Teacher Education to Promote Constructivist Use of ICT: Study of a Logo-based Project

In the frame of a training course for future teachers, an ICT-enhanced project, based on a Logo learning environment and inspired from a constructivist education philosophy, was undertaken aiming at familiarizing students with the use of computer as a tool that can trigger constructivist learning and helping them to adopt an exploratory and constructivist teaching practice. The training methodology applied in the training course focused on the trainees’ self-activity and active engagement in lab exploratory activities. The common feature of the training activities was not the programming language but the so-called “Logo spirit”, a constructivist spirit of action and learning. Through such a process, it was expected that student-teachers would gain personal experiences of exploratory and constructivist learning and would be able to inspire into their future students the same educational spirit. Student-teachers were asked to give instructions to their turtle to draw regular polygons and a circle using movement commands. They were encouraged, before they give instructions to the Logo turtle to draw a geometrical figure, to analyse the problem and to think about the instructions. Very often student work resulted in unexpected wrong figures on the screen. So students had the opportunity to recognise their errors and to try again. This process was repeated several times until students reached the expected result. They were encouraged to try several solutions and keep trying until they succeed, to work with self-action and autonomy and finally to be questioned about the educational value of those activities. • The evaluation of the project was based on • Teacher-students ́ achievement on the tasks as it was recorded on their work sheets. • A 5-point Likert scale measuring the degree to which students agreed or disagreed with statements regarding the interest and the educational usefulness of the learning experience they had working on the tasks. • Answers and explanations on open questions given in written form asking them to detect and mention any positive educational issues they had found in that method and to think of and report similar methods for teaching their school subjects • Two case-studies: two teacher-students were encouraged to implement the same activities in their school class with their students and report results and experiences. The evaluation results indicated a positive impact on the students in terms of familiarization with the spirit of the proposed methodology and of understanding the potential of ICT for constructivist learning. The evidence coming from the two course participants, who applied and evaluated the methodology in a school class, provided encouraging indications that the students became capable of applying the methodology they had learnt in real classroom settings.