Abstracts - Earli

field of ICT by drawing on socio-cultural psychology and other strands related to the study ofcognition in context. More specifically, our aim is to show that identifying the actual practices thatthe various schools developed to train their teachers can help us to capture the specificities ofteacher education in ICT. Our research design included the collection of various types of data:observations of training courses and meetings of the school teams, documents used or produced inthese contexts, interviews with the teachers’ trainers, the project managers and the teachers, aswell as questionnaires filled by the teachers. After having briefly described the context of thisnational project, we shall first present the characteristics of the training setting that was initiallyplanned by the project managers. Then, we shall point to the obstacles and difficulties that theactors faced in the implementation process. We shall highlight the solutions that the differentschools found in order to overcome these difficulties, the way they managed unexpected eventsand the way in which they gradually adapted the planned training setting to fit their own scopes,needs, resources and constraints. Finally, we shall show that this contextualisation process led tothe development of original forms of teacher training and discuss their characteristics. Inconclusion, our results emphasise the importance of taking into account the actors’ actual practiceswhen designing a training setting in ICT. (1) in collaboration with Barbara Fiorilli, Elvis Mazzoni,Jean-Francois Perret and Carlo TomasettoStudent and teacher negotiations in a Media and Communication Studies classroomThomas de Lange, InterMedia, University of Oslo, NorwayAndreas Lund, InterMedia, University of Oslo, NorwayVocational Media and Communication Studies have in recent years been added to the Norwegiannational curriculum, a subject that still is taking shape as new technologies are applied to and coevolvewith classroom practices and, in particular, production oriented activities. Thus, we seeemergent practices, often driven by requirements for solutions to ill-defined or new problems andchallenges. In this situation we have observed how learners and teachers approach and negotiatechallenges that are linked to production assignments. Our paper is a case-study focusing on howlearners and teachers in an Upper Secondary School position themselves when facing a seeminglyunsolvable task. Methodologically the study is based on an ethnographic approach with 51 hoursof video recordings as the main empirical corpus. Theoretically our study is based on CulturalHistorical Activity Theory that affords a multilevel analysis connecting classroom interactionswith a longitudinal and institutional perspective. Our analysis suggests that institutional demandstend to be poorly aligned or even at odds with student strategies in media production. Our findingsalso imply that the school subject of Media and Communication Studies opens an opportunity forstudents to draw on knowledge and experiences partly developed in out-of-school practices. Ouraim is to contribute to a deeper understanding of how Cultural Historical Activity Theory can beapplied to analyzing classroom practices where two activity systems (teachers’ and learners’) areinvolved. On a more practical level we aim to examine the competencies that are needed to take onnew or unexpected challenges and, thus, serve knowledge advancement.The role of e-mail communication in fostering knowledge creation in a teacher training coursedesigned in a collaborative learning environmentHelga Dorner, University of Szeged, HungaryThe Knowledge-Practice Laboratory (KP-Lab) project is coordinated by the University of Helsinkiand EVTEK University of Applied Sciences. The general objective is to facilitate "innovativepractices of working with knowledge in education and workplaces" (Hakkarianen, K., Ilomäki, L.,Paavola, S., Muukkonen, H., Toivianen, H., Markkanen, H., and Richter, C., 2006, p.1). The– 718 –