| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 英語教學研究所 === 101 === Integrating technology into teaching has been a trend among K-12 teachers. With reference to such a trend, contests on designing technology-integrated materials encourage teachers’ efforts in incorporating technology into pedagogical practice. In this regard, the present study aims to explore the process of CALL material design in contests with the focus on teachers’ beliefs and practices. Although teachers’ beliefs in technology integration have been addressed in abundant literature, the relations between beliefs and CALL materials have not yet fully addressed.
Drawing on activity theory (Engestrom, 1987, 1999), the qualitative study targets three pre-service teachers and records their process of CALL material design by means of semi-structured interviews and documents. The study addresses three research questions, including (1) how teachers’ beliefs in CALL and language teaching and learning are reflected in their CALL material design in a contest, (2) what underlying factors mediated the process of their participation for the contest, (3) how participating in the contest influences teachers’ beliefs and teachers in terms of material design, technology integration and contest participation. Interview data was coded into six components in Engeström’s (1987, 1999) model of activity theory, including subject, object, mediated artifacts, community, rules, and division of labor.
The findings of the study reveal that teachers’ beliefs were influential in their practice. Regarding their beliefs in language teaching and learning, three common themes were found to be crucial, including their preference in creating attractive materials, consideration of involving learners, and their professional knowledge. Additionally, insufficient training, contest regulations and deadline of submission were found to contribute to the inconsistency between teachers’ beliefs and practices.
With reference to the components interplaying within teachers’ activity systems, firstly,
agency consisted of teachers’ beliefs, training as well as experience in both teaching and material design. Second, the mediated artifacts were adopted by the two participants in varying their materials. Interestingly, only one participant adopted rather few mediated artifacts due to her limited time and the tendency to utilize only the available resource. Third, primarily established within the contest, the rules were found to impact teachers’ use of technology and cause restrictions to their practice. Conversely, the community such as partner or technical support was suggested to be facilitative to teachers. Finally, concerning division of labor, teachers were at disadvantage to the host institute in the context of a contest. Last but not least, despite no drastic change in teacher’s beliefs was spotted, the experience of participating in such contest brought both positive and negative impacts to teachers in terms of material design and technology integration.
Several pedagogical implications were proposed, including the encouragement of contest participation and collaboration with partners, and involving teachers’ perspective in constructing contest regulations.
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