Fra Pluto til Kunnskapsløftet – fra Utopia til Virkeligheten

Abstract

For my approach to this problem scenario, I chose a combination of the quantitative and qualitative methods. I chose to use a survey questionnaire to chart an entry identifier. This questionnaire identified four factors that seemed to be of particular significance as far as what thoughts the former students had after the project was concluded. I organized the interview guide based on the same four areas of focus, which were context, teamwork/collaboration, folder methodology, and ICT. I conducted two focus groups, and the participating respondents were former students of the general studies teacher-program, and participants in ICT and new learning processes at Vestfold University College. The fact that I was myself a participant in this project could be both an advantage and a disadvantage to my current study. In one way it gave me unique access to the project’s silent aspects, and thereby the activities’ silent aspects as well. On the other hand, it gave me a predisposition which would unavoidably affect my interpretation and analysis. My goal has still been to achieve as objective of an analysis as possible, taking these circumstances into consideration. I suspected that what the former students believed were the most essential aspects of the project they participated in, would also be what affected them the most in the way they work in their career after completing their education. My analysis proved that this was partially true. The different didactic aspects of PLUTO, which in addition were identical with those aspects revealed in my survey, have more or less been continued by the students. Even though the framework factors in many cases actually limited the development, all the project participants still stated that the project at Vestfold University College was correct time-wise with respect to ICT focus in their current field of practice. When it came to teamwork and collaboration, all the participants agreed that they used many of their experiences and much of their competence from the project in their professional career, and that they most likely would have functioned differently as teachers without these experiences. Integration of ICT as a pedagogic tool, through open, digital portfolios on the Internet, as the participants were made familiar with through the project, has not turned out identically in their professional lives. The portfolios currently used by the participants focus more on products than on the process itself, and none of the participants fully use this portfolio methodology with logs and metareflections. But as time passes, ICT focus in Norwegian schools works in the participants’ favor. Through the Knowledge Promotion, it would seem that the former PLUTO students have been helped in advancing their work with cooperative learning, portfolio methodology and pedagogic use of ICT, which was the primary objective of ICT and new learning processes to begin with.