Constructing narrative ecologies as a site for teachers' professional learning with new technologies and media in primary education

Abstract

This article argues that to understand how new technologies and media can become coagents in the process of pedagogical change, we first need to understand teachers' complex relationship with new technologies and media in both their personal and their professional lives. A conceptual framework is delineated for constructing a complex narrative ecology around teachers' professional and personal relationship with new technologies and media. The narrative ecology model, it is proposed, can be used to story the otherwise isolated but constituent aspects of teachers' experiences of technology. It is an approach predicated on a view of professional learning as a narrative process. The model is applied and evaluated in a fine-grained narrative case study of one student teacher's approach to the use of a virtual learning environment (VLE) in an intervention within a primary school in the United Kingdom. The findings suggest that using the narrative ecology model to story teachers' personal and professional experiences with technology brings meaning and new insights to teachers' nuanced relationships with technology, creating a site for further professional development and learning.