Constructing narrative ecologies as a site for teachers' professional learning with new technologies and media in primary education

This paper argues that to understand how new technologies and media can become co-agents in the process of pedagogical change, we first must understand the teacher's complex relationship with new technologies and media, both in their personal and their professional lives. A conceptual framework is set out for constructing a complex narrative ecology around the teacher's professional and personal relationship with new technologies and media. The narrative ecology model, it is proposed, can be used to 'fill in the gaps' (Schostak, 2006, p.162) or story the otherwise isolated but constituent aspects of teachers' experiences of technology. It is an approach predicated on a view of professional learning as a process of 'narrative cognition' (Bruner, 1990). The model is applied and evaluated in a fine-grained narrative case study of one student teacher's approach to the use of a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) in an intervention within a primary school in the UK. The findings suggest that using the narrative ecology model to story teachers' personal and professional experiences with technology, brings meaning and new insights to teachers' nuanced relationships with technology, creating a site for further professional development and learning.