Abstracts - Earli

teachers and pupils are interviewed. The design of the game as well the actual gaming process isanalyzed with respect to story construction and historical knowledge. First results indicate that thegame as narrative learning environment succesfully supports a process of storification. However, itseems that gaming elements partly dominate the construction of knowledge that is historicallyrelevant. On the basis of this, mobile games can be argued valuable in stimulating storification.However, care is needed in designing educational games in terms of mixing fictional with thesubject related learning effects.Using blogs for storification and professional reflection: the case of mathematics teachersKaterina Makri, University of Athens, GreeceThis paper focuses on the use of narrative in the area of higher education, in a context of postgraduate courses in Mathematics education, addressed to Mathematics teachers. On the basis ofprevious research in the fields of Technology enhanced learning environments, Mathematicseducation and narrative theory, it provides a broad, process-oriented definition of narrative, as aframework for the design and implementation of a technology enhanced learning environment: aclass blog for online, asynchronous communication in two six-month courses. The tool was usedas a mediator of specific CSCL activities for the participants, such as co-construction ofpedagogical materials, inquiry and reflection. Narrative was a major element in its design, whichaimed at triggering specific acts of narrating, consequently producing different kinds of narrativesand finally, at providing learning outcomes related to narrative expression. The discussioncomprises parts of the data analysis related to these design aspects, to form an evaluation based onnarrative principles.Developing a narrative knowledge base: Storification by teachers on their role as designersBregje de Vries, Teacher College, Radboud University Nijmegen, NetherlandsThis study seeks to investigate what, according to teachers, the skills are that teachers need tobecome designers of innovative learning arrangements. Under headings such as ‘new learning’, aview on learning as situated and collaborative has been implemented in schools (Simons, Van derLinden & Duffy, 2000). As a result, the role of teachers is changing. Besides instructors, theybecome designers of innovative learning arrangements in which multiple work formats andtrajectories are arranged, and (groups of) learners can choose which way to go. Designing thearrangements is new to most teachers. Although they have implicit knowledge about how toorganize learning situations, teachers have only little experience with designing complex ones. Tobecome reflective designers, teachers therefore need to articulate and share their experientialstories about organizing education with colleagues. In this study, teachers of primary andsecondary schools in the Netherlands were invited to share stories about designing innovativelearning arrangements to build a database for anecdotal evidence and develop practice-basedtheory on the teacher as designer. The findings suggest that teachers’ stories talk much about‘awareness of students’ needs’, but express less extended ideas about how to design a range ofdidactical approaches. The stories only cover existing models on instructional design partly ashigher levels of designing instruction are hardly present in teachers’ stories, and teachers viewdesigning as an individual trial rather than a cyclical collaborative process. The teachers’ storiesshow which skills can be taken as a starting point to make teachers aware of their future role asdesigners, and at the same time point out which skills need to be added in teacher training toprepare them well for this job.– 310 –