Generative Learning As A New Approach To Developing Teachers’ Competencies In Pedagogical Use Of ICT

In resent 20 years, education has been deeply influenced with the rapid development of ICT. Nowadays it is in the Application Stage for the average level of teacher’s competencies in pedagogical use of ICT which plays a decisive role in the process of Educational Informatization in China. If we aim to advanced it to the Infusion Stage, teachers’ initiative and creativity is significant for the development of ICT competencies in pedagogy. This research investigates generative learning as a new approach to exploring the bottom-up pathway of developing teachers’ competencies in pedagogical use of ICT.In the philosophical perspective generative learning means professional learning paradigm for teachers in which they can revert to their own life, interact with external world, construct practical knowledge for adaption to the changing world, realize the professional autonomy and self-consciousness. But for the development of teacher’s competencies in pedagogical use of ICT, generative learning is defined that teachers construct knowledge based on their own experience by generative learning activity with the flexible learning support in the interaction with enabling environment during the process of Appropriation, Transformation, Publication, Conventionalization for the purpose of the change of the meaning structure and development of teachers’ICT competencies.With the generativeness metaphor for learning and the social cultural-activity theory as the interpreting framework, this research constructs the theoretical model in which the key elements are generative process, generative learning activity and enabling environment, and in which the corresponding key relationships are assimilation and accommodation, presetting and generation, affordance and cultivation. Based on theoretical exploration this research applies generative learning as educational intervention in large-scale distance teacher training project by means of Design-Based Research.This dissertation is consisted of five chapters:In the first chapter, this research analysis the essence of generative learning after tracing the origin and the history of generative learning in the field of philosophy, psychology, and teacher learning, and then put forward a definition of teachers’ generative learning based on the summary of the current research of the development of teacher’s competencies in pedagogical use of ICT.In the second chapter, this research discuss the process of teachers’ generative learning based on the theoretical framework developed by Harre, and then analyzed the four transformations of generative learning which is the internal logic of the development of teacher’s competencies in pedagogical use of ICT.In the third chapter, this research discusses issues on design and support of generative learning activity which is the basic unit of analyzing the development of teacher’s ICT competencies, and then mainly analyse double stimulation and iterative support network which is self-growing.In the fourth chapter, this research construct enabling environment which can support the enabling affordance for generative learning and receive the cultivation from generative learning process. And in enabling environment technology leadership, teachers’ PLS and micro-culture in context are discussed in the perspective of generative learning.In the fifth chapter, this research applies generative learning as educational intervention in large-scale distance teacher training in Shandong Province. The project adopts the method of Design-Based Research to facilitate the development of generative learning activities and support network in the process of Appropriation and Transformation, and then an empirical study is conducted to reveal the effectiveness of generative activity.