Interactive Teaching
The relationships between interactivity of teaching and pupil learning have been explored in terms of the affordances and constraints of different features of the classroom including communication media, forms of interaction, nature of tasks set, and extent to which these are orchestrated by teachers and pupils in order to complete tasks and bring about learning. There is widespread agreement between teachers and pupils concerning the need for pupils to participate actively and to influence the course of activity, including whole-class teaching episodes, in order to improve learning. There is evidence that ICT is being used to assist in this approach, but the interactivity supported remains at a relatively low level while teachers gain skills and evaluate resources in ICT.
There is a clear balance of evidence in favour of a focus on increasing the depth of interactivity of teaching rather than on using ICT for its own sake. The question then becomes ‘how can the technology which is, or could be, available be used to deepen the level of interactivity in the classroom?’. There are two ways in which interaction is predominantly happening at present:
• interacting about ICT resources (such as a video clip or sample of pupil’s writing)
• interacting with ICT resources (such as a game or challenge with immediate feedback)
But there may be more potential for ICT as a medium to interact through, for example collectively developing a concept map of photosynthesis, or individually constructing a sentence in Welsh for interpretation, discussion and development by a partner).
The findings suggest that teachers should focus on more dialogic activity, mixing whole-class, small group, pair and individual work supported by appropriate resources. They need to become attuned to the affordances and constraints of ICT’s features so that they can orchestrate these effective in support of task goals and learning goals; this takes time outside the classroom and experimentation in the classroom.