Technology and pedagogical practices: ICTs as mediation tools in joint teacher-student activity

Abstract

From a socio-cultural constructivist perspective, this paper proposes that the potential of ICTs to transform pedagogical practices is closely related to (i) the way in which ICTs are actually used by teachers and students in each particular teaching and learning situation, and (ii) the way in which ICTs are eventually inserted in the actual development of the joint activity of teachers and students. Starting from this proposal, the paper analyses some uses of ICTs in two instructional sequences with university students. The results show important differences between the planned uses (the level of the technopedagogical design) and the actual uses (the level of the organization of the joint activity) in both sequences. These results seem to support the claim that joint activity crucially modulates the impact of ICTs as psychological tools in educational practices.