Ruthven's "Structuring Features"

Slightly different type of post today; I’ve been reading a bunch for a project and just came across this framework. I wrote a little summary of what I took away from it, and since it might be interesting, decided to share.

I read a couple of interesting theoretical framework articles by Kenneth Ruthven yesterday while doing some background research on technology integration and teacher growth. His article in 2009 sought to take a more teacher practice perspective on the effect of technology in a classroom. He takes the route of creating theory to describe rather than explain practice. With an eye towards the knowledge of the teaching craft, he worked through a number of research studies and identified five “structuring features” of a teacher’s practice that could be understood as separate but intertwined. He then works through how the different structuring features are affected by the addition of technology. The five are rather self-explanatory:

• Working Environment: where the learning takes place, and the related logistics. Computers may cause change in location (i.e. computer lab) or split classes. One to one classrooms present issues of charging and timing. These issues can be minimized, but they do add up.
• Resource system: the teaching resources as well as the teachers’ coherent system of organization for those resources. Technology-related resources abound; teachers must be able to access, understand, and organize them for usability.
• Activity format: the types of activities that are done and the way that students and teachers interact with each other. Technology allows for radically different activities, as well as large changes to existing patterns of actions or interactions.
• Curriculum script: the map of activities and goals that drive instruction. Here is the teacher’s knowledge of the “ideas to be developed, ideas to be developed, tasks to be undertaken, representations to be employed, and difficulties to be anticipated” (138). Again, the addition of computers brings s new diversity to this category.
• Time economy: issues relating to the conversion of time into instructional time, and an understanding of the costs and benefits to that conversion with the inclusion of technology.

The article then employs a case study to explain examples from the five structuring features.

My initial reaction to this framework was its relative clarity. By focusing on practice, the framework seems to be easily employable when working with professionals. It seems that it could really help to frame discussions and identify potential roadblocks with the implementation of a technology initiative in a rather traditional school. It comes as no surprise to me that Ruthven is a former educator, as the framework is very practical and grounded in the teacher’s experience. Ultimately, it is an interesting framework that may help inform some of our professional development work, as well as help describe findings from research data.

One last thing: I also read the comparative piece from this year (Ruthven, 2014), and also found it quite interesting, for slightly different reasons. He offers a number of critiques of TPACK that are extensions of or additions to many common critiques. As a researcher with a teaching background, he argues that there is not enough evidence in teacher comments to tease out TPACK inferences. Also, when comparing it with his own system, he makes clear the difference between TPACK, which is delineating domains of knowledge, and structural features, which concerns the interaction of teaching expertise with what is present. Also interesting, if not more aimed at the research community.

Ruthven, K. (2009). Towards a naturalistic conceptualisation of technology integration in classroom practice: The example of school mathematics. Education & Didactique, 3(1), 131–159.

Ruthven, K. (2014). Frameworks for analysing the expertise that underpins successful integration of digital technologies into everyday teaching practice. In The Mathematics Teacher in the Digital Era (pp. 373–393). Springer. Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-007-4638-1_16