The stimulated recall method and ICTs in research on the reasoning of teachers

This article reports methodological aspects of a research study on the reasoning of teachers. The aim is to describe and evaluate the use of the stimulated recall method (STR) when information and communication technologies (ICTs) are involved in terms of educational settings and therefore in the research setting as well. First, we introduce the research context of the study: the teacher's pedagogical thinking and concept mapping as a student's school task. Second, we discuss how the development of research on the teacher's pedagogical thinking has influenced the progress of research methods in which video observation and interviews are employed. A combination of these can be classified under the STR, which will be described. Third, we look more closely at the case in which ICTs were involved in the object of the research, that is, a class project for eight-year-olds conducted in the school's computer lab, and evaluate the research methodological implications of this. We argue that traditional use of video-stimulated recall interview in teacher thinking research can be advanced by focusing on the student's learning process with the recordings of the student's digital concept map creation instead of plain teacher performance analysis on the video.