EJMT Abstract

The article is based on a research in which the primary aim of the study had been to find empirical justification for seven crucial challenges that could be considered simultaneously within instrumental orchestration. The results of the data synthesis suggested that a quasi-systematic framework to promote links between conceptual and procedural knowledge may be crucial when planning the problems of students’ own investigation processes, whereby an innate way to utilize technology is to proceed in a more or less non-systematic way at the level of instrumentalisation (i.e. knowledge construction means bi-directional actions between the person and the tool). As students’ freedom to choose learning objectives and working methods appeared in a most natural way in collaboration between students or student teams, the research process offered a journey to take a critical position on the term ‘student-centred’, being characterized in a more or less “loose and grey” way in the literature. The synthesis reveals that Neuman’s triple-step contexts for defying “student-centred learning” should extended by the paradigm between student teams. Thus, rather than trying to be written as a rigid research report, this article describes this journey in a way that hopefully portrays the complexity of the field and emphasizes the challenge to consider several components simultaneously. Implications for teacher education and school culture are discussed briefly.