Designing scaffolding for personal learning environments: Continuous learning perspective in vocational teacher education context.
Year: 2020
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The present dissertation examined how to scaffold students when they study in their Personal Learning Environments (PLEs). PLEs give students the freedom to choose their learning environments by themselves and the ability to support their continuing professional development throughout their career once their studies are complete. The examination also concerned what kind of competence vocational student teachers demonstrate in their ePortfolios as a part of their PLEs during their teacher studies in order to design scaffolding. The data was collected from several groups of vocational student teachers. Various pedagogical learning designs, scaffolding models, digital tools and definitions and evaluations of competences were examined. The data analyses were conducted using the qualitative content analysis approach. The results of the study revealed that the Dialogical Authentic Netlearning Activity (DIANA) pedagogical model contains several scaffolding activities and is the most effective when it is presented with students’ personal web tools integrated in the learning process. The study presents a detailed framework for evaluating and studying vocational teachers’ competence and provides instructions for scaffolding the content of ePortfolios. The study revealed that the open badge-driven learning structure provides a method and digital tools for scaffolding students via their PLEs. The results indicate that scaffolding via PLEs is successful when there are several scaffolding providers, such as a lecturer, a workplace training mentor and students, instructions in digital environments and peer-students. Vocational student teachers are motivated to study and make their competences visible through ePortfolios because they are interested in promoting their teaching career and they wish to continue their personal growth. Using an ePortfolio in their studies also enables student teachers see the potential of using ePortfolios with their own students. This dissertation reveals three aspects with practical features which may be used to designing scaffolding PLEs: personal web tools, content and methods. Although the dissertation deals specifically with vocational teacher education, it is hoped that the results will be implemented in every educational sector.
Source: UTUPub (University of Turku)
Author: Anne-Maria Korhonen
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3045558792