InnTELT addresses today’s challenges of shifting demands on teachers’ roles and requirements for professional development, as theory-based teaching and practical training are currently disconnected. These shifts are needed to respond to: 1) the rapid digitalization of learning arenas; and 2) for education to remain relevant in its response to societal needs and the growing pursuit of sustainable development.
Our solution is to generate innovative approaches using AI and VR technologies, as well as blended learning techniques, to prepare future teachers and teacher educators to respond effectively to a changing society.
The Faculty of Education (LUP) in collaboration with Faculty of Audiovisual Media and Creative Technologies (AMEK) at Inland University of Applied Sciences (INN) has initiated several important efforts to establish new learning arenas to enhance the provision and quality of its education programmes.
These include a) digital learning technologies (including artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR)) to bridge between classroom and praxis-based learning; b) an integrated praxis period to enhance experiential learning and practical application; and c) a learning hub (part of PARK business and start-up house) as a future classroom lab for innovative learning technologies and co-production between different stakeholders.
The InnTELT project will 1) investigate how use of technologies (including AI and VR) can enhance learning outcomes across these new learning arenas, using teacher education as a pilot, and 2) strengthen their strategic integration into education programmes to enhance innovations in pedagogical practice, professional development and the quality and relevance of education.
Innovative applications for future learning arenas will be practically applied, tested, and refined to achieve flipped classroom, virtual classroom, virtual dialog simulator, and active-blended learning. Key to this research is understanding how teacher education responds to changing roles of teachers and development of professional identities, and how the use of new learning technologies strengthens this, and the impact it can have across other educational programmes.
State of the art, knowledge needs and project objectives
Recent studies1–3 have identified a disconnect in teacher education between theory-based teaching and practical training which negatively impacts on the professional development of student teachers. In turn, this results in newly qualified teachers feeling unprepared for the challenges of school teaching environments, as well as for the recent advancements in teaching technologies and pedagogical approaches. SINTEF's surveys in 2010 and 2013 on perceptions of quality in teacher education highlight students’ experience of theory-based teaching and practical training being treated as two separate and unrelated cycles4,5.
A new model of quality training and practice for student teachers is needed, and teacher education institutions and partner schools should strengthen collaboration to provide inquiry-rich and coherent teaching school experiences.3 The National Guidelines for Teacher Education discuss the need to prepare teachers for changing societal demands for skills/competencies (e.g., sustainable development). Teacher education should “equip teachers to develop relevant knowledge for the contexts they will encounter” and to “adapt to new social conditions, new curricula, and new research in relevant subject areas”6.
While the current competency focus in education for sustainable development (ESD)7–10 has gained much attention both in literature and in practice, it is also notable that much of the literature on sustainability competencies avoids discussing how pedagogical methods and teaching approaches support their development. Sustainability competencies play a key role in ESD and provide a targeted focus towards delivering quality education. However, they alone do not provide guidance in relation to the pedagogical design of quality education, nor how learners gain the capacity for proficient application of these competencies. Research-oriented programmes need to integrate more practice-oriented strategies if they want to increase competency development, especially in relation to building learners’ practical skills and methods11.
Therefore, the knowledge needs for teacher education are: 1) greater synergy between theory-based teaching and practical training; 2) development of professional skills and competencies that can be adapted and applied to different situations; and 3) diverse pedagogical experience and expertise, including significant competence in digital learning technologies.
To tackle limitations of current research and practice, InnTELT’s primary objective is to develop and test how the use innovative learning technologies (including AI & VR) in teacher education can strengthen educational quality, relevance and the professional development of future teachers to respond effectively to the changing nature and challenges of education and society in the 21st Century.
InnTELT will generate new knowledge and innovations by creating points of critical praxis where theory-driven design and design-based research find synergies to establish meaningful and practical knowledge to successfully respond to the changing demands on teaching professionals and the ability of education to develop sustainability competencies and 21st Century skills, which includes digital literacy skills related to information literacy, media literacy and information and communication technologies (ICT) literacy. The project will intervene within its points of critical praxis by developing and testing innovative learning technologies, using AI and VR, and by conducting research on the impact this has on professional development, teacher identity, skill/competency development, as well as educational quality and relevance.
Through these efforts, InnTELT aims to achieve its secondary objectives:
S0.1. Develop new AI and VR learning technologies and apply these into education programmes to strengthen active, blended learning approaches and create synergy between teaching and praxis cycles.
S0.2. Investigate how new learning technologies impact on the competency and professional development of future teachers, especially related to 21st Century skills, ICT literacy and sustainable development.
S0.3. Provide research-based advancement in the assessment of learning outcomes specifically linked to competency development and professional development.
S0.4. To investigate the potential transfer of AR and VR learning technologies tested in InnTELT to other fields of professional development, and across INN educational programmes.
Research questions, theoretical approach, and methodology
Research questions
RQ.1. How can teacher education utilize AI and VR technologies to better prepare student teachers to adapt to changing roles and learning environments to respond to needs for educational quality and relevance?
RQ.2. How do active, blended learning technologies and methodologies affect and inform the professional and competency development of student teachers, and what is potential for transferability of these impacts to other fields of professional development?
RQ.3. How can learning outcomes related to the development of 21st Century skills, digital literacy skills and sustainability competencies be effectively assessed?
RQ.4. How do the different learning technologies and approaches applied in the InnTELT project impact on the development of 21st Century skills, digital literacy skills and sustainability competencies? How does this enhance the quality of educational programmes across INN?
RQ.5. How can game elements and user experience (UX) enhance learning outcomes?
Theoretical approach
InnTELT will apply a grounded theory framework to study processes in natural settings and invoke pragmatic criteria of usefulness to evaluate the completed studies12. Grounded theory provides an effective approach for researching applied, practice-based scenarios in education, and shifts the focus of knowledge generation from deductive, hypothesis testing towards an inductive process of developing theory through practice. This is achieved by i) naming of an emergent social pattern grounded in research data, and ii) getting the ‘voice’ of the participants to define concepts and reflect on possible hypothesis13.
InnTELT will conduct applied educational research to produce practical-oriented knowledge to strengthen teacher education in its efforts to improve professional development, achieve adaptive skill and competency development, and enhance educational relevance. We will do so by implementing two main approaches: Tier 1) theory-driven design (TDD), and Tier 2) design-based research (DBR) to generate points of critical praxis for the productive interaction between practice and theory. The former is the core to generate scientific knowledge through theory building (discovery, domain limitation, relationship building) and theory testing (prediction, validation, refinement) which are carried in cycles. TDD faces challenges that affect its impact and relevance14, thus we combine it with DBR to mitigate limitations and generate relevant project outcomes. For DBR, typically used in learning sciences, we will use the contextual frame generated through TDD and develop solutions/interventions within a participatory design.
Work packages
InnTELT will be carried across three work packages (WP) where WP 1 will focus on TDD (Tier 1), WP 2 on DBR (Tier 2), and WP 3 on impact generation and quality management (Tier 3).
