Multimedia and Professional Learning in Initial Teacher Education

This volume examines the complexity of preservice teacher professional learning and the contributions that an interactive multimedia resource, known as QuILT (Quality In Learning and Teaching), offered for constructivist, reflective and social learning experiences. The study focusses on preservice teachers’ meaning-making of their learning experiences as they developed their teacher knowledge while they used the multimedia resource QuILT within a subject in teacher education programs. Data analysis reveals the complexity of preservice teachers’ professional learning; particularly the rich and multilayered learning associated with QuILT use such as personal reflection and those based within multiple communities of practice cultivated while studying with QuILT. The volume shows that the ways the preservice teachers engaged with the multimedia resource contributed significantly to how they learned from QuILT. This indicates that preservice teacher professional learning also relied on engaging the affective domain of learning. Affective factors discussed in the findings include: willingness to accept QuILT as a resource for learning; valuing the resource; being able to make connections between the multiple communities of practice associated with studying QuILT. Together, these factors assisted preservice teachers to deepen their learning with QuILT. Lacking these affective characteristics seemed to bring tensions to the professional learning of some of the preservice teachers.