependent, diverse, partially self-
organizing, and adaptive (p. 3). Barron (2006), in turn described the concept of
a knowledge economy as a learning ecology as the set of contexts found in
physical or virtual spaces that provide opportunities for learning, which may
include formal and informal settings (p. 195).
Brown, Pendleton-Jullian, and Adler (2010) introduced the idea of ecotones to

describe learning environments that possess a complex set of exchange dynam-
ics. Ecotones is derived from the Greek word oekos, which means household,
and tones from tonos, also Greek, which means tension or pressure. They con-
tend that students are involved in new combinations of education and research,
classroom learning and learning in informal study groups, and learning that
takes place in face-to-face and in online environments (p.12). Gilbert (2013) de-
scribes an example of an ecotone in her work on civic education as providing an
opportunity to dismantle the boundaries between community and campus to
create a highly interactive environment for civic engagement (para. 3). Brown,

80
Pendleton-Jullian, and Adler (2010) applied the concept of ecotones to new

learningscapes that they were seeing in higher education; however, the con-
cept can be applied to K-12 learning environments as well. In both contexts, the
tension of working with emerging technologies helps spark a creative dynamic
in terms of teaching and learning.
Spires et al. (2012) defined a new learning ecology (Figure 1) as a new concept
prompted by personal computing and learning environments. In a one-to-one
ecology that has constant and immediate access to information, many influences
are present in a partially chaotic (i.e., unpredictable) wayamong complex inte-
ractions, new ways of teaching and learning may emerge. The new learning
ecology provides new learning opportunities for students; greater understand-
ing is possible as technologies are leveraged for ongoing learning actions. This
view of situated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991) is different from a scientific
model in which every effect has a cause preceding it. The new learning ecology
as we have defined it in relation to one-to-one computing environments is one
such application, that includes four phases (Spires, et al, 2012, ).
Figure 1. Four conditions of the new learning ecology.
One-to-One Computing in the Classroom

Policy-makers have championed one-to-one computing programs, in part, based
on economic and equity concerns as well as a general interest in education
reform (Zucker & Light, 2009). There is a belief that technology use by students
and teachers is an essential component of developing future-ready, 21st century
skills (Dede, 2009; National Research Council, 2008), and addressing the literacy
challenges of the 21st century, more generally (Warschauer, 2006). Early one-to-

81
one laptop initiatives have been implemented at the statewide level in Maine
and at a more regional level in New Hampshire (Bebell, 2005) and Virginia
(HCPSTLI, 2008). Individual school districts in Texas, as well as states such as
South Dakota, Massachusetts, and Florida, established programs ranging in size
from 5 to 47 schools (Bebell & Kay, 2010; Cavanaugh, Dawson, & Ritzhaupt,
2008; Gorder, 2007). North Carolina also has an extensive and statewide one-to-
one laptop computing program (NC1LC, 2008). Not surprisingly, schools in oth-
er countries are also establishing one-to-one programsboth industrialized na-
tions such as Australia and emerging nations through the One Laptop per Child
program (Derndorfer, 2011; Muir et al., 2006; OLPC, 2010).
This move to establish one-to-one computer (primarily laptop) programs has

been supported by studies that have shown positive impact on the standard
measures of student achievement (Gulek & Demirtas, 2005; Richardson, Mcleod,
Flora, Sauers, Kannan, & Sincar, 2013). Penuel (2006) demonstrated in a meta-
analysis that technology use may positively affect technological literacy and
writing. Similarly, Sclater, Sicoly, Abrami, and Wade (2006) reported positive
impacts on secondary reading and writing scores. The emergence of ubiquitous
computing has also opened the door for new forms of instruction, especially in-
dividualized instruction driven by computer-based tutoring systems (Bebell &
ODwyer, 2010; Mendicino, Razzaq, & Heffernan, 2009). From the research-
er/practitioner view, however, there has been a desire to render a richer view of
what is and what can be transpiring in the classroom (Spires et al., 2012; Weston
& Bain, 2010) in the form of deep descriptions of transformative practice.
One-to-one laptop programs, in particular, and technology infusion programs,

in general, are not without their critics. Numerous studies have found uneven
implementation and varying levels of technology integration effectiveness when
analyzed at the classroom, school and district level (Bebell & Kay, 2010; Shapley,
Sheehan, Maloney, & Caranikas-Walker, 2009). The lack of strong implementa-
tion/integration plans and the resulting low-level or sporadic use that follows
are problems that cross cultural and national boundaries (Derndorfer, 2011;
Eteokleous, 2008). The reasons cited for these outcomes are many, including the
slow response of curriculum development to match the potential held by new
technologies (Johnson, Levine, & Smith, 2009). Researchers also have com-
mented that technology implementation strategies in the classroom do not nec-
essarily reflect how technology is used by students outside of the classroom (Ito
et al., 2009). Cuban (2001) noted that initial technology integration designs often
mimic their analog counterparts rather than facilitating transformative possibili-
ties in teaching and learning. The result can be unstructured or poorly sup-
ported computer use that becomes a distraction to educational goals structured
around traditional approaches and benchmarks (Clotfelter, Ladd, & Vigdor,
2009).
Christensen, Horn and Johnson (2008) concluded that one-to-one technologies

act as a positive disruptive force to traditional approaches to instruction. How-
ever, the disruption must be followed by a development of new paradigms of
teaching and learning (Weston & Bain, 2010). These changes are often seen first

82
in changes in teaching practices, if not in standard measures of student

achievement (Cavanaugh et al., 2008). Instructors whose implementations have
been deemed successful have understood the systemic nature of one-to-one en-
vironments, developing strategic plans to overcome both known and emerging
barriers (Hew & Brush, 2007), especially as projects scale up (Dede & Rockman,
2007). Understanding the role that school leadership plays in one-to-one pro-
grams has been recognized as central to the success of projects (Ertmer et al.,
2002). Student outcomes, in fact, is just one of many factors principals and other
administrators take into account when deciding whether to commit resources to
a technology project (Gerard, Bowyer, & Linn, 2008). Both researchers and policy
makers also have concluded that research can play a role in building leadership
and instructional capacity within school districts for the types of changes large-
scale technology projects bring (Roderick, Easton, & Sebring, 2009; Zucker,
2004). Needless to say, at the classroom level, teachers have a key role in affect-
ing how one-to-one technology is deployed and used in the classroom (Bebell &
ODwyer, 2010). Teacher use of the technology affects the learning conditions in
the classroom, while also providing a model for how students might make use
of the technology.
Drawing from the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings of the new learning
ecology and the literature highlighting the impact and support of one-to-one in-
itiatives in the classroom, we conducted case studies of four one-to-one class-
rooms. With this understanding of the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings
of the new learning ecology and research on one-to-one computing, our focus
shifts to our own research initiative.
Research Context and Methodology

This research project emerged out of our work in a professional development
network designed to support schools as they transitioned into a one-to-one
computing program. After working with numerous teachers in one-to-one
schools as part of this professional development project, we established a fo-
cused research relationship with a group of teachers at one school. Our research
was guided by the following questions.
What does teaching and learning in one-to-one environments look like?
When and how were the conditions for the new learning ecology realized
in four core academic one-to-one classrooms?
In addressing these questions, we wanted to describe the new learning ecology
in one-to-one computing classrooms in terms of how teaching occurred in these
environments. We purposively selected four teachers, one from each core con-
tent area, who had accepted the challenge of using technology in their teaching
in the one-to-one computing environment that was new to their school. Follow-
ing Yins (2012) approach to multiple-case design, the selection of four teachers
in four different content areas was an attempt to replicate the potential of a new
learning ecology across four cases. The four cases were bounded by curriculum
content, the teachers pedagogies, and the uses of laptop computers in the class-
room.

83
Yin (2012) also suggested that case selection is often theory-driven; therefore, we
selected the cases based on the theoretical ideas featured in our early work on
the new learning ecology (Spires et al., 2012). We were interested in determining
the extent to which the teachers, who had all received previous training in one-
to-one instruction, were facilitating a new learning ecology in their classrooms.
The research project was situated in a southern Atlantic coast state in the US in a
rural high school with 1,044 students and 59 classroom teachers. Fifty-two per-
cent of the students were African American, 46% were Caucasian, and 2% were
Hispanic. Forty-five percent of the students enrolled were on free or reduced
priced lunch, placing the school about 10% higher than the state average in
terms of the number of students enrolled in the free or reduced lunch program.
Students were each given a laptop computer. Faculty had completed two profes-
sional development sessions for one-to-one computing in the classroom. To get a
fuller picture of one-to-one computing in the school, we chose a teacher in each
of the four main content areasEnglish, social studies, math, and scienceto
observe and interview.
We collected data from observations of classroom activities, interviews with the

teachers, and the analysis of teacher work materials. In total, we conducted 8
observations of the classrooms as well as 8 teacher interviews. All data were col-
lected over a two-month period in early 2011. To ensure reliability, two observ-
ers completed observations. The observation instrument and interview protocol
were developed from the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (Piburn, M.,
& Sawada, D., n.d.) and included a description of the classroom, descriptions of
events, and related commentary. Interviews with all four teachers were con-
ducted immediately following the observation sessions. The interviews included
nine questions with follow up questions emerging during the interviews. Our
data analysis consisted of scrutinizing our open-ended observations and result-
ing field notes as well as the data from the follow-up interview sessions. Analy-
sis of teacher planning materials was also conducted as part of the process of
confirming and disconfirming emerging findings.
We coded the data using a priori coding categories consisting of the four condi-
tions of the new learning ecology. The general condition of student dispositions
was comprised of four elements and the general condition of teacher capacities
was comprised of five elements as noted below (Spires et al., 2012):
Immediate and constant access to information and a global community
Intensity, relevance and personalization of learning
Self-directed, self-regulated, curious, and creative learners
Teacher as content expert, facilitator, consultant, mentor, and improvisa-
tionist
We continued the analytical process using a method of selective coding which,

according to Strauss and Corbin (1990), involves "selecting the core category,
systematically relating it to other categories, validating those relationships, and
filling in categories that need further refinement and development" (p. 116). In
effect, we wanted to determine how teachers were meeting the conditions of the

84
new learning ecology as a way of making concrete the nature of learning in a

one-to-one classroom. We identified themes that represented general trends or
similarities among coded data. For example, we identified a tension between
constant access to information and classroom management as we found multiple
instances of observation and interview data describing classroom management
activities that were coded for constant access to information.
From the coded data, Yins (2012) method of pattern matching was used to de-
termine the extent to which the new learning ecology was present in the four
classrooms represented in the multiple cases. Additionally, a cross-case analysis
was conducted in an effort to, as Yin (2012) describes, apply a replication logic
in interpreting the findings across the cases in a multiple case study (p. 17).
This analysis sought to determine the factors influencing the existence of a new
learning ecology in the classrooms. After compiling a full list of these factors, we
collapsed them into five assertions, which are presented following the four cas-
es.
The Cases
This section presents cases of four teachers: Mrs. Perry, Mr. Thomas, Mr. Wat-
son, and Ms. Austin. Each case describes how the teachers constructed learning
experiences given the (a) one-to-one laptop computing activities present in the
classrooms, and (b) potential of the new learning ecology as a theoretical frame-
work for describing the interactions between teachers and students and their
uses of laptops and information to achieve educational goals in the classroom.
Mrs. Perry, the Science Teacher

Mrs. Perry was an experienced science teacher. She had been teaching for 34
years, and although this was her first year using laptops in the classrooms, she
had been using computers as part of her instruction for many years. During the
semester in which this study was conducted, Mrs. Perry taught three classes of
biology. Students engaged in a wide range of computer-based activities. They
completed virtual labs and interactive activities from Public Broadcasting Ser-
vices (PBS) as well as SAS Curriculum PathwaysTM. Several of Mrs. Perrys tradi-
tional hands-on dissection lab activities were being replaced with online virtual
dissection.
In general, Mrs. Perry was very receptive to the schools one-to-one laptop pro-
gram. She viewed the initiative as providing students with a unique opportunity
to develop skills they would need for college and career. She valued the fact that
the one-to-one laptop program gave her students access to information and saw
that access as a way to encourage and motivate her students. In an interview,
Mrs. Perry talked about access to information online as something that will
spark them a little bit because some of [it] might be a bit dry too. Some of them
might find an interest and relate to it. However, Mrs. Perry also observed a dif-
ference in the way different students interacted with online information. In the
same interview, Mrs. Perry described the unevenness of student experiences:
The good students like self-direction and are willing to take that extra step. The
weaker students, I dont see doing anything better from using the computers.

85
Mrs. Perry sought to accommodate her students deficiencies in technical skills

by creating differentiated instructional plans. In her third period regular biology
class, Mrs. Perry assigned students a project to research each stage in the cell
cycle. Students were allowed to prepare their report using notecards or by creat-
ing a tri-fold brochure using Microsoft Publisher. Students used the Internet to
gather information from various resources and find pictures and video links,
and they also used their textbook as a resource. Six students used notecards and
books while the remaining 15 students used computers and the Internet. While
she identified a specific need for this instructional differentiation, Mrs. Perry al-
so thought there were larger issues at work that limited some students as they
worked in one-to-one computing learning environments. As she put it, Weve
all been led to believe that all the students in this day and age are very technolo-
gy savvy, but we have a lot of students that are not that savvy.
In another lesson, some students were having difficulty creating graphs with
Excel so Mrs. Perry thought an online program would assist students with
graphing. She quickly discovered that students were not able to adjust the scales
on the axes in the program, and thus the online program was not helpful after
all. Mrs. Perrys use of the online tool to replace Excel, which had been used to
replace a paper and pencil graphing exercise, ended up being more of a distrac-
tion than an instructional benefit.
Despite the limitation, Mrs. Perry was often optimistic in her talk about using
technology. In one interview, Mrs. Perry described an advantage of the comput-
ers is that they allow students to collect information about science-related topics
on their own and provide a more efficient means to access resources:
Can we do this without computers? Yes, we can go to the library
to look up the information. If they did find something that was
interesting and they wanted to research further, it is much easier
to do it on the computer. I like the computers. I think it is a great
thing for the kids.
In one activity representative of Mrs. Perrys approach to research, she engaged

the class in a lesson designed as a seek and find activity focused on health and
disease. Students selected a particular disease and found out more about its
causes and how the causes related to internal and external factors. Students en-
gaged in animated discussions as they shared the video clips and images they
had found with each other. Overall, the activity worked because the use of tech-
nology (online searching and retrieval of visual content) was limited and specifi-
cally aimed at supplementing other class activities. Mrs. Perry was able to work
around constraints that limited her in other activities. In this activity, students
were able to work together, thereby limiting the negative effects of some stu-
dents not having computers. Students analysis of the visual, the most important
part of the exercise, was not dependent on a technical skill that had to be applied
while using the computer. Connectivity remained a concern for this activity, but
was not a limitation.

86
Essentially all of the one-to-one activities in Mrs. Perrys classroom involved

moving existing classroom activities to use on computers with little if any
change in learning objectives or pedagogy. In some cases, the moves brought
little transformative value while introducing the downside of students needing
to learn new technologies. More successful was leveraging the online informa-
tion web and modeling and simulation tools that required little overhead in
learning how to use. These web-based tools were still used to mimic activities
that originally took place largely in the library or lab but expanded opportuni-
ties and resources with little logistical downside. Somewhere in between these
two extremes were activities such as the seek and find activity that served as
an effective replacement to off-line work, but required new skills and disposi-
tions that students had not yet mastered. Mrs. Perry was able to use this activity
and others like it as a context to support the development of her students online
literacy skills. The new teaching capabilities highlighted here did not involve
new teaching approaches so much as an emerging improvisation around provid-
ing alternate lessons for the frequent Internet outages or students without com-
puters.
Mr. Thomas, the Mathematics Teacher

Mr. Thomas was a young, energetic teacher who recently completed his under-
graduate degree in mathematics education at a university not far from the rural
county high school where he was employed as a full-time mathematics teacher.
Mr. Thomas taught two sections of Geometry and one section of Algebra. Dur-
ing professional development workshops and as part of his undergraduate ex-
perience, Mr. Thomas was exposed to a variety of different content-specific
technology tools, including The Geometers Sketchpad, graphing calculators,
clickers, and curricula for mathematics, such as SAS Curriculum Pathways.
In his teaching, Mr. Thomas regularly used wikis and a classroom management
system called Schoolview to monitor what students were doing on their laptops
during class. Mr. Thomas felt like his classes were, in some ways, positively af-
fected by the introduction and integration of one-to-one laptop computing in his
classroom. He pointed out that, after receiving their laptops, students appeared
to be more engaged during class. He also noted that some students were taking
the initiative to do research as well as looking online to find different methods
for solving problems and to learn more about the mathematical ideas they were
studying. However, Mr. Thomas mostly talked about access to online informa-
tion in the classroom as an ancillary type of experience. Having constant avail-
able Internet access does kind of help them out. There have been random days
where I think okay. Mr. Thomas was not convinced that the one-to-one initia-
tive was fundamentally altering his instruction given the content he taught. He
described this in an interview: I was so excited about doing all the WebQuests
with them. But then again its a math class, theres only so much you can do
with it. Mr. Thomas saw himself as guiding students toward knowledge. He
described this approach as such:
When I teach my kids Im not like 2+2 is Some teachers Ive had
in the past just talk like that at you. So, I think I kind of coach
them through the problem, and a good example of that is when

87
my kids go home and do homework. They say this was tough,

but when I go over it, it seems so easy because you just go over
and explain it.
Despite his reluctance to fully embrace technology in his teaching, Mr.
Thomas described himself as a techie and noted that he was using a tablet PC
during his first year of teaching even before the school implemented one-to-one
laptops in the classrooms. With the implementation of one-to-one laptops, he
was beginning to seek creative ways to use technology to motivate and teach
students. The most prominent shift for Mr. Thomas regarded the manner in
which he supported students as they worked individually on math problems.
Mr. Thomas said the biggest benefit of one-to-one computing was his ability to
walk around the classroom where he could focus on students one-on-one.
During one class, he created a review game for students using his own Microsoft
Xbox gaming system. During another class, Mr. Thomas created a Geometers
Sketchpad sketch that contained different polygons and a sequence of questions
for students to answer related to finding the length of a side, the perimeter, and
area of different polygons. Even with these in-class experiences, Mr. Thomas
most often talked about the use of laptops outside of his classroom. Some of
them have taken the initiative [with laptops] when they go home or if they have
a little free time they will go and find other ways of doing a math problem or
research something.
Mr. Thomas had a direct pedagogical stance that was not enabling of the sort of
self-directed learning featured in the new learning ecology. He described the
limitations of self-directed learning on laptops in terms of time and student
knowledge. In algebra I cant afford to lose five minutes. Im not going to lie
and Im not trying to talk bad about students but you have to spoon feed them.
He also saw limitations to technology integration in his discipline. The quadrat-
ic formula is a long process. Thats just pencil and paper. Grind it out.
The one-to-one laptop computing environment provided opportunities for Mr.

Thomas to assess and monitor formatively what his students were learning. He
used clickers to ask questions and immediately gather information about stu-
dents understanding, used Schoolview to see what students were doing on their
computers as they worked, and walked around the classroom and interact with
students while using a wireless tablet PC to post problems, notes, and solutions
on a screen. Mr. Thomas also posted notes and assignments on a class wiki to
provide students immediate access to the information discussed in class. He also
encouraged students to submit all of their work electronically. This requirement
helped Mr. Thomas with the management of paperwork and reduced the use of
paper and the need for copiers.
Mr. Thomas high comfort level with technology in his classroom helped em-
power him to investigate some new ways to use laptops, but he generally
avoided the laptops in favor of more traditional paper and pencil or didactic pe-
dagogies. While the mathematics content covered in the classroom stayed, out of
necessity, close to the state-mandated course of study, his implementation of

88
some computer-based learning and assessment tools provided new approaches

to teaching and learning this material. While Mr. Thomas did not draw widely
from the information on the Web, he accessed tools and information specifically
focused for the learning goals at hand, providing a more intense and persona-
lized learning experience for his students. The use of technology-based forma-
tive assessment tools allowed him to improvise more strategically as he guided
his students through the highly focused learning goals. When he did use the lap-
top technology, Mr. Thomas sought to use it in additive ways, demonstrating
both creativity and adaptability in his pedagogy.
Mr. Watson, the Social Studies Teacher

In his third year of teaching, Mr. Watson taught three classes of United States
history. He had recently completed an undergraduate teacher education pro-
gram in social studies education. Mr. Watson was an engaged teacher who ea-
gerly adopted his schools one-to-one laptop computing initiative. He viewed
himself as a facilitator in the classroom, managing students work and providing
context and direction when appropriate. As a young teacher, Mr. Watson was
still developing his teaching personality and pedagogical beliefs. He expressed
an openness to change, but at times he projected a traditionalist view about
teaching. Mr. Watson characterized his teaching approach prior to the imple-
mentation of one-to-one computing as traditional, saying about a particular ac-
tivity that it just would have been a lecture. Maybe an activity using the text-
book.
As a one-to-one teacher, Mr. Watson was more expansive and inventive about
his role in the one-to-one classroom. Mr. Watson described his teaching style as
fluid, saying that he likes to move around [to] make sure that Im looking at
every kids computer so that I see theyre progressing and theyre not getting
stuck, staying on one thing too long. Evidence of this facilitative stance
emerged in the classroom as well. In an activity where students were research-
ing various protest techniques used in the United States over the last century,
Mr. Watson carved out 50 minutes from a 60-minute lesson for students to work
in groups to locate and analyze relevant information online and then construct a
product representing what they learned. Mr. Watson supported this work in two
ways: he rotated among the groups using informal and formative assessment
strategies to encourage students progress, and he provided students with subs-
tantive content or clarifications about content.
Mr. Watson was committed to using one-to-one laptop computing throughout

his teaching. Although, Mr. Watson was enthusiastic about his new one-to-one
pedagogies, he also identified challenges. One challenge concerned the man-
agement of students and their on-task behavior. Mr. Watson indicated that larg-
er classes were more difficult to manage if the activities required individual or
paired work. He said that for classes over 20-25, he tended to group students
into groups of three or four. This enabled him to manage interaction with
groups better and to provide assistance for all students. A second challenge re-
garded online information access. Like Mrs. Perry, Mr. Watson was concerned
about the reliability of the computer infrastructure and his classes reliance on

89
network connections. He noted several times during the year when the network
had been down or slow and how the resulting lack of access to information had
limited the progress of students work.
Even when the Internet connections were good, Mr. Watson was concerned
about the quality of information his students accessed online. He attempted to
manage his students work by setting expectations about what resources they
could use in research activities. For example, he only allowed students to use
Wikipedia if they coupled the Wikipedia reference with a second reference that
corroborated the original information. Mr. Watson did not seek to limit access
just manage the critical quality of the information used. As Mr. Watson put it,
Theres no resource they cant access. Everything and anything they dont
know is on the Internet somewhere, and they can find it as long as they search
for it correctly. They now can find whatever it is were working on and be much
more creative.
Although Mr. Watson had a high level of acceptance for one-to-one laptop com-
puting in his classes, some pedagogical conflicts emerged as a result of the
school-wide shift to one-to-one computing. For one thing, Mr. Watson struggled
with how to deliver lectures to students. He made use of a centralized system to
control students laptops, so as to keep them from browsing the Web while he
delivered a lecture. He also was struggling to find a way for students to take
notes while he lectured. His approach was to give students outline notes with
blanks that they would fill in as he talked. Mr. Watsons use of one-to-one laptop
computing to manage note-taking was at odds with his other more student-
centered pedagogies. For example, Mr. Watson implemented an activity on the
Cold War where students created video-based examples of propaganda. In the
activity, he took the position of a facilitator, and in some ways, ceded content
expertise to outside resources. Mr. Watson talked about how the one-to-one lap-
top environment had changed his responsibilities as a teacher. He saw the tech-
nology as enabling and expanding opportunities for students to be creative and
inventive. [One-to-one computing] definitely changed project-based learning.
You give them a computer and its easier to get materials together. Theres no
resource they cant access.
As with Mrs. Perry, Mr. Watson was able to use online information access to
transform research projects that were previously completed in the library with
limited resources. However, Mr. Watson struggled with both managing and
empowering students online research activitiesboth in terms of helping them
to assess what constitutes appropriate, high-quality material to utilize and
prompting them to stay on task. Mr. Watsons concern for management also ex-
tended to his use of the classroom management software, especially when he
returned to a more teacher-centric lecturing approach. While the introduction of
one-to-one computing forced a change in classroom pedagogy from a more
teacher-centric lecture style to a more student-centric group project approach, it
was unclear how much of this change was an existing desire by Mr. Watson faci-
litated by the technology or change imposed on him by the introduction of one-
to-one computing. Mr. Watson made minor adjustments to existing activities

90
when leveraging computer technologies. As such, it was unclear whether en-

hanced student dispositions and teacher capacities were being fully realized
through this transitional period. The change to one-to-one engendered some
healthy reflective tension in Mr. Watsons teaching that led to continued creative
problem solving on his part.
Ms. Austin, the English Language Arts Teacher

Ms. Austin was an ambitious and high-energy English language arts teacher.
When this study was conducted, Ms. Austin taught 11th grade literature and
AVID (Advancement Via Individual Achievement), where she consistently in-
corporated one-to-one laptop computing in her teaching. As an early adopter of
one-to-one computing in her school and in the state where she teaches, Ms. Aus-
tin saw herself as being in a unique position to challenge some of the expected
conventions about teaching her subject. She often took positions that were coun-
ter to the status-quo in favor of the use of computing in the classroom. Her
views on social networking illustrated this forward and sometimes non-
conventional thinking:
I think they make it seem as if social networking is this big be-all-
end-all downfall of everybody. But I think that it doesnt neces-
sarily have to be all bad and that connecting in here with my kids
will be a positive thing, a learning experience for them and me,
and that eventually we can communicate with other people that
have different experiences than what we have here, and that so-
cial networking being a positive thing, that was something new.
Ms. Austin went on to describe how she had worked to overcome barriers to so-
cial networking in her school: That was something that I had to explain to the
tech people, because a month into this you created this great social networking
site, and I get on it one morning trying to get some stuff added on, and its
blocked.
At the same time, Ms. Austin was often cautious and quick to point out potential
pitfalls or limitations to using one-to-one laptop computing in her classes. She
described immediate and constant access to information a double-edged sword:
Its good because we can use it for classroom instruction. Its negative in some
ways because theres still some people around here that maybe arent being mo-
nitored the way they should, that are using it for not the correct purposes and
theyre slowing down and bogging down the whole system. However, on bal-
ance, Ms. Austin seemed to value the access to information that one-to-one com-
puting affords. Before, we were very limited as to what we could do because
we have very few resources that we all shared with two or three people, so now
thats all right there. Also we can find out things that are very current. And
thats important for the kids because they can find it out right then.
Ms. Austin sought out a middle ground between the transformative nature of
one-to-one computing and the centrality of the teacher in the classroom. Ms.
Austin was reluctant to argue that the laptop computer would alter the relation-
ship between teacher and student. From day one, my kids walked in the door

91
and because they knew me, it didnt matter that that computer was in their
hand. They knew that they werent going to touch that business until I said.
Mr. Austin insisted that she would be in control of students use of technology,
both in terms of their physical access to the technology and in terms of how stu-
dents used online information and technology tools. In talking about how her
teaching had changed with the introduction of one-to-one computing, Ms. Aus-
tin said, So that stayed the samethe structure has stayed the same. I think
that what has changed was that we have a lot more information at our finger-
tips.
In her teaching, Ms. Austin attempted to balance one-to-one laptop computing

by maintaining control over the learning environment. One activity that reflect-
ed this careful balance was her focus on student writing. In one of these activi-
ties, students wrote a letter to Ms. Austin using a specific format and audience.
She provided very specific guidance to students regarding how they would use
computers. So, today were going to write a letter. On the board I have put
some things that I would like you to include in this letter. So you may as well
just spread your bodies out and type, type, type away. This activity and the in-
troduction to the work provided by Ms. Austin were interesting because of the
distance she put between the work and the technology. The laptops were back-
ground tools designed to support an activity that was decidedly removed from
the specific forms and conventions of technology-enabled writing.
Ms. Austin seemed to be enthusiastic about one-to-one laptop computing and

even aspirational regarding prospects of the technology, but she often took a de-
cidedly traditionalist stance on instructional activities. Her position on a writing
assignment highlighted this traditionalist stance. I think because I am a little bit
old-fashioned, I still want to see their handwriting. I still want to see that spell
check is not what helped them write that word correctly. Ms. Austin was not
willing to jettison traditional approaches to teaching reading and writing. I
think that some writing will still have to be done on paper. And even some of
the kids have mentioned, why cant we do it the old fashioned way? What was
wrong with that? If it wasnt broken, why do we have to fix it?
Ms. Austin struggled with the changes that immediate and constant access to
information through the one-to-one laptop environment brought to the class-
room. Her concerns were related in part to classroom management, but more
than some of the other teachers, she also struggled with how to leverage these
new capabilities and tools into way that reflected less of a teacher-centered dy-
namic. This was reflected in her optimistic hope for social networking tools to
help transform her classroom practice. However, this embracing of new technol-
ogies often came in conflict with deeply held beliefs about what constitutes ap-
propriate instructional strategies in the classroom. In many ways, Ms. Austins
response to one-to-one computing centered more on ubiquitous access to infor-
mation and the potential for students to develop their capacities with new tools,
than on transforming her teaching.

92
Discussion
The cases reported here suggest that teachers engaged a range of negotiated ac-
tions as they searched for ways to situate one-to-one computing in their teach-
ing. Although these teachers used computers differently in their classes, from
the computer as a tool to support existing practice to using the computer as a
hub for learning activities, there were important consistencies regarding the na-
ture of the learning ecology that emerged in these classrooms. In this section, we
highlight prominent themes from the new learning ecology framework that
were represented in the data. Our analysis suggested that across the four class-
rooms, immediate and constant access to information was the most prevalent
condition. The students and teachers had immediate and constant access to in-
formation since they all had Internet access and laptops; however, the four
teachers leveraged that access in very different ways. The teachers in this
studyMrs. Austin (English), Mr. Thomas (math), Mr. Watson (social studies)
and Mrs. Perry (science) demonstrated their capacities as content experts, faci-
litators, consultants, mentors and improvisationists in different ways and in an
uneven manner. The other two conditions, intensity, relevance, and personaliza-
tion of learning as well as highly developed student dispositions (students as
self-directed, self-regulated, curious, and creative) were less evident across the
four teachers classrooms, but important in unique ways. The following four
assertions describe in more detail these findings as culled from data across the
four cases.
Teachers Manipulated Immediate and Constant Access To Information

Given Their Epistemological Stances
Internet-based access to information affected teaching and learning experiences
in the four classrooms and in many ways reflected the teachers beliefs about
knowledge. The science teacher, Mrs. Perry, and social studies teacher, Mr. Wat-
son, developed activities that involved students accessing information from the
Internet to develop projects and conduct research. Both teachers were willing to
facilitate their students access to information even when that information in-
cluded conflicting or even contradictory knowledge. These teachers enabled
their students to construct knowledge using a wide range of acceptable sources.
Their use of Internet resources was consistent, but not without problems. Both
teachers worried about the reliability of their access to the Internet. They also
confronted issues related to organizing students work, insuring all students had
laptops, and helping students make critical use of online information. Both
teachers developed pedagogical approaches to accommodate for these issues so
they were able to continue the use of online information in the classroom.
In contrast, the math teacher, Mr. Thomas and Ms. Austin, who taught English,
were less likely to incorporate immediate and constant access to information in
their classrooms. They tended to view online information as protean and a po-
tential source of distraction from the fixed knowledge featured in their instruc-
tion. Both teachers saw Internet access as a way to extend the learning expe-
rience outside the classroom as opposed to inside the class. Mr. Thomas and Ms.
Austin both developed class wikis and presented content online to facilitate
homework assignments, but rarely incorporated such technology in class. Mr.

93
Thomas did use Geometry Sketchpad, a student-centered computer software

program for learning mathematics, but only in situations that he considered
low-stakes i.e., classes with no mandated state end-of-course of tests. Ms. Aus-
tin also leveraged social networking tools to facilitate and extend conversations
with students, but limited the use of these tools to activities outside of class.
These two distinctly different approaches to accessing online information re-

flected the teachers general pedagogical dispositions as well as their beliefs
about knowledge. Mrs. Perry and Mr. Watson tended to provide their students
with more project-based and personalized learning opportunities. Both teachers
saw themselves as facilitators and were willing to cede some knowledge author-
ity to outside resources and materials. However, both teachers were also con-
cerned about how their students used critical skills when accessing online re-
sources. Mrs. Perry worried about her ability to properly review materials that
her students were accessing and used a system of informal and formative as-
sessment to monitor students online resource use. Mr. Watson developed spe-
cific rules for his students use of online content from Wikipedia, requiring cor-
roboration for any Wikipedia source. In both cases, the teachers were moderat-
ing their students uses of materials, but were also recognizing multiple sources
of information and to develop understandings from these materials. These
teachers epistemology was more flexible than traditional teacher stances on
knowledge, which have viewed the teacher (or a teacher proxy in the textbook
or other materials) as authoritative sources of knowledge.
Mr. Watsons use of questions signaled his epistemological beliefs. In one activi-
ty he used questions to open the door for students to develop knowledge about
Soviet propaganda. Youve seen propaganda in photographs, and now youve
just seen Soviet propaganda [films] about the Soviets and the Cold War. What
did you notice about the film? What do you notice about the claims? Mr. Wat-
son did not answer his questions. Instead, he had students conduct research,
viewing additional propaganda films and conducting analysis, and then produc-
ing their own propaganda films while applying what they had learned. Mrs.
Perry took a similar approach toward knowledge. When working with students
in online research projects, Mrs. Perry also posed questions and consistently
emphasized the importance of students creating their own meaning and learn-
ing from these experiences. As she put it when talking about an activity focused
on disease; get them to figure out which [diseases] would be more likely to af-
fect them in their lifetime and how they might change their lifestyle right now to
prevent them from having problems later.
Mr. Thomas and Ms. Austin were not as willing to take the open epistemological
stances that Mrs. Perry and Mr. Watson took. Mr. Thomas, who taught mathe-
matics, had a direct pedagogical approach that was predicated on a more tradi-
tional epistemological stance. In his description of the differences between stu-
dents self-directed learning in mathematics and his guidance of student learn-
ing, Mr. Thomas argued, when my kids go home and do homework they say
this was tough, but when I go over it, it seems so easy because you just go over
and explain it. Mr. Thomas saw himself as in possession of knowledge and his

94
teaching tasks as involving the communication of that knowledge to his stu-

dents. These beliefs about knowledge seemed to limit Mr. Thomas willingness
to intercede the laptop computers between himself, as dispenser of knowledge,
and the students as recipient of that knowledge. Ms. Austin took a similar stance
on knowledge. Ms. Austin, when explaining her pedagogical beliefs, also took a
traditional position on knowledge. She coupled a desire to guide students with
firm beliefs about the forms within which students should express themselves.
In commenting on writing, Ms. Austin called herself, old fashioned. For ex-
ample, with regard to writing Ms. Austin wanted to, as she put it, see that spell
check is not what helped them write that word correctly. Instead of viewing
knowledge as fluid and subject to negotiation, Mr. Thomas and Ms. Austin had
firm beliefs about not only what students should know, but also the shape that
knowledge should take, and how students should learn these fixed bodies of
knowledge. Laptop computers operated on the periphery of the learning activi-
ties where Mr. Thomas and Ms. Austin most carefully applied their traditional
epistemological beliefs.
Highly Effective Teacher Dispositions Shifted Given Instructional

Contexts
Of the five conditions for highly effective teaching theorized in the new learning
ecology (content expert, facilitator, consultant, mentor, and improvisationist),
none stood out as a prevalent method. Instead, specific dispositions were preva-
lent given specific conditions of the one-to-one computing environment in the
classroom. Teacher dispositions were conceptualized in this research as holistic
belief systems that would emerge in tandem with other conditions in the new
learning ecology, and, in fact, we found evidence that these beliefs and disposi-
tions took form unevenly among all four teachers. These dispositions were con-
text driven, with teachers shifting very quickly along a range of dispositional
attitudes. For example, Ms. Austin talked about being a facilitator, or as she put
it a coach, and an improvisationist.
I still think my time in here is still divided 50/50 and with the computer time
Im a coach and Im helping and Ill get on the same play or page, and then on
the other side of it Im an improvisational artist because Im always dancing and
singing and being on stage up here.
Ms. Austin wanted her dispositions to emerge in contexts. In the one-to-one con-
text, she viewed herself as a helper and a motivator. In this context, the central
classroom focus was on individual students, and Ms. Austin provided support
or facilitation to get students to the same learning goal, or as she put it the same
page or play. In whole class settings, where Ms. Austin was the focus of atten-
tion, she saw her role shift to an improvisationist who was drawing on a wide
range of personal skills to maintain students focus. But, when she played the
part of an improvisationist, Ms. Austin was less reliant on technology.
Mr. Thomas expressed similar shifting dispositions given the context. For exam-
ple, his approach to teaching with Geometers Sketchpad highlighted the way in
which he moved back and forth across these dispositions. With Sketchpad,

95
every kid can work at their own pace. A lot of them say I talk a lot and I do. I
want to do it like they do in college and in college they give lecture. With Sket-
chpad I can walk around and help every student, which I havent been able to
do a lot of in the past.
Mr. Thomas deliberately shifted his teaching disposition to facilitator when

teaching with Geometers Sketchpad. These opportunities to facilitate his geo-
metry students learning were mostly driven by the testing context for his geo-
metry class. As Mr. Thomas explained, the lack of a test provided an opportuni-
ty to teach differently. When talking about how his teaching has changed since
the start of the one-to-one laptop initiative, Mr. Thomas explained.
Algebra two has stayed a lot the same. I havent changed my
formal lecture but Ive only been teaching two years. The geome-
try has changed a lot because of Sketchpad. I did Sketchpad in
college and I was able to do that a lot with my regular geometry
group and a lot with this group because theyre in progressive
geometry where I dont have the [End of Course Test].
The use of Geometers Sketchpad in Mr. Thomas class facilitated multiple ap-
proaches to solving geometry problems, meaning students needed to be more
self-reflective as to the quality of the approach and solution they generated
while attempted to demonstrate or prove properties of geometric forms such as
triangles.
As with the personalization of learning, the teachers in this study sought to bal-
ance their role by maintaining some control over the instructional processes.
Mrs. Perry and Mr. Watson tended to enable students independent learning
more through motivation, while also providing examples and direction toward
attainable learning goals. The ubiquitous, constant access to information and a
greatly expanded array of software tools enabled Mrs. Perry and Mr. Watson to
carry on a parallel expansion of facets of instruction they could engage in. For
example, Mrs. Perry faced challenges in supporting students on the use of so-
phisticated software tools, but found better luck in supporting more transparent
software tools and information sources, where she could focus on supporting
knowledge building around core science concepts. In sum, all four teachers stra-
tegically shifted their pedagogies between direct or teacher-centered approaches
and student-centered approaches.
Teachers Used a Form of Pedagogical Triage in the One-To-One Class-

room
In a new learning ecology, constant and immediate access to information as well

as self-directed, curious, and creative learning, should in theory support in-
creased relevance, personalization, and intensity in learning. Instead, the one-to-
one environment in the four classrooms featured in this study encouraged
teachers to personalize their instruction through the sorting and prioritizing of
students needs, something we viewed as a type of pedagogical triage as op-
posed to personalization as instructional transformation.

96
All four teachers expressed strategic tensions between the potential of the tech-
nology to individualize student instruction, while also keeping them on track.
In contrast to relevance and intensity, which the teachers and learners were able
to realize as a whole group, personalization required a distinction in individual
learning that was difficult to attain. The teachers actually used technology tools
to control individual departures from class norms. Teachers were interested in
helping students, as Mrs. Perry put it, find an interest and relate to it, but spe-
cific adaptations at the individual level were rare.
Teachers tended to address issues and conditions at the class level as opposed to
the personal level. For example, the uneven availability of computers caused
teachers to differentiated instruction based on whether a student had a laptop to
use. At other times, teachers developed alternative lesson plans based on wheth-
er the Internet would be working. The teachers also modified activities based on
computing skills or the availability of specific resources online. In these in-
stances, the teachers were presented with the challenge of flexible instruction as
something to contend with rather than something they voluntarily embraced.
Consequently, the teachers in this study were performing a sort of triage where
student learning conditions that served as impediments to learning were as-
sessed and teachers actions were meted out based on the teachers perceived
priority of needs. Classroom management software provided by the district was
one tool deployed by these teachers, as was the low-tech solution of walking
around the room and observing what was on the students screens. When teach-
ers identified students either off-task or in need, they provide personal assis-
tance, but rarely enable personalized learning opportunities. Some of the teach-
ers also realized that formative assessment would be a key tool to gauge the out-
comes of these more individualized approaches to assignments, but instead used
formative assessment in this process of triage and conditional pedagogical re-
sponse.
Teachers Struggled to Manage Information Flow in the Classroom
The teachers in this study incorporated a variety of strategies when dealing with
problems and opportunities that emerged from their constant and immediate
access to information and the changing conditions for learning. Two of the
teachers, Mrs. Perry and Mr. Watson, provided students opportunities to access
information online during class, but used different strategies to manage stu-
dents uses of that information. Mrs. Perry saw her efforts to provide students
access to information as replacing existing analog approaches to using informa-
tion in science classes. However, she struggled to provide students consistent
experiences both as a result of students limited technology skills and due to
hardware and technology infrastructure limitations. Mr. Watson took a more
ambitious position. He created new learning experiences with online informa-
tion for his students that were no possible offline and then tried to develop new
instructional strategies for managing his students uses of online information.
Mr. Watson created rules about what types of information could and could not
be used (e.g. Wikipedia) and created research activities that necessitated stu-

97
dents use of online information. However, Mr. Watson remained uncomfortable

with his strategies.
Mr. Thomas and Ms. Austin did not regularly provide their students with op-
portunities to access online information in class. Both teachers thought that stu-
dents accessing information during class would be a distraction, but for different
reasons. Mr. Thomas saw student access to online information as disrupting his
ability to maintain instructional control over the delivery of content. Ms. Austin
was concerned about limited academic value of the information students would
access, being mainly social constructed information. However, they both saw
value in supporting students uses of online information out of class. Mr. Tho-
mas appropriated and adapted wikis to support his didactic teaching style,
while Mrs. Austin used network tools to encourage traditional literacy skills.
The uniqueness of the teachers experiences given that the original notion of the
new learning ecology emphasized personalization in learning points to the need
for some clarification in the original ideas, specifically with regard to highly de-
veloped teacher capacities. Additional work should seek to determine how
teachers personalize their pedagogies when the teaching and learning ecology
shifts in order to gauge a variety of paths to transformational teaching and learn-
ing.
Conclusion, Limitations, and Future Research

Two general conclusions emerged from the analysis of data collected for the cas-
es. First, the teachers appeared to mediate the new learning ecology given their
beliefs about knowledge. Mr. Thomas and Ms. Austin believed that teachers
should be the primary sources of authority of knowledge in the classroom. Mrs.
Jones and Mr. Watson had more open epistemologies, valuing a wider range of
sources for knowledge. The teachers general pedagogical beliefs about manag-
ing the classroom framed a second general conclusion, which suggested that the
extent to which the teachers were willing to provide some authority to students
to regulate their learning influenced the ways in which the new learning ecology
presented itself. Mr. Watson and Ms. Jones were willing to hand over more au-
thority to students, both in terms of knowledge construction and in terms of
how activities played out in their classroom. Given the nature of the new learn-
ing ecology as facilitating student learning that is self-directed, self-regulated,
curious, and creative, Ms. Joness and Mr. Watsons classrooms came closer to
realizing the theorized new learning ecology.
This study made use of data collected within a small number of classrooms over
a relatively short period of time. Future work will need to scale this investiga-
tion in both time and spacefollowing a similar group of teachers longitudinal-
ly over a year or longer to see how their instructional practice and student beha-
viors continue to evolve (or not) and to expand the investigation to more schools
and districts. Such work would help to generalize the findings of this multi-case
study and further refine both the commonalities and differences in challenges
faced by different disciplines as they grapple with the new learning ecology.

98
This study emerged from an ambitious idea that teaching and learning in the
new learning ecology will enable constant and immediate access to information;
personalized learning; advanced learner dispositions; and highly developed
teacher capacities. This research responded to the need for establishing theoreti-
cally grounded practices within school-based one-to-one programs. Given the
amount of resources (both time and money) that are being invested across the
nation, as well as the hopes that are raised in terms of potential educational ben-
efits of one-to-one environments, it is essential that we think deeply and strateg-
ically about one-to-one teaching and learning, including thoughtful considera-
tions for theoretical grounding. The cases presented here suggest that although
conditions of a new learning ecology are evident within one-to-one learning en-
vironments, they may be more nuanced and contextualized than we understood
when theorizing our original idea (Spires et al., 2012). The Knight Commission
(2009) report highlighted the dramatic changes in ways we use and share infor-
mation in the current digital age. As school systems respond to these changes
with one-to-one laptop computing initiatives, educators will need to carefully
evaluate the contexts of these educational innovations. This research is one such
effort toward better understanding of how one-to-one laptop computing can en-
hance teaching and learning in the 21st century.
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Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 102-127, March 2015.
The Impacts on the Educational Landscape

ahead the Free Internet Offers, Traps and
Surveillance that Threatens the Safety and
Privacy on the Web
Rogerio L. Roth
Ca' Foscari University of Venice
Venice, Italy
Abstract. The current educational landscape pedagogically and

technologically sound has been undergoing several changes, mostly on
what concerns the common sense in personal and institutional exposure,
content and file sharing. The lack of knowledge about security and
privacy besides the different ways of virtual learning environments does
not guarantee a new approach or innovation. On the other hand, the
adoption and effective use of fads without a previous context of
experimentation, testing, protection and logic of use can bring different
results of the expected negatively impacting the use of technologies to
support the education.
Keywords: e-resources, oversharing, privacy, rereading, security
Looking to the future: Breaking the links with the recent past
This is not a clich, or even the Back to the Future trilogy of science fiction
adventure films written by Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis, but to rethink
education in terms of current and future technological possibilities involves
experimentation, practice and feeling. Where to go?
Given the diversity of scenarios and options free or paid, open or proprietary,
local or cloud, domestic or foreign the decision-making process should take
into account something more than just the omnipresent costs. Items such as
security and privacy of information should be considered essential.
Many prominent people are recognized more for their eventual errors and
failures than by their great achievements. It is not easy to predict the future with
100 percent certainty. What to say when the bets are related to the future of the
education area, so resilient, tough, conservative and averse to changes...
The recent past has brought us a virtual massification of academy, often without
any quality or even interaction that should be mandatory in times of Web 2.0.

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Regarding to the behaviour on the Internet, of individuals and institutions

including educational, we witnessed the rebirth of pretentiously moderns,
dazzle, boring and invasive.
But I have everything on my plex. My diaries, my homework, my music, my

books my whole life! (Marshall & Gaviola, 2011).
This paper is part of the results from the research Building an Immersive
Distance Learning Experience beyond Massive Open Online Courses with Web
Conferencing, Socratic Method, Problem-Based Learning and Social Networks
funded by the CAPES foundation, Ministry of Education, Brazil.
Security, privacy, and responsibility are themes that consistently and recurringly
are brought to the forefront reported here to the different Internet uses.
Several universities and students do not see limits, to expose themselves
(oversharing) on social networks. Likewise, it seems to lack common sense in
adopting different service models offered in the cloud computing, as well as
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Platform as a service (PaaS) and Software as a
service (SaaS) solutions such as Google Apps. Some services apparently are free
of charge, but there is always a price to pay for everything.
For many decades now, Microsoft has been criticized for its predatory
monopolistic practices. Google is currently under the spotlight as well.
On the April 1, 2014 the Gmail email service (Google Mail) completed 10 years
(Gmail, 2004), (Gmail, 2014). The date always refers to the celebration of
April Fools' Day, sometimes called All Fools' Day especially in Australia,
Brazil, Canada, United States and Europe (April Fools' Day, 2013).
For Brazilians, the April 1 has several interpretations, it also reminds the military
revolution that occurred on this day in 1964 and the harsh years that followed.
Interventions such as this are typical of the technique of a coup d'tat, that the
CIA has developed and applied in Brazil, artificially radicalizing the social
struggles to the point of causing the imbalance in the political and destabilize
governments (spooling actions), who did not submit to the strategic guidelines
of the United States who deny responsibility and complicity with the coup
(plausible denial), standard by which American governments was characterized
many times their intervention policies in other countries (Bandeira, 2004).
Friday, April 3, 1964 12:06 p.m. Thomas Mann: I hope you're as happy about
Brazil as I am. Lyndon B. Johnson: I am. I think thats the most important thing
that's happened in the hemisphere in three years. Lyndon B. Johnson: I hope
they give us some credit, instead of hell. (Beschloss, 1997).
Interpretations and historical events aside, we all (Gmail users) can be victims of
this stigma.
Are we fools to use the Gmail and its associated tools from Google?
What is the price we pay for the use of these free of charge offers?

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Ribble (2014) states that, Gmail was not the first of its kind. In fact, it was a
relative latecomer to the webmail party. Gmail's objective was not to create a
totally new way of communicating, but to make radical improvements to the
existing webmail model. And the last ten years leave little doubt that they've
succeeded.
They really managed to do radical improvements, ranging from the absurd to

the unbelievable, verifiable in a judicial documentation of 30 pages, when
Google acknowledged that Gmail users have no reasonable expectation that
their communications are confidential. Its users do not have complete privacy
(Rushe, 2013).
That suit, filed in May (2013), claims: Unbeknown to millions of people, on a

daily basis and for years, Google has systematically and intentionally crossed the
'creepy line' to read private email messages containing information you don't
want anyone to know, and to acquire, collect, or mine valuable information from
that mail.
To John Simpson (Rushe, 2013), Consumer Watchdog's privacy project director,

Google has finally admitted they don't respect privacy, emphasizing that,
those who want some security or privacy, should not use Gmail.
The document came to light at a time when Google and other technology
companies (AOL, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Paltalk, Skype, Yahoo and
YouTube) try to explain the role they play in mass surveillance practiced by the
National Security Agency (NSA) over citizens of the United States and
foreigners (governments, authorities and citizens) of several friendly countries,
including France, Germany, Spain and Brazil.
The denunciations of Snowden (2013), former technical expert of the Central

Intelligence (CIA), occurred through the newspapers The Guardian (Greenwald,
2013) and The Washington Post (Gellman & Poitra, 2013), giving details of the
information traffic carried through various surveillance programs, among them
PRISM (2013) and XKeyscore (2013).
According to the information published, it is possible (XKeyscore) to read the

email content of any person in the world, just knowing the email address. Any
website can be verified (inbound and outbound traffic). Any computer that a
person uses on the Internet can be monitored. Any notebook can be traced
when accessing the Internet while the user travels, to any part of the world.
Snowden (2014) said (00:03:46,445 00:03:59,131): Every time you pick up the
phone, dial a number, write an email, make a purchase, travel on the bus
carrying a cell phone, swipe a card somewhere, you leave a trace and the
government has decided that it's a good idea to collect it all, everything, even if
you've never been suspected of any crime. (Snowden Interview, 2014).

105
No new information. Snowden just proved what we all, in some way, already
knew that the control and manipulation of information have been used (by all
parties) not only in times of declared war to change public opinion, to support
certain actions of the rulers or even to contain the resilient and politically
incorrect through the eyes of the dominant power.
If someone travels to a different country (of their usual displacements which

are monitored) and try to access Gmail through a different way than webmail
immediately has the access blocked, forcing the use of a mobile phone to receive
an unlock code via SMS or voice message. Google keeps a record history of the
used IP addresses and suspect whenever someone gets out of their controlled
comfort zone. Some user requested this kind of protection or is it possible to
disable? Not... (Basics, 2015), (SMS from Google, 2015).
This kind of control that not just Google does seems to be meaningless for
those who already transformed their life (personal/institutional) in an open
book, updated and exposed 24 hours a day (Twitter/Facebook) in a sort of Big
Brother (reality show). Probably, in search of their fifteen minutes of fame
(Warhol, 1967)...
Google or any other service provider paid or free of charge cannot be our
PlexPad, not now; much less in the future (2149), (Terra Nova Marshall &
Gaviola, 2011).
The year 2014 was prodigal in examples of lack of privacy and security for both
users and institutions, including the lack of digital literacy. The incident of
August the biggest scandal of celebrity photo leaks already occurred exposed
a security hole of the Apple's iCloud service (2014 celebrity, 2014).
Our lives can not be fully exposed and/or dependent on a single supplier.
That way we will be allowing connections between the various services and
providing more information than necessary both for those hosts as well as for
our personal and professional contacts. Also, we are going to be hostages of a
particular company under a certain government or country and its policies,
economic interests and technological failures.
Eventually everything that goes to the cloud may be lost or even accessed by
other people. If certain information is sensitive, secret or even intimate, the
Internet and the vast majority of their gratis or paid services is certainly not the
best place to store them. After all, nothing is forever. Google also taught us this.
On Tuesday, September 30, 2014, the chronicle of a death foretold finally came
true: Orkut is over (Orkut, 2014), (Orkut Archive, 2014).
To Assange (2014), Unlike intelligence agencies, which eavesdrop on

international telecommunications lines, the commercial surveillance complex
lures billions of human beings with the promise of 'free services'. Their business
model is the industrial destruction of privacy. And yet even the more strident

106
critics of NSA surveillance do not appear to be calling for an end to Google and
Facebook.
This business model searches not only the destruction of privacy but also the
end of anonymity and the end of freedom of opinion without reprisals.
Who should not, does not fear? Who should not, should fear yes, and with good
reason...
WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, himself is the victim of the system, in the
same way as all those who try to challenge the constructed and manipulated
truths, that subsequently have become definitive and unquestionable evidences
(WikiLeaks, 2011).
But what options are available? Fance (2013) recognizes that Gmail can be one of
the most popular services, but there are many people who feel that it is far from
being the best. She cites some problems and points out how the most important
justification is the fact of the Google scans each email message that is sent and
received. This is done so that advertisers can better target users and display ads
that are more relevant to them although from a Gmail users standpoint, this is
considered an invasion of privacy.
If, for these reasons or any other someone wishes to stay away from
Gmail/Google or simply wants to try something new, she lists ten major
alternatives: Hushmail, Zoho, Mail.com, Outlook.com (replaced Hotmail), GMX,
Facebook, Inbox.com, Yandex, Shortmail and Yahoo Mail.
There are many other options in almost every country the Internet is a sea of
possibilities and the major players seem to have servers located in the United
States, China and Russia. On Wikipedia, for example, there is an extensive
compilation and comparison of providers (webmail providers, 2014).
Some people or institutions may want to not rely on Russian or Chinese services
for several reasons. But what is the difference among staying under the
surveillance of a Big Brother (Orwellian) American, Chinese, Russian, or any
other controller?
This text does not intend or even has the pretense of showing anti-Russian, anti-
American or anti any other country. Nothing is intended against or in favor of
any party. It only reflects the absurdities to which all were thrown, implicitly or
explicitly, after Second World War, during the Cold War and the ideological-
political bipolarization. What we thought we had stayed in the past seems more
alive than ever.
Impossible not to relate the current ubiquitous and pervasive practices to the
dystopian novel 1984 (Nineteen Eighty-Four, 2010) written in 1949 by Eric
Arthur Blair, or rather by his pseudonym George Orwell. The pseudonym has
always been one of the forms of anonymity.

107
Wilde (1891) through an assay and using a Socratic dialogue, stated that: Life
imitates art far more than art imitates life. The Orwellian nightmare comes true.
Sooner or later, though, you always have to wake up Cameron, 2009).

The anonymity nowadays is something pursued by all means and ways. On the
Internet, due to the illusion that many have to be anonymous, the practice is
verified even in discussion forums and/or opinion that, in a ubiquitous manner,
require the use of an email of identification or affiliation to a social network as
if the two possibilities were not possible to be false and, thus, be possible to post
a comment anonymous.
How can we distinguish current practices to those verified in the middle ages?
In a way, we live in a new holy inquisition, and witch hunts... Any difference
even among the contemporary practices of the Gestapo, Kempeitai, NKVD,
Stasi, SAVAK, KGB, MSE, FSB, OSS, DOPS, CIA, Mossad and similars?
On behalf of a anti-terror paranoia systematically fed, the Patriot Act (Patriot

Act, 2008), a fascist law that invades the privacy of any American citizen (with
impacts throughout the world at airports, for example), we can not create a
state of exception, trample fundamental freedoms and constitutional rights in
the alleged combat against an imagined or created intentionally terrorism...
The new heretics accused of heresy, piracy or terrorism remain being all who
are contrary to the established dogmas, those who question certain truths,
considered as indisputable created without evidence, logic or moral use or
even those who oppose to the opinions determined by certain dominant groups.
No one is discordant in itself, and any founder or participant in any practice or
behaviour that may be considered divergent in a given historical period and
social reality nothing more is than someone who, from his own point of view,
believed that he was moving in the correct path. The heterodox is classified this
way just because someone invested with some sort of institutional power, rated
its practice or its ideas as dissonant and contrary to an official orthodoxy that if
self considers as the correct path (Barros, 2008, p. 125).
There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths (Nietzsche, 1908, p. 22).
Both science, law and history are made of transitional truths. There are no
thorough truths in every area of human knowledge, in constantly evolving,
much less in our official story, the manipulated version of the facts that goes
to the books.
After all, the paper accepts everything and who writes, defines, govern or even
judges do it according to his own bias of life, including his own prejudices as
well as the maintenance and commitment to the current situation.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression?

Scientists, jurists, rulers and serious historians, exempt, uncompromised and
without fear of facing the status quo and the truths imposed?

108
Galileo Galilei (2007) would have certainly divergent opinion about inquisitorial
courts. The reality that prevails corrupts and marginalizes those who oppose the
established truth, through the fear of rejection or ridicule, which makes many
thinkers to remain hidden.
Many actions of certain groups which, without options, try to survive the
extermination what is imposed on them and the occupation of their territories
real or virtual are erroneously classified as terrorists. This never can be
compared with the widespread raids against civilian populations that began in
Second World War and culminated with the attack with nuclear bombs on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 6 and 9, 1945). We have lost the moral.
The true terror remains the actions of powerful states, primitive, warlike and
pre-historic imperialisms; that have not learned lessons from the mistakes of the
past and insist through a path unilaterally imagined in denying the right to
self-determination of peoples, as well as impose their vision of the world to
other cultures, most of the time ignoring the cultural diversity and ethnic
minorities.
On the Internet we can see that the attacks are not limited to strategic targets.
In the case of Google actions, they are generalized. Beyond the control of the
email contents we can realize an insistent and resilient way to induce and/or
require the identification that matches completely to the policies adopted by this
company which, often, is not shy to request additional information another e-
mail, cell phone to connect the dots. Consequently, it became a common
practice, including banks, sending codes via SMS to confirm operations, as if cell
phones could not be stolen. On the contrary, mobile phones can identify the
exact location of the user or anyone who uses his phone.
Remoaldo (1998) points out that anonymity has always been an important
feature of society. The need for its existence has been demonstrated over the
years. It has been of great value to dissidents in countries with little or no
freedom of expression, for the victims of violation and for people who might
want to share their experiences without revealing their true identity. Without
anonymity, these actions could result in the silencing of these people through
censorship, physical aggression, loss of job, legal processes or even through
murder.
Many countries allow citizens to hide their identity as part of the right to
privacy, since the acts are not considered illegal. Yet even this concept of legality
varies according to a particular era or social situation (Anonymity, 2011).
Wikipedia, for example, is written collaboratively mainly by authors who use
unidentifiable pseudonyms or use only their IP address, some might even use
identifiable pseudonyms or their real name (Wikipedia: Anonymity, 2014).
The actions of Big Brother (Orwellian) can reach everyone and the current
distrust of solutions providers on the Internet entails further the desire to remain
anonymous. The full anonymity on the Internet is possible but not always

109
guaranteed, since IP addresses can be tracked and associated with a particular

computer through which a message was sent or through which the contents of a
website has been changed without identifying a user directly.
Identity masking services such as Deep Web (Tor, Freenet, I2P and others like
Morphmix/Tarzan, Mixminion/Mixmaster, JAP, MUTE/AntsP2P and
Haystack) hinder tracing, by using technologies of distributed computing and
encryption (Deep Web, 2008), (Tor Project, 2002), (Freenet Project, 2000),
(I2P, 2003). Another possibility is the use of a Virtual Private Network
(VPN, 2013).
Hoffman (2012) says that: All the major search engines track your search
history and build profiles on you, serving different results based on your search
history. He suggests five alternative search engines for those who are tired of
being tracked: DuckDuckGo, Ixquick's Startpage, Ixquick, Blekko and
Ask.com/AskEraser. He also reminds us that, to surf anonymously everywhere
with slower browsing speed the best option is the Tor browser.
The SlashGeek (Anonymous, 2012) recommends that not be used only the Tor
(previously an acronym for The Onion Router). It indicates as the best choice to
associate Tor with VPN: You-Tor-VPN or even You-VPN-Tor. Gives tips about
VPNs, points out that the Google search engine should not be used and indicates
the Firefox as the best browser (with the extensions Ghostery, NoScript and
Adblock Plus).
A device that promises total anonymity online in a simple, non-technical and

inexpensive way ($51) is the Anonabox (2012), (Anonabox, 2015), and there is
also a free turnkey solution for application-wide online privacy. It's called Tails
(Tails, 2009) and it is a live operating system, developed from the Debian
(Linux) and optimized for privacy, where all network data is routed through Tor
network.
Proxy servers can also be used (Proxy, 2010). There are different levels of
proxy (web, caching, reverse, transparent, etc.) with different levels of protection
and anonymity enough to bypass the restrictions of websites even in countries
where the Internet is censored or wars occur, to report the latest developments.
These technologies allow the traffic to pass through another computer before
communicating with the recipient, a different user's IP address.
The Lizard Squad, group that presented itself as responsible for Christmas
attacks (2014) to PlayStation Network and Xbox Live above all did so to
demonstrate the incompetence of Sony and Microsoft to avoid these attacks
(Pilkington, 2014).
With the attack on the Tor, anonymous Internet service, the Lizard Squad
(@LizardMafia) attracted even the wrath of Anonymous (@YourAnonNews)
whose only concern is the privacy made possible by the Tor, which is used by

110
people around the world to navigate and communicate without having anyone
else lurking their private activities (Smith, 2014), (Arce, 2014).
The Tor project is one of the most effective sites for encrypted communication,
becoming one of the most important Internet services in the world.
Whistleblowers like Edward Snowden has used the service as well as many
dissident movements and users who are under the control of information
from countries such as China, North Korea, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Russia and
Venezuela. Without wishing to create an axis of evil, where we are free?
The Americans and not only them should seriously consider its use.
Trojan Horse
In October 2006, Google allowed educational institutions to use the Google Apps
service, which is now called Google Apps for Education (Google for
Education, 2015), formerly Google Apps Education Edition. Google Apps for
Education (Apps for Education, 2015) is free of charge and offers the same
storage space that Google Apps for Work (Apps for Work, 2006), formerly
Google Apps for Business. Seems to be an offer they could not refuse. But, even
the success stories multiply; there has not been unanimity among the
universities, even among the Americans (Whittaker, 2010).
In the European Union (currently, 2015) checks are in progress to legally allow
access to users' privacy and the right to be forgotten a process that began in
2010 in Spain as well as Google's business separation. All try curb the
company's dominance in the Internet search market (Fioretti, 2014), (European
Commission, 2014). Recurring issues of (lack of) privacy comes at a time when
the company Google is also fighting for four years against an antitrust
investigation (European Commission, 2010).
Starting in the academic year 2008/09, Ca' Foscari (UNIVE) began using Google
services, starting with Gmail by shifting the MX record of domain unive.it:
IP address: 157.138.7.88 Host name: unive.it

MX aspmx.l.google.com
MX alt1.aspmx.l.google.com
MX alt2.aspmx.l.google.com
MX aspmx2.googlemail.com
MX aspmx3.googlemail.com
source: http://network-tools.com/default.asp?prog=express&host=unive.it
This initiative is initially observed in Ca' Foscari (2008, 26) (translated): email
@stud.unive.it Starting from the academic year 2008/09 for all students has
been prepared a mail box identified by registration@stud.unive.it. The mailbox,
hosted by Google, has more than 7 GB of disk space. The initiative aims to
improve the quality of communications to students, and from these to the
University. Later in Ca' Foscari (2012, 55) there is a reference (translated): It is
also expected that the migration to Google Apps for Education can encounter

111
some problems (not severe) relating to technical and/or organizational aspects

and one realizes that, even being a free offer from Google (without direct
acquisition costs), the UNIVE paid (indirectly) for consultancy fees (translated):
Investment relating to consultancy for transition to the systems Google Apps
for Education, Moodle and iTunes U.
Both Google, Moodle and Apple do not charge (directly) the use of their
platforms by universities. But one day the invoice may arrive.
Currently (academic year 2014/15), all Google Apps for Education services are
available to faculty, staff, researchers (username@unive.it) and to students
(registration@stud.unive.it). The authentication system of the University
(translated): To professors, employees, and researchers the email
username@unive.it associated with the services Google Apps for Education; to
students the email registration@stud.unive.it associated with the services Google
Apps for Education; (autenticazione di Ateneo, 2015): Warning: although
the new mail box is hosted by the Google operator is accessible exclusively by
web address http://mail.stud.unive.it and not via www.gmail.com
(translated), (account di posta studenti, 2015).
However the emails are explicitly exposed on the UNIVE website, ignoring the
risks involved and abstaining from using, for example, JavaScript or images.
Piotto (2014) said: Use image instead since text email is forbidden by Italian law
(legge Stanca 17/01/2004 about public administration sites accessibility). Use
text like [dot] [it] or _AT_ help spammers (see http://techie-
buzz.com/featured/tips-to-tackle-email-harvesting-spam.html). Use complex
system like captcha, JavaScript, etc... help us to prevent spam but block Google
indexing and reduce site's usability. We are a public service, @unive.it isn't a
personal email (if you want a personal email use @gmail.com), our first goal is
help students and users to find us (Google indexing is necessity, not a problem),
no matter if we receive spam.
This position is simply absurd, and the same can be said with respect to all the
arguments offered as a reason to not protect the emails. Currently all @unive.it
accounts receive a reasonable amount of spams, higher than the verified in
normal Gmail accounts already included in lists of spammers. This is due
mainly for sewing the email lists to people from academic institutions (internal
and external clients) that are made through offers sent to all account holders.
I'm not referring to the absurd mailing lists (CIdE) that are created internally
and, as always, shoot first, ask questions later (Mailing List CIdE, 2015).
Why do we need an institutional email? To prove some affiliation? This type

of account is one which we do not have full control, which is subject to the
receipt of unsolicited messages institutional or non originating within the
institution and that, most often, we lose access to all content and contacts when
we move away, or are taken away.

112
The UNIVE, on the flip side, provides a proxy server (Proxy Settings, 2015),
proxy.unive.it (157.138.1.34:3128) that allows access to internal services as if we
are within the internal network, which includes email and thus omit the
location.
The security issue also calls for proper attention and information from
professors to students at all levels in exposing and demonstrating the risks as
well as suggest alternatives not only with regard to the overexposure.
Diversifying the options we will be collaborating to create a society digitally a
little more safe and just.
The Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said at the UN that no one has a
monopoly on truth and no one is now capable of tailoring global and regional
processes to their own needs. (Lavrov, 2014). This is a correct and consistent
statement albeit absurd, coming from Russia, who practices the opposite of
speech, and recurrently, in the cases of Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova.
Such a statement should even be applied to the Stalinist version of history

mostly related to the Second World War, whose events insistently have been
changed and used in the wrong way (by all parties) and Hollywood that, in
the absence of new military victories and in the face of repetitive failure
verified later (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria) does not shy to
distort the facts and explore the event, apparently, to the last drop: Fury, a Sony
movie (Block & Ayer, 2014).
This is not about watertight issues or problems unrelated to the entrenched

reality in which many universities live. We live in a state of war, even when not
declared, which includes all forms of surveillance, electronic attacks, cyber-
attacks and cyber terrorism; often sponsored by governments and sovereign
states democratic or not or by independent groups.
Angela Merkel (Germany) and Dilma Rousseff (Brazil) would have been only
two, of the 35 world leaders monitored by the NSA (Rawlinson, 2013), (Global
surveillance, 2013). According to Aymone (2014), provided that the complaints
have been proven many Brazilian federal public universities have adopted
various new safety standards, among them the use of own email servers,
something that the majority of them had already made.
Generally, there is a recommendation (DOU of 2014, October 17) so to adopt the

Guide to Good Practices on Hiring Information Technology Solutions, of the
Secretary of Supervisory Information Technology of TCU (SEFTI), to decrease
the risks to which IT area is subject, especially with regard to the creation of
service level agreements with the applicants areas and the holding of
documentation of products developed by third party companies, for that they do
not become hostages of the companies contracted, who hold the knowledge of
the products developed, (Guia, 2012).

113
The information leaks are not something inherent to the Internet or use of
computers. It has always existed. And were not just spies of the enemy
photographing secret documents. Most of the time it's friendly fire and the
problem is at home the leaks mostly originate from within the institutions. We
slept with the enemy or heroes, depending on the observer's point of view...
Scanning only made things easier and faster. And the Internet allowed for
greater disclosure, that is, more people have access to information.
WikiLeaks (2006) is an organization which publishes, on its website, posts from

anonymous sources, documents, photos and confidential information leaked
from governments or corporations, on sensitive issues.
In Russia, the Kremlin is returning to typewriters in an attempt to avoid leaks.

It has already spent nearly $15,000 on the purchase of this modern equipment
(Kremlin, 2013). The joke seems to be about to become literal also in Germany
(Farivar, 2014).
Secret information must, as its name implies, be kept secret. In the case of emails,
the biggest problem is what we write and for whom. Unlike spoken words (that
can be recorded) emails are written and identify (digitally) the origin and
destination. They can and are used as evidence, even after our own death (e.g.
Steve Jobs), (Ames, 2014).
Certain words or expressions can classify any message as interesting or

potentially dangerous to the eyes of the software spies who monitor the
computers (locally or remotely). This is also true for all kinds of websites,
including blogs and social networks. McAfee has related the search keywords
more dangerous to scammers (Keats & Koshy, 2008).
A given message will be stored at least in two places: on the sender and on the
receiver. Where both sides keep copies of sent and received messages on their
personal equipment as well as on their servers (cloud) the same message will be,
at least, in four places. That is, it is sufficient to invade or have access to only one
of the options to take ownership of all content, something that not just the NSA
makes with perfection.
There are several technologies to improve the security level of messages sent as
the encryption and the use of certificates. But nothing is perfect. Just a password
that is easy to break in order for this data to be accessed by anyone. The main
thing is to use common sense in the contents and, even with respect to private
messages, keep in mind that eventually the text will be accessed by others, even
unauthorized, which may make different use of the information, including
against us.
The issue of security, for universities, should not be restricted to emails and own
servers. To Roth (2014), should be assessed what options are available free of
charge at this time and it would be both technically and pedagogically usable.
The focus would not be to fall into the discussion paid vs. free, but to speak out

114
on issues such as security and privacy. Given the current quality of free options
(such as Google's package), it is an irresistible appeal to institutions, public
and/or private, in lean times.
But we should not make the same mistake of the Trojans.
The end of anonymity, for example, does not mean any guarantee of the end of
inappropriate content publication (Blum, 2014).
The Brazilian Civil Rights Framework for the Internet officially Law No 12.965,
of April 23, 2014 also guarantees the freedom of expression, but registers the
possibility of compensation when there is a violation of the intimacy and private
life (Civil Rights Framework, 2014). Moody (2011) described the regulatory
Framework as a law anti-ACTA, in reference to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade
Agreement, widely criticized for restricting the freedom on the Internet and that
was rejected by the European Union. Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World
Wide Web, called it a fantastic example of how governments can play a positive
role in advancing web rights and keeping the web open and called for other
countries to follow suit of Brazil (McCarthy, 2014).
The Internet is a reflection of the imperfect world in which we live and it has its
good and bad points depending on how we use it. We can observe practices that
may be, at the same time, considered right or wrong, depending on who the
judges (status quo). Countries such as China, North Korea and Cuba, among
others, are criticized by the second largest democracy in the world (USA) with
regard to the control what they do about Internet access.
Which country does not do the same (and not just on the Internet)?
Paddling against the tide

With respect to content sharing, there are conceptual differences and distorted
as well as various interpretations about the French expression droit d'auteur
(authors' rights), (Authors' rights, 2014) and the Anglo-Saxon term copyright
(right of copy), (Copyright, 2009).
Wong (2013) compares the Chinese appropriation of western culture and the
construction in the western imaginary of a China that represents the
quintessential mimicry. She reveals that, the copy as learning method, common
in arts academies worldwide, is part of Chinese culture and its pedagogy, linked
to the thought of Confucius, to whom the copy is an exercise in humility. In
2004, responding to allegations of copyright violations, China's government
argued that, thanks to the imitation skills of artists from Dafen (Shenzhen),
consumers around the planet could have access to the world of great art.
This point of view can be extrapolated to music and books. But why not apply
this also to education, so that more people have access?

115
The replication process as an instrument facilitating access to information and

social change always comes up against the same issues.
Some governments insist on the way of criminalization. Projects such as the

PROTECT IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and
Theft of Intellectual Property Act), (PIPA, 2011) and the Stop Online Piracy
Act (SOPA, 2011) did not follow ahead. And the persecutions, the closure of
some hosting services as well as the control of the search engines (Chilling
effect, 2011) have not reached the expected results, as was expected.
After all there are several other ways to share content, with greater or lesser
exposure as well as the commitment of those who intend to do.
The cases of Napster, Megaupload and The Pirate Bay are exemplary. After
these services have been withdrawn from the air, the options clones or similar
ones have multiplied exponentially. In times of shared economy the solution to
the problem does not pass by this way: prohibit, prosecute and punish...
The history has shown us that certain actions and/or positionings have different
interpretations over time. We should learn more from our mistakes than from
our accidental successes. There are notorious examples proving the opposite, full
of discrimination of the most varied types: social class, belief, skin color, creed,
disability, ethnicity, age, education, nationality, sexual orientation, political
opinion, national origin, race, religion, sex or any other type. In the past, and
occasionally nowadays, the discrimination was something explicit. In these
politically correct times discrimination follows other models. Many people have
already been barred or even lost jobs for them being exposed in social networks:
their opinions, their preferences, their friends, their followers.
The new generation are born under the illusion that there's freedom at least on
the Internet and there is no dominant feeling in them, of doing something
wrong, with respect to the information and data sharing, whether simple
personal photos as well as music, movies and books of third parties.
Considering that they are the future and who controls the world is always a
dated issue we all have a life limit this difficulty will soon be outdated.
The copy path as learning method can not be restricted to art schools
(worldwide) nor be seen in a discriminatory manner as happens currently
against the Chinese, in the same way as happened with the Japanese after the
Second World War. Both gave us lessons that the copy process always has a cost
and there always occurs some appropriation of content by who performs...
Does not fit here discuss the rights of the author or copy, but if a particular work
is displayed to the public, that is, was exposed, published, rented or even sold
there is no way to prevent, in practice, that people to do records (photos, audio,
video, paper copies, etc.) and then display them and/or share. It is impossible
and there is no Big Brother (Orwellian) that can contain this tsunami due to the
omnipresence of photo and video cameras in mobile phones.

116
One can only try, but this is and will always be a losing battle.
Streisand effect
On November 21, 2014 a self-titled group Guardians of Peace or GOP would
have hacked the servers of Sony Pictures, blocking all computers, blacking out
the company's website, besides stealing files and leaking unpublished movies
(Sony hack, 2014).
How a company as powerful as Sony technologically speaking shows itself

as vulnerable to different attacks (Guardians of Peace, Lizard Squad) in so little
time?
The origin of the Guardians of Peace is still uncertain. According to the

American television channel NBC, FBI sources investigate if North Korea
would be behind the attack (Williams, 2014), (North Korea, 2014). The Asian
country has its own division of hackers within the armed forces, known as Unit
121, which is suspected of attacks on the United States and South Korea.
Could have been the North Koreans? Yes, in the same way that, could be the
Chinese, Russians, Iranians, Japanese, Europeans, Americans (northern, central
or southern), or Sony's own staff. The pseudo-defenders of freedom of
expression and privacy exist everywhere.
The stronger evidence of the authorship of the attack would be the fact for
North Korea to have a reason to attack the Sony Pictures: the movie The
Interview, a bad taste comedy from Sony about the fictional assassination of the
North Korean Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un (Roger & Goldberg, 2014).
If Sony was again the victim of the enemy hidden (or declared) maybe we never
have all the answers. Could have been a marketing action (internal) or the work
of friendly fire (Lena), after all the repeated attacks to the Sony's structure has
gotten a seemingly easy success.
All that the Guardians of Peace obtained in relation to threats to suspend the
release of the movie was to make the even much more commented than would
normally be, that is, the Streisand effect. It is an Internet phenomenon where an
attempt to censor or remove any kind of information turns against the censor,
resulting in the vast replication (Streisand effect, 2007).
It is very likely that the movie The Interview would have been unnoticed, were
it not for all the controversy that surrounded it. According Chedin (2014) and
Spargo (2014), there are reasons to suspect this story which points the
involvement of North Korea, or even exemption from Sony.
Through what happened Sony received disproportionate attention and the

movie won an absurd free marketing. In the name of freedom of expression
and as an act of protest and support, many people resorted to websites about

117
cinema, notably the IMDb, and rated a perfect 10 to the movie, even before
watching it (IMDb, 2014), (Savov, 2014).
They even went as far (Barack Obama) as to suggest the movie be nominated for
an Oscar! (Maddocks, 2014).
The same movie that is featured in the race for the Golden Raspberry Awards
(Kreps, 2015), which honors the worst productions of the year (2014) of
American cinema.
If the movie is good or not, depends on the personal taste of each one of us.
With much good will, protest and everything else, Chedin (2014) asserts that the
movie does not deserve even half of it. It is possible, but better not to rely on
critics in the same way that we should not trust politicians, researchers and
exempt historians.
The Sony's profits are probably being larger than normally would have been
under standard conditions for temperature and pressure. Only at the premiere
weekend were about $18 million, of which $15 million would be from online
sales (Baker & Milliken, 2014) the film was released simultaneously in several
streaming services such as YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Videos and Kernel.
According to Sony, just in this period the movie had been purchased or rented
online more than 2 million times (Baker, 2014), becomes the largest Sony
Pictures online movie of all time.
Between December 24 and January 4, this number rose to more than 4.3 million
times, having raised more than $31 million from online, cable and telecoms sales.
In addition, the film has earned $5 million at the theatrical box office, with 580
independent theaters showing the movie in North America (Sinha-Roy, 2015).
To what extent has Sony learned from the mistakes of the past and can be held
harmless in the process? That is, put sensitive information on a server which
can be accessed via the Internet does not refer to the rereading of an antecedent
trap, in Pearl Harbor-style (Japan Questions, 2008) when all the Americans
aircraft carriers of the Pacific fleet had already abandoned the port, leaving only
the battleships, almost all old and outdated to achieve our true purposes?
The results, after the release of the film, has been so significant that, probably,
the ports of Sony's servers will be open to the future invasions.
It costs much less to promote the new releases and profits online are immediate.
Any definitive evidence about the attack's authorship presented so far?

The government of China said that there is no evidence that North Korea is
responsible for attacking the Sony Pictures, as stated by the United States
(Rajagopalan & Holland, 2014).

118
In the past the U.S. also accused China of cyber spying, without evidence, and a
U.S. official said the attack on Sony could have used Chinese servers to mask
its origin (Wroughton & Rajagopalan, 2014).
Could have used is an inaccurate, partial and biased statement. Suspicion and
investigate evidence is something normal. Disclose this information before to
prove something is irresponsible. Call a spade a spade, with impartiality and
without compromise, is another story.
The persistent and opportunistic attitude of trying to incriminate without

evidence all those opposed to the dominant ideas of a given country does not
give us the right to expose them and ridicule them (Basques, Communists,
Cuban, Nationalists, National Socialists, North Koreans, Palestinians, Iranians,
Ukrainians, Venezuelans, etc.).
This recurrent modus-operandi always refers to the argument used, for example,
with respect to the alleged large hidden reserves of mass destruction weapons in
Iraq...
The American agencies of intelligence CIA (Iraq) and the FBI (Sony) are so
discredited that their information should always be interpreted to the contrary.
Something like the weather forecast: we would make fewer mistakes
This is a strategy adopted by various nations, throughout history, to distort the

facts, to create false truths, to obtain the support of the majority of other
countries and, sometimes, not even that.
Since the early years of the twentieth century we witness tampering, denial,
creation or even the imposition of versions considered historical episodes as
Holodomor, Katyn massacre, attack on Pearl Harbor, Holocaust, murder of John
F. Kennedy, September 11 attacks, weapons of mass destruction of Saddam
Hussein, Guantnamo Bay Detention Camp, etc. The list is not intended to be
exhaustive nor exclusive of any country.
Conspiracy theories? Perhaps they could be considered that, but this does not
mean that the huge list of evidence and proof of unofficial versions are lies
(American False Flag Operations, 2015), (Sutton, 2001), (Sutton, 2000).
Today we think that we know what really happened in Ukraine (1932-1933), in

Poland (1940), in Brazil (1964-1985) and in Iraq (2003). The history was partially
rewritten in these cases. But, many other revisions (rereadings) are required
(Holodomor, 2010), (Katyn, 2004), (Iraq, 2003).
The official story hardly reflects the real history what really happened it is
always distorted by the bias of one who tells or is obliged to narrate.
We can not change the past, but we should at least try to correct our mistakes
including the official versions of the history and, as far as possible, not
repeat them.

119
Several episodes remain being victims of the manipulation of the facts

nowadays. We should have evolved as a human race but we remain using
concentration camps, performing the forced deportation of people and the
extermination, practicing the most diverse types of discrimination, forcing
various forms of slavery of all colors and exploiting the child labor.
If the year 2014 brought hope to Cuba, it also proved that this country and not
only remains limiting and chasing the freedom of opinion.
Faced with an inert United Nations due to the limits of power and facing a
security council that does not allow the positioning of the majority, we see the
resurgence of conflicts in all continents and we are witnessing the rebirth of a
new cold war in Europe.
This security council whose five permanent members (who have veto power)
are the same as, currently, they practice the worst atrocities and crimes against
humanity without any punishment, because they consider themselves above
the law that they have created for others: China (Tibet), France (Libya), Russia
(Ukraine), United Kingdom (Argentina) and United States (Iraq).
In addition, we watched transfixed, the eternal victim of the Second World War
(Israel) does not shirk from applying these days (with evidence) against
Palestine the same crimes and persecutions which alleged that they had been
victims in the past (without proof).
The battle of information or rather, misinformation nowadays happens

mainly through the Internet. Many people who hold key positions including
presidents and prime ministers choose to disclose relevant information via
Twitter than through official statements. Nothing like creating a noise...
The truths created (lies) against Ukraine and its heroes (1942-1956) are repeated
nowadays (2013-2015), (Stopfake, 2014), distorting the historical role of
nationalists as Stepan Andriyovych Bandera (Stepan Bandera, 2010) and his
current followers, as well as the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA, 2007) and
all tragic events that followed the Euromaidan (Euromaidan, 2013), which
began on the night of 21 November 2013 with public protests in Maidan
Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) in Kiev, demanding closer European
integration. All in the hope of creating an independent Ukrainian state, and now
fully integrated into the European Union.
And as in any military conflict, gives rise to the propaganda war. Given the
manipulation of the news by Russian or pro-Russian agencies many reversing
totally the sense of what happens we highlight the blog Ukraine in Africa
(Ucrnia em frica, 2015), one of the best exempt sources of information about
the absurdities that happen in this European country.

120
Conclusion
The episodes cited bring lessons in all senses of interpretation.
The year 2015 will be just another in that world powers will show their inability
to resolve many major crises. The next president of the United States will have to
work out if there is a middle way between the imprudences of George W. Bush
and the retraction of Barack Obama. The European Union will have to decide if
it wants to stick at its current borders or whether it will allow the entry of
Ukraine and Turkey. The upsurge of tensions will be considered by the West as
Russia's fault. Vladimir Putin, in turn, will blame the West, while encouraging
Russians to turn inwards, away from the malign influence of foreigners. China
should use its new leverage to push harder for a stake in global internet
governance. The Big Brother (Orwellian) may become the whole world (Ahmed,
Doucet, Gracie, Kendall & Mardell, 2015).
The attack occurred in France (Charlie Hebdo) on January 7, 2015 in the event
of confirming evidence that the murderers are Muslim terrorists indirectly may
introduce more difficulties for Turkey, besides favoring the current racist
offensive in Europe (Schofield, 2015). Probably on the day that all the much-
vaunted freedoms (expression, opinion, religion and manifestation) keep
distances and ethical boundaries between themselves politically correct, and
contemporary be possible to obtain a suitable solution to all issues involving
not only the complex religious world, without running the risk of messing with
existing passions when it comes to faith, whatever it may be.
The history of Europe was a long blood-filled drama full of wars, conflicts,
revolutions, plagues, discriminations, enforced migrations, coups and
catastrophes the majority of these events related to religion or to different
visions and religious options. In name of god we remain watching the most
resilient and regrettable episodes.
It's not time to repeat history. It's time to make history (#McLaren Honda).
In the same way that movie studios can get better financial results through
secure online operations lowest-cost and value to the end consumer than in
movie theaters, should universities ask themselves about the dominant model of
knowledge's sale and bet on innovative online solutions (different from this e-
learning low-quality model that turned massive) and with a new model of
sustainability, without charging customers directly.
The OpenCourseWare have evolved into the Massive Open Online Course and
the irreversible trend is to move towards full university courses, via Internet, in
a safe environment and with guaranteed privacy, with certification and totally
free of charge. It would not be ultimately a way unlike everyone else a
redesign to achieve the beautiful revolutionary, democratic and constitutional
standard of universal, compulsory and free education at all levels, to all
people and without any distinction or discrimination? (Neves, 2003).

121
The use of free resources available on the Internet is a great asset to all
universities, whether public or private, because theoretically and probably its
use demand less financial resources than would be needed to develop and/or
maintain services and its own structure. However, it is necessary to moderate
the enthusiasm of early adopters and dampen the skepticism with regard to
novelties as well as pass on these benefits in some way to the users and
ensure that they will have security and privacy preserved.
The destruction of privacy widens the existing power imbalance between the
ruling factions and everyone else, leaving the outlook for subject peoples and
oppressed classes, as Orwell wrote, still more hopeless (Assange, 2014).
In the movie Iron Man 3 (Feige & Black, 2013), Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.)
quotes a phrase at the beginning and end of the film: We create our own
demons...
The context is different from this paper and much closer to the Europe's strategic
relationship with Russia after the end of the Cold War, but can be applied and
generalized to the extent that, when we bet all our chips on a given market
solution product and/or service, proprietary technology and/or provided by a
single vendor; and hosted in a single country we became hostages of our own
options, or even worse, of the third-party options to whom we entrust our
information on the Internet.
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Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 128-146, March 2015
Using Social Network Analysis for Analysing

Online Threaded Discussions
Roberto C. Rodrguez-Hidalgo1,2, Chang Zhu1,

Frederik Questier1 and Aida M. Torres-Alfonso2
1Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
2Universidad Central Marta Abreu de Las Villas, Cuba
Abstract. This study analyses the use of online threaded discussions

(OTD) through social network analysis (SNA). The participants involved
are university students in a Cuban higher education setting. It was
conducted in the Programming Technologies course of the Information
Sciences, at the Universidad Central Marta Abreu de Las Villas
(UCLV). An intervention study was conducted involving students in
Information Sciences during one semester. Both survey research and
content analysis for online discussions have been used in this research.
The social network analysis shows that online discussions reinforced
student peer relationships and network dynamics. Furthermore, it is
shown that SNA is a useful approach to analyze students peer
interactions in the digital space by comparing the peer relations before
OTD and those during the OTD. The results are beneficial for both
teachers and students to get a better view of the interaction patterns in
online learning activities and thus helpful for further structuring and
supporting students in online learning environment.
Keywords: social network analysis, online threaded discussions, peer

relationship, online collaboration.
Introduction
Today social Webs emergence has come to play an important role in education.
It is in a core position in the development of students as the paradigmatic
laboratory supporting the learning processes where the students are
immersed. The socio-constructivist theories laid by Dewey, Piaget, Vygotsky
and Bruner (Bruner, 1966, 1977; Dewey, 1916; Piaget, 1971; Vygotsky, 1978)
support the contemporary e-social constructivism (Salmons, 2009), the
collaborative e-learning principles and the co-construction of knowledge when
social software mediates the learners interaction. Currently educational
practices with social software supporting teaching and learning activities are
increasing (Zhu, 2013). In Cuba, the demand for the use of social software for

129
learning is increasing in order to improve the teaching and learning processes

(Zhu et al., 2012).
Online threaded discussions

In recent years, online threaded discussions (OTD) have been widely used as
communication and collaborative learning tools in e-learning and blended
learning settings (Zhu et al., 2009). Instructional designers use online discussions
to encourage students active participation in the learning process (Maurino,
Federman, & Greenwald, 2007; Ng & Cheung, 2007). Online collaborative
learning activities can promote critical thinking, facilitate peer assessment and
peer interaction (Chrystal, 2009; Jeong & Frazier, 2008; Rizopoulos & McCarthy,
2008; Chan, Hew, & Cheung, 2009; Ioannou & Artino, 2009; So & Brush, 2008). In
OTD settings, discussions can be supported by an open-ended prompt
(Rizopoulos & McCarthy, 2008) or raising questions (Lee, 2009). Moreover, the
process of discussing online brings along some other tasks such as sharing and
comparing information, exploring dissonance, agreeing the application of
meanings and supporting people (Veerman & Veldhuis-Diermanse, 2001).
Current use of OTD in Cuban higher education settings

Online threaded discussions are used within the teaching and learning process
to support students interactions and knowledge sharing in some Cuban higher
education settings, especially in Information Sciences and related fields. It can
support the instructional activities such as lectures, workshops and online
learning (Borges-Frias, 2009; Garca-Garay, 2005; Rodrguez-Torres & Anta-
Vega, 2006). Although quite a lot of studies have recognized the effectiveness of
OTD in teaching and learning, its applications in the Cuban higher education
context are not yet widely spread. This is on the one hand related to teachers
familiarity with traditional, face-to-face teaching and monitoring students
learning processes, and on the other hand related to the limited internet access
among Cuban universities. In order to overcome the hurdle of limited internet
access, many universities use intranet to host social software applications and
online tools including OTD tools in Cuban universities.
Social Networks Analysis

Social network analysis (SNA) is a way of analysis for mapping and measuring
of relationships and flows between people, groups, organizations, computers,
URLs, and other connected information/knowledge entities (Abbasi & Altmann,
2011; Numela, Lehtinen, & Palonen, 1999; Wasserman & Faust, 1995). The nodes
in the network are the people and groups while the links show relationships or
flows between the nodes. SNA can provide both a visual and a mathematical
analysis of human relationships. These measures can give us insight into the
various roles and groupings in a network (Abbasi & Altmann, 2011; Butts, 2008;
Hanneman, 1998; Laat, Lally, Lipponen, & Simons, 2007; Xia, Wang, & Hu,
2009). Using SNA for online communications and OTDs can help us studying
the structures and dynamics of online communities.
However, in the knowledge base of computer supported collaborative learning

(CSCL) and the analysis of OTDs, there is a lack of analysis of the relationship

130
structures and dynamics of online communication using SNA (Abbasi &

Altmann, 2011; Butts, 2008). Furthermore, there is a lack of knowledge especially
in the context of Cuban higher education regarding student interactions and
peer relationships in OTD learning designs. The use of SNA for analysing OTDs
is unique for studying the online learning communities within Cuban higher
education. It provides the steps to use SNA software to visualize the students
social network states and can provide guidance for teachers decision making
regarding the level of online collaboration and peer relationships and thus
improve the learning design of their courses.
Content analysis of OTDs

Peer relationships and interactions can be analysed at the content level (Pena-
Shaff & Nicholls, 2004). In the literature, the models of Gunawardena et al (1997)
and Veerman and Veldhuis-Diermanse (2001) are widely used. The instrument
of Gunawardena et al. (1997) is presented as a tool to examine the social
construction of knowledge in computer supported learning. It is based on
grounded theory and uses the phases of a discussion to determine the amount of
knowledge constructed within a discussion. The model of Veerman and
Veldhuis-Diermanse (2011) situates the use of CSCL within a constructivist
framework and presents an analysis of the type of comments and discussions
(De Wever et al., 2006; Rienties et al., 2009; Zhu, 2012). Next to the use of SNA
for analysing the peer dynamics in online communities, content analysis is used
to analyse peer interactions at the content level. Through both ways, this study
will be able to reveal the actual interactions among university peers in OTD
learning settings.
Objectives and research questions

This research aims to investigate the role of OTD in reinforcing student peer
relationships in learning and how students interact with each other in OTD
settings. The following research questions guide this research:
1. How do student peer relationships differ during OTD learning context
from the relationships before starting the OTD learning activities?
2. Does OTD reinforce student peer relationships in learning?
3. How students interact with each other at the content level?
4. How do students perceive the effectiveness of OTD for learning?
Method
Design of the study
This research involves an intervention study of using OTDs among 4th year
bachelor students in Information Sciences during the 2010-2011 academic year at
UCLV in Cuba. Before the start of the intervention, a survey was administered,
including three measurement scales: students current social network
relationships, preferred social network relationships and views on collaborative
learning. These quantitative data were analysed through descriptive statistics
and SNA (Butts, 2008). The students were involved in OTD learning activities for
the course of Programming Technologies during one semester. After the
intervention of one semester, a questionnaire was administered to measure

131
students views of the OTD and perceived effectiveness of OTD. The OTD
activities were analysed with SNA and content analysis.
Participants
Participants of this study were 21 students who attended the course of
Programming Technologies in Information Sciences (IS) at the Faculty of
Information and Educational Sciences (FCIE). This was the population of a
whole class. All of them were between 22 and 24 years old. Among them, there
were twenty female students and one male student.
Instruments
At the start of the study, a questionnaire was administered to the students to
gather data about their peer relationships and preferred peers for study, and
their views about collaborative learning. The students were asked to answer
questions regarding (1) their current peer relationships for study (the number
and names of peers that a student frequently studied with), (2) their preferred
peer relationships for study (the number and names of peers that a student
preferred to study with), and (3) views about collaborative learning.
At the end of the intervention study, a questionnaire was administered to the

same group of students assessing their views of using OTD for learning and
student self-efficacy. The questionnaire included three scales: students self-
efficacy (SE) about learning the subject (Programming Technologies), perceived
importance of using OTD for learning the subject (I.TD, 8 items), and perceived
effectiveness of using OTD for learning the subject (E.TD, 6 items). The SE scale
inquired specifically about students self-efficacy about their knowledge on the
course. The SE scale included 34-items reflecting three sub-scales, namely self-
efficacy in Programming Language, self-efficacy in programming Tools, and
self-efficacy in current Web Programming Technologies. The composition and
reliability of the scales are shown in Table 1.
Table 1. Self-efficacy scales and student perceptions of Threaded Discussion for learning
Reliability
Scale Items Type (Cronbachs
alpha)
1. Self-efficacy in
Programming Technologies 34
(SE)
a)Self-efficacy in
Programming Languages 12 6-point Likert Scale
(SE.PL) ranging from Not
=0.96
b) Self-efficacy in Confident to Strongly
Programming Tools 12 Confident
(SE.PT)
c) Self-efficacy in Current
Web Programming 10
Technologies (SE.NT)
2. Importance of Threaded 6-point Likert Scale
8 =0.69
Discussion for learning ranging from Not

132
(I.TD) Important to Very

Important
6-point Likert Scale
3. Effectiveness of Threaded
ranging from Completely
Discussions for learning 6 =0.78
Disagree to Completely
(E.TD)
Agreed
Intervention
The intervention of this research took place during a full semester. Two
communication tools were used to support student online threaded discussions:
OTD and Feedreader (a RSS news aggregator). The students were required to
participate in four online learning activities supported by OTD. The OTDs were
hosted on the intranet of the university. The teacher and students also used
emails for communication, especially when there were problems with OTDs.
The teacher used the Feedreader for monitoring students participation in the
OTD throughout the RSS channels. A worksheet was designed for archiving
students learning activities and performance during the course. It consisted of a
sheet per activity for facilitating the tracking of student participation in OTDs.
The teacher used it to record student activities and performance per activity. The
worksheet also contained the observation guide that the teacher used to assess
student online learning activities.
At the end of the intervention, both qualitative data and quantitative data were
gathered. Qualitative data were collected through student actual participation of
discussions online. The students online discussions and comments in the OTD
were used for content analysis. Quantitative data were gathered through a
questionnaire, which was introduced in the above Instruments section. The
questionnaire was administered during the last workshop session of the
intervention course.
Data Analysis
Regarding the quantitative data, reliability analysis and descriptive analysis
were conducted for all measured scales. As for the qualitative data, we focused
on student actual participation in OTD and their peer relationships online. With
regard to online discussions, content analysis was applied to analyse students
actual participation while using OTD during the learning process. Regarding the
peer relationships, the software tool Gephi was used for conducting the Social
Network Analysis, modelling and monitoring the interactions of the students
while learning online. The Gephi tool includes plug-ins for gathering live data
about social interactions within virtual learning environments. This software
combines the graphs theory with a strong visualization engine facilitating the
social networks presentation. Student desired peer relationship, prior peer
relationship and actual peer relationship during the OTD were analyzed and
compared.
Results
The results of this study focus on three aspects: first, student interactions and
peer relationships in OTD as analysed by SNA; secondly, content analysis of

133
student online discussion in OTD; thirdly, students perceptions and views

about OTD and their perceived importance and effectiveness of OTD.
Student peer relationships analysed by SNA

First of all, students reported peer relationships before the intervention was
analysed. The data gathered at the beginning of the research regarding student
peer relationships for study was used to construct the graph B (N, E) (B refers to
the status of the network before using OTD); where N was the set of nodes
representing the students and E was the set of edges representing the study
relationships they declared to have at the start of the research (Figure 1).
Secondly, a graph concerning the desired peer relationships of the students was
modelled. It included the colleagues the students would like to study with. This
graph was constructed by using the same analogy of the previous one. It was
denoted as D (N, Ed) (D refers the desired network for learning), whose nodes
are the same N- and the edges are represented as Ed (Figure 2). This graph
depicts the students desired peer relationships for studying this course.
Figure 1. Composition of the network for studying PT [B (N, E)] before the study
began.

134
Figure 2: Composition of the desired, ideal network for studying PT [D (N, Ed)]
Thirdly, the state of peer relationship network that was shaped during the
interaction while using the OTD was examined. The graph T (Nt, Et) (T refers to
threaded discussions) denotes the relationships the students established through
interacting and commenting within the OTD (Figure 3). Next to the actual peer
relationships among the students, this graph included the participation and
interaction of other two members: the teacher of this course (Teacher) and the
students of other academic years of IS who were involved in the discussions
these were denoted by Others. Thus the following formula was used:
1. Nt = N (Teacher, Others)
The teacher and the other members (senior students of the same program) had
an added value in this social network, as they had the possibility of monitoring
students online activities in OTD. It also gave the teacher an effective way to
assess the students learning progress. Moreover, it allowed the students of
preceding academic years to enhance their knowledge about the topics that were
discussed in OTD.
Another two auxiliary graphs were shaped to analyse the composition of the
network states formed during online learning activities. The other, auxiliary
graph represents the result of unifying the graph B with the graph T. This union
(B T = Ir) surpassed the supposed ideal state of the network (D), taking into
account the cardinality of the new set of edges obtained. The following
equations show the foundations of this finding:
2. B (N, E) T (Nt, Et) = Ir (N Nt, E Et)
3. |N Nt| > Nt 23 > 21
4. |E Et| > |Ed| 85 > 78
The improvement of the network (Figure 4) for studying PT was confirmed by

its metrics improvement after the course finished. The results showed that the

135
cardinality of the nodes (|N Nt|) increased. It refers to the quantity of nodes
interacting in the social network. The same occurred in the case of the edges.
Both were beneficial for students learning relationships. A comparison between
Ir and D is presented in the Table 2, where the shaded columns show the metrics
of these two networks states. The main improvement of Ir consists on the
augment of the cardinality of the set of nodes, by including the teacher and other
students (Equation 3). Moreover, there is an augment in the cardinality of the set
of edges (Equation 4), but it is not significant if considered the incorporation of
the teacher and other students. The results show that there was a meaningful
improvement of the network in terms of the relationships established through
the OTD, taking into account that the state denoted as D shows an ideal state of
this social network. A comparison between the metrics of the initial networks
state shown in the first column of the Table 2- with the metrics of the final state,
illustrates the improvement on the final networks state, taking into account that
the students never abandoned their study habits before using the OTD. They just
combined the use of OTD with their learning habits.
Density
The density measures how close the network was to complete every possible
edge among all pairs of nodes. A full-connected graph/network has a density
value equal to 1. The higher the density of a network, the better is the
connectivity among its nodes.
The Irs density increased with respect to the initial state of the network (B).
When these states are interpreted as directed graphs the density values
increased from 0.136 to 0.168. Otherwise, considering the network as an
undirected graph, the density increased from 0.229 to 0.273. These values are not
considered significant, even when a little improvement of the network is
perceived, because the students were in their fourth university year; so they
previously had established almost all the learning relationships they would
want. It is also the cause of the absence of isolated students within Ir and B.
Once the students have been in touch during three academic years they have
had the possibility to choose the peers they consider suitable to study with.

136
Figure 3: Graph denoting the relationships established by the students while

commenting within the OTD
Figure 4: Union of the network for studying PT (B) and the relationships established
through the OTD (B T = Ir)

137
Strongly connected components

The quantity of strongly connected components of a graph is the minimum
number of sub-graphs whose density is equal to 1 (e.g. an isolated node in a
network represents a strongly connected component). The smaller the quantity
of strongly connected components of a social network, the best is the
information flow between the networks nodes.
There was a reduction from seven (within B) to four strongly connected
components (within Ir) whereas the ideal status represented by D- has only
two. This reduction contributed to the improvement of the learning possibilities
by increasing the information flow among the network nodes. The increasing of
the edges connecting the nodes of the network is visually obvious in Ir when
comparing Figure 1 with Figure 4.
Shortest paths
In the graphs theory, the shortest path from a to b (a, b N) in a given graph G
(N, E), is the path with the minimum number of intermediate nodes c1, c2, , cn
between a and b; where the path length is equal to n+1.
A meaningful augment was found in the quantity of shortest paths of B with
respect to Ir (from 229 to 442). It can mean an improvement in terms of time and
effort spent by the students for finding information through the interaction with
their classmates. Moreover, the number of weakly connected components did
not change across the study; which confirms the absence of isolated nodes in the
network. Besides, the number of full-connected triads (triangles) in the network
varied from 34 to 80, being better than the 56 triangles of D. A triangle in a given
graph G (N, E) is constituted by a triad of nodes a, b, c N, such that (a, b), (a, c),
(b, a), (b, c), (c, a), (c, b) E.
Closeness centrality
One of the best improvements of Ir concerns the centrality metrics. The closeness
centrality metric (Brandes, 2001) indicates how often a node is found in the
shortest paths between each pair of nodes of the network. This metric, whose
average is 0.407, is significantly better than the initial average of the state B
(0.491). Hence, it is very close to the average closeness centrality of D (0.392).
Contextualized to this study, it indicates how long it would take for the
information from a given node to reach the other nodes in the network,
supposing that the time taking for the information to reach the node b from the
node a is equal to one unit when exists an edge from a to b within the network.
Table 2: Metrics' comparison of the different states of the network
Metric B D T Ir = B T Ir D
Isolated nodes 0 0 5 0 0
Nodes 21 21 23 23 21
Directed edges (Edges
57 78 33 85 48
cardinality)
Graph Density (for
0.136- 0.186- 0.065- 0.168- 0.114-
Directed-Undirected
0.229 0.290 0.103 0.273 0.190
networks)
Shortest Paths 229 400 162 442 135

138
Average Path Length 2.638 2.625 2.333 2.688 1.978

Average Betweeness
0.047 0.081 0.020 0.070 0.017
Centrality
Average Closeness
0.491 (1) 0.392 (1) 0.541 (12) 0.407 (1) 0.643 (1)
Centrality
Clustering Coefficient 0.273 0.311 0.236 0.313 0.252
Triangles 34 56 13 80 18
Weakly Connected
1 1 6 1 1
Components
Strongly Connected
7 2 15 4 11
Components
There is only one node of the network whose closeness centrality is null, which
means that its correspondent student does not have an effective way to share or
consult information with the others. The smaller the value of this metric, the
smaller will be the delay for sharing information among the students of the
network, which also improves the learning results.
The benefits of sharing information among the students are also confirmed by
the analysis of its average betweeness centrality (Brandes, 2001), whose value
varies from 0.047 to 0.070. This metric indicates how often a node is found on the
shortest paths of the network. In this study, it is understood as a measure of
knowledge sharing capabilities. Moreover, the average clustering coefficient
(Latapy, 2008) indicating how close the neighbourhood of a specific node is to a
complete subgraph- augmented from 0.273 to 0.313, which is even greater than
the ideal (desired) value of D. So, it means an enhancement of Ir when
comparing with B or D in terms of the probability of each student to access the
knowledge flowing in the network. Another analysis intersected the resultant
state of the network with the desired one (Ir D, Figure 5).
Figure 5: Coincidences of the union of social network for studying PT and the OTD
interactions' network, with the desired network for studying PT

139
Figure 5 shows a great covering of the desired relationships (D) represented by

Ed in the intersection, as well as a great covering of the real relationships (Ir). The
percent of edges covered were 62% and 56% respectively. A shallow analysis
suggests that the students used the OTD for establishing relationships with some
of the peers they wanted to interact with as they declared in the sociometric
questionnaire.
Content analysis: students online comments and discussions

The students online comments and discussions were analysed according to the
established content analysis approaches (De Wever et al., 2010; Gunawardena et
al., 1997; Veerman & Veldhuis-Diermanse, 2001). The purpose was to analyse the
experience they acquired during the course in the use of OTD; which was, for
them, a novelty way on facing the learning activities. Error! Reference source
not found. shows a detailed summary of their comments and discussions,
classified by the coding schemes based on the discussion types (Veerman &
Veldhuis-Diermanse, 2001) and the levels of knowledge construction
(Gunawardena et al., 1997). Additionally, the comments containing assessment
evidences were coded and marked with other two codes signalling the presence
of assessment and/or peer-assessment scripts.
Table 3: Content analysis of the students' comments within the OTD
% of the total of
Code Comments
comments
Task-oriented analysis
Task oriented 59 87%
Non-task oriented 52 76%
Irrelevant 5 7%
Technical 10 15%
Planning 29 43%
Social 22 32%
Levels of knowledge construction *
Sharing and comparing information 21 31%

Assessment
Assessment 15 22%
Peer-assessment 6 9%
* The rest of the codes of this approach (exploration of dissonance, negotiation of
meaning, testing synthesis and agreement-application) are not included because there
were no comments concerning these levels of knowledge construction.
The students had an acceptable participation within the OTD. Fifty-three

students comments and 15 teachers comments were coded 168 times, according
to the codes of the referred approaches. It suggests a mean of more than two
comments per student while the teacher monitored the OTD. Fifty-nine
comments were coded as task-oriented ones, representing 87% of the total of
comments and showing a very good symptom of students focus on the learning
activities. They also used the OTD for writing additional, inline scripts which
were marked as non-task-oriented ones. The most of these comments (29, 43% of
68) referred planning aspects regarding the usefulness of these activities for
subsequent studies and knowledge management on the subject of PTs topics.

140
Twenty-two comments (32%) contained social scripts and 10 (15%) of them

contained technical ones, where the students asked for help to use the OTD.
Only five comments (7%) treated irrelevant issues.
Concerning the levels of knowledge construction, only 21 comments are marked
with the codes of this analysis approach. All of these are dedicated to share or
compare information, indicating the shallow experience of the students when
interacting through social software. The other four superior levels of knowledge
construction conceived in this content analysis approach were not used within
the students comments.
presents a matrix indicating the codes coincidences within the collected

comments. The rows and columns indicate the considered codes for
accomplishing the content analysis. Moreover, it shows the percentages of
coincidences, with respect to the total of codes in the rows, separated by slashes.
Table 4: Codes' intersection matrix and percentages of codes with two or more
scripts coded
Sharing-comparing
Peer-assessment
Task oriented
Assessment
Irrelevant
Technical
Planning
Social
Codes
Task-oriented analysis
Task 59 1 10 25 15 20 14 6
oriented (100%) (2%) (17%) (42%) (25%) (34%) (24%) (10%)
Non-task oriented
5
1 2
Irrelevant (100% 0 0 0 0 0
(20%) (40%)
)
10
10 4 2 5
Technical (100% 0 0 0
(100%) (40%) (20%) (50%)
)
25 4 29 6 13
Planning 0 0 0
(86%) (14%) (100%) (21%) (45%)
15 6 22 6
Social 2 (9%) 2 (9%) 0 1 (5%)
(68%) (27%) (100%) (27%)
Levels of knowledge construction*
Sharing- 20 21
0 0 0 0 0 0
comparing (95%) (100%)
Assessment analysis
14 5 13 15
Assessment 0/0 1 (7%) 0 0
(93%) (33%) (87%) (100%)
6 6
Peer- 6
(100% 0 0 0 0 0 (100%
assessment (100%)
) )

141
In this table, the task oriented and planning comments represent the biggest
quantity of them containing scripts marked with a couple of codes, which is 25
in this case.
A further analysis shows high percentages for almost all of the comments
containing scripts marked with the task-oriented code, medium percentages
for almost all of the planning-coded scripts and a considerable portion for the
social-coded scripts. It confirms that the students have mainly focused on the
online learning tasks. Moreover, this table shows that 100% of the comments
containing technical and/or peer- assessment scripts are also task-oriented
comments. Considering that the peer-assessment implies a level of socialization
with other peers, all the peer-assessment-coded comments (100%) are also
marked as social ones.
The most participative OTD was the task in which the students posted their
personal information. This way they shared some of their skills, likings and
careers records so they could motivate the others to discuss about those topics.
It was also the most social online learning activity (21 of 22 social-coded
comments) due to the nature of the discussions, on which they evaluate their
classmates performance in the university. The whole of the peer-assessment-
coded comments were detected within this activity.
The content analysis of the OTD gave the teacher the possibility of rapidly
analysing the students comments, like a parallel task. The teacher could
perform better by assessing them immediately they posted their comments.
Likewise, the peer-assessment of the students was improved by providing them
with an effective way to evaluate their classmates online learning. However, the
scaffolding for this kind of assessment can be improved by increasing the
activities following this instructional design during the courses.
Student self-efficacy, perceived importance and effectiveness of OTD

The means of the administered OTDs importance and effectiveness scales, I.TD
(M=3.78, SD=0.47) and E.TD (M=3.82, SD=0.85) respectively, confirmed its
importance and effectiveness within this setting. Consequently, the effectiveness
of the computer-supported framework for analysing OTD was confirmed.
Although the mean of the self-efficacy scale (SE) on the course topics was
relatively low (M=2.90, SD=0.80), it was acceptable taking into account the
complexity of the course topics. Moreover, the students performed very well at
the end of this course (M=4.32, SD=0.82).
Discussions and conclusions

The results show that students relationships were reinforced by using OTD for
learning. Many evidences of collaboration emerged within the social network
after using OTD while learning online (Ir). Collaboration emerged from students
interactions and it occurred consciously or spontaneously. Gephi explorative
data analysis showed the advantages of OTD in terms of time and effort spent
by the students for finding and sharing information through the interaction with
their classmates. Another actor actively participated within the social network
was the teacher, who could intervene during the learning process to provide

142
additional feedback. Moreover, some senior students could participate within

the OTD; encouraging a wide range of critical thinking responses from the
students, as well as situating them as the discussions leaders (Wishart & Guy,
2009).
The use of social software to promote critical thinking has been considered in
other studies (Jeong & Frazier, 2008; Lee, 2009; Rizopoulos & McCarthy, 2008).
This intervention study demonstrates that integrating analytical and social
software guarantees the teacher presence in the social space and gives him/her a
constant feedback about the students learning process, which provides more
evidences for assessment and enhances the knowledge construction by
improving critical thinking. The assessment practices reported by other authors
(Chan et al., 2009; Chrystal, 2009; Ioannou & Artino, 2009; Isotani et al., 2010;
Kang et al., 2010; Lee, 2009; Maurino et al., 2007; So & Brush, 2008; Wishart &
Guy, 2009) might be encouraged by combining with content analysis methods
(Gunawardena et al., 1997; Veerman & Veldhuis-Diermanse, 2001) in order to
improve the quality of assessment.
Monitoring students learning process facilitates the intervention of the teacher

and thus the possibility of giving immediate aids and feedback. Moreover, it
motivates the students to reflect on their learning process through peer-
assessment and critical thinking. In this study, it was confirmed that the
assessment quality was improved by using the social software for improving
this key component of the teaching and learning process.
The present study has contributed to the using of Social network analysis (Scott
& Carrington, 2011) in analyzing online learning spaces and communities
(Rainie & Wellman, 2014). In this research, we have elaborated the importance of
social network analysis for analysing student peer relationships and interactions
in online discussions. Understanding the network of interaction between
students can help teachers monitor the interaction structure of students, and
have a clear view of the role of students in discussions and the patterns of peer
interaction behavior (Scott, 2013). For example, which students were taking the
lead and which students were peripheral. This is also important to measure the
effectiveness of students actual participation in online learning activities
(Borgatti & Everett, 2013).
Some limitations need to be noted in this study. First, the sample size of this
study was small, limited to the 21 students involved in a specific course under
this study. Secondly, the results of this study need to be considered with caution
as it applied to a specific setting. In addition, the results might be related to the
so-called Hawthorne effect as the participants were introduced to new methods
and got extra attention (Hansson & Wigblad, 2006).
Nevertheless, this study has a number of important implications for the use of
online learning activities in Cuban higher education. The analysis of threaded
discussions facilitates the scaffolding of the students learning and gives the
teacher more evidences for their assessment. The combination of social software

143
with SNA and content analysis methods provides a suitable framework to

promote collaborative learning practices within Cuban higher education
settings, where the Internet gap weakens the knowledge socialization. The more
the teachers would know these methods, the more they would be successful to
confront the challenge of transforming the teaching practices to more analytical
approaches. Even though the tools and methods for applying the approach
described in this study are known in Cuban higher education, it is important to
promote a culture of using those ones for assessing the students and analysing
their performance within their learning social networks. According to the
emergence of social software and new learning environments, it is beneficial for
the teachers to use it to support their learning activities, thus motivating the
students to accomplish their learning tasks. Hence, the teachers would apply
more analytical practices and more innovative assessment, on the basis of
collaborative learning and social interaction.
This learning approach, supported with online collaborative learning, has been
applied in other courses too in the Cuban setting. The present study provides
significant evidences regarding the effectiveness of computer-supported
collaborative learning in Cuban higher education.
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IJLTER.

Antecedents of Norwegians Student Teachers' Campus Time on Task ........................................................................ 59

SPortraits of One-To-One Learning Environments in a New Learning Ecology ......................................................... 78

International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research

The Nature of High School Students Experiences at

Keywords: Stone Laboratory; Biological Field Station; Informal Learning;

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Science Education and Learning

Environmental education is affectively learned through personal, hands-on

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Learning can be formal or informal. Formal learning is obligatory, planned, assessed,

The cognitive/affective or people-centered lens focuses on the development of

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Stone Laboratory Biological Field Station

Of particular concern to this study is Stone Labs commitment to provide quality,

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The study originally intended to examine biological field stations in general.

Materials and Methods

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As described earlier, the study explored the students four-day immersive

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Credibility and validation was an important priority throughout the development

Observation requires researcher interpretation and inference of feelings,

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Lucas-L regularly spoke of boredom throughout the interviews. Concerning the

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Interest Influenced Future Lifeplans

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Island Setting Facilitated Class or Activity

Discussion and Recommendations

Literature describes biological field stations in general as venues where education

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and motivation among students, who became extrinsically and intrinsically

Impact on Science Education

In reference to science education, the student participants unanimously related

Impact on Students lives

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International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research

A Needs Assessment Survey on Teacher Readiness of

Darryl Roy T. Montebon

Keywords: Needs Assessment; Pre-Service Teacher Education;

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designing effective instructional materials, conducting demonstration teachings,

2. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

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3.1 Demographics of the Respondents

3.2 Research Design and Instruments

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4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

4.1 Needs Assessment Survey Result

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The mode of instruction in the new K12 Program will be inquiry-based

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Self-confidence is one of my personal issues. Though I mastered the topic

Honestly, I have a problem communicating with a large group of people.

4.2 Mean Comparisons on Major and Gender

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5.1 Contextualized Student Teaching Enhancement Program (Context-STEP)