Abstracts - Earli

constitutes a valuable framework for the study of transformations of collective practice. Thepresent paper aims to conceptualize teacher views about technological innovation through theprism of Activity Theory and determine the implications for in-service teacher ICT training. Fiftyelementary school teachers attended a 30 hour in-service training course on the educationalapplications of the internet taught by the author. CSCL was one of the three main course modulesupon which the course focused. Three main questions about CSCL were posed by the author in thecourse forum. Teacher views were recorded through their participation in the forum discussions ofthose questions. Teacher responses were content analyzed and coded in a number of themes whichemerged from the forum discussions. Overall, while teachers favored the integration of CSCL intotheir daily practices they also expressed skepticism about the essential prerequisites of successfulCSCL integration. Time emerged as a common pattern from the analysis of teacher responses andwas manifested in their discourse as a vague, multifaceted ‘‘enemy’’. The conceptualizationteacher views in terms of Activity Theory revealed a contradiction within the teacher object ofactivity: covering the material vs. student learning. It is concluded that in-service teacher trainingin ICT should also take into consideration teachers’ perspectives, concerns and practices.Towards a model of mentor teachers‘ roles in dialogues with prospective teachersPaul Hennissen, Fontys University of Applied Science, NetherlandsFrank Crasborn, Fontys University of Applied Science, NetherlandsNiels Brouwer, Radboud University Nijmegen, NetherlandsMentoring dialogues play an important role in the supervision of prospective teachers. Mentorteachers have the dual role of guiding the students in the workplace and of stimulating students toreflect and learn from their teaching experiences. Does this happen in practice? This studydescribes the supervisory behavior of mentor teachers during their mentoring dialogues withprospective teachers by analysing 4 aspects of the dialogue: content, mentor teachers’ role, thephases and time. There were three phases in the analysis of the literature. The results indicate thatwhile teachers are effective in the guidance of prospective teachers in the workplace, they are notso effective in the area of stimulating reflection in the prospective teacher. In the mentoringdialogues it is usually the mentor teacher who is the dominant interlocutor; raising issues oforganization, directing the prospective teacher in a prescriptive manner, deciding the content of thedialogue, not structuring the dialogue in phases and doing most of the talking. However, studies inthis area vary greatly in the presentation of the issues and offer little coherence or correlation. Soafter looking at the literature, we propose a model where the roles of the mentor teachers can becategorised and where the data collected can be correlated with the existing literature.Habits of hope – seeking a sound rationale for teachers’ professional practiceHusu Jukka, University of Helsinki, FinlandThis study brings the concept of hope to bear on the processes of education in ways that directlyimpact the practices of schooling. Hope is commonly regarded as an unrealistic idea and assumedto be unrelated to the everyday school life. Within our prevailing ethos of standardization andquantification, it is difficult for teachers to convince others that such idealistic notions as hopecrucially affect students’ well-being and achievements in schools. This paper argues that hopebears not only moral value in teaching but it is actually a workable rationale for teachers’pedagogical practice. The paper explores the ways in which the habits of hope contribute to thecharacter and development of teachers’ professional knowledge. Drawing from the empirical dataof 132 primary school teachers, the paper identifies three related aspects of hope as teachers’pedagogical rationale: self-related hopes, tasks-related hopes, and impact-related hopes. The paper– 750 –