Lärares användning av digitala resurser i undervisningen: "Kombinationen av ett praktiskt verktyg och en skicklig lärare"

AbstractThis thesis investigates the use of digital resources in education with a 1-1 computer to student ratio. Studies were performed with a sociocultural perspective and in the light of the theory of affordances. The two studies differ methodologically but the shared topic is teachers’ usage of digital resources. Previous studies have shown that using digital resources to promote collaboration, as well as synchronous and asynchronous learning, may positively affect engagement and agency among both elementary and higher education students. Other studies indicate that teacher-supervised and computer-mediated individual or group work may lead to increased student satisfaction and to improvement of student results. On the other hand, students’ computer-mediated work without teacher guidance may have a negative impact on results. The aim of two studies in this thesis was to increase knowledge about the usage of digital tools and about their affordances in elementary education. The participants in the studies were all connected to schools in a mid-size Swedish municipality where the resource in question was introduced to all teachers and students without centrally organized training. The first study investigates how teachers use a digital resource, Google Classroom, in their teaching, and what effects they perceive from it. The second study is a case study which investigates interaction and inclusion when a telepresence robot and Google Classroom are used when teaching a partially homebound student in distance education. Lessons where the robot was used were observed and the participating teachers as well as the focus student and her guardians were interviewed regarding their perceptions of the outcome of the resource usage. The results show that teachers express a differing ability to use Google Classroom to support learning as well as differing opinions regarding the affordances. The digital resources were mainly used for one-way communication, but innovative teachers describe usage that affects students’ development of communicative and metacognitive abilities, which are important aspects of learning according to the Swedish curriculum. The main conclusions of the studies concern teachers’ appropriation of digital resources in their teaching. The digital resources can be powerful tools in teaching despite a limited number of features. The studies have shown that they have affordances that exceed the features, such as collaborative and asynchronous learning. The results indicate that fully appropriated digital resources may have a significant impact on learning. While most teachers in the present studies use the digital resources mainly for one-way communication there is a group of teachers who experience how usage with a pedagogical objective may promote students’ development of metacognitive and communicative abilities as well as agency in learning.