Transcript Slide 1

ICT CPD for primary and
secondary school teachers
A study for Becta
UCET November 2009
Caroline Daly
Norbert Pachler
Caroline Pelletier
WLE Centre for Excellence
Institute of Education
University of London
20 Bedford Way
London WC1H 0AL
Tel +44 (0)20 7911 5531
Fax +44 (0)7092 288 882
Email [email protected]
Web www.wlecentre.ac.uk
A persistent ‘deficit’?
• Despite considerable resources being dedicated to
developing the use of ICT in schools in recent years, there
is a lack of impact on teachers’ everyday practice, or what
Becta has described as a ‘significant deficit’ (The
Harnessing Technology Review, 2008)
• This is despite the vast majority of teachers receiving some
form of ICT CPD according to national surveys
• This is despite considerable mobilisation of money and
resources for ICT in schools
Literature review
Two persistent and difficult factors:
• Policy tensions (Hardy, 2008; Pearson and Naylor, 2006)
– Between ICT policy and other policy demands
– Within ICT policy-making
• Deep-seated beliefs and dispositions among teachers
(Belland, 2009; Hammond, 2009; Cogill, 2008)
– Need to change experiential evidence for beliefs
– Need deep, intellectual engagement with ideas as well as skills
– Enquiry has a role to play
They are the main
agents of change. They
need to ‘make sense’
of their learning
experiences to be able to
take action
CPD is about
changes in them as
persons as well as
teachers – the two are
joint aspects of
professional identity
Teachers at the centre
How teachers “manage
and ride the waves of
change” (Day, 2000) are
at the centre of any future
education that meets the
needs of young people
We need to properly
understand how
teachers learn in order
to design effective
CPD
Semi-structured interviews with
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26 teachers
13 headteachers/senior leaders
9 ICT co-ordinators/e-learning leaders
17 ICT providers
• One to one interviews
• Telephone interviews
• Focus groups of teachers
Project findings
• A fragmented general picture of ICT CPD among the whole
range of provision (school-based, Local Authority, CLC,
commercial, subject/professional association).
• Extremely effective CPD provision both in-house and
externally provided but very localised and not much
evidence that effective provision in one site has an impact
anywhere else.
• Skills training is not enough…
The incorporation of group work, collaborative
problem-solving, independent thinking, articulation
of thought and creative presentation of ideas are
examples of the ways in which teachers’ CPD
might focus on pedagogy. The CPD design itself
should incorporate these kinds of activities using
ICT, so that teachers can experience active
learning for themselves as part of their
professional development.
School-based CPD
• The majority of CPD is school-based. Design features
include:
• Compulsory formal ‘INSET’ sessions for all staff
• Compulsory small group sessions for staff who share subject or phase
backgrounds
• Optional after-school CPD sessions on specific software
• Brief ‘tasters’ or briefings at staff meetings to provide updates on new
software.
• Many of these involved external providers
There was evidence of effective CPD in schools which
showed evidence of a professional learning community…
ICT CPD within schools as learning
communities
• Effective leadership which focused on inclusive and democratic
approaches to deciding the CPD agenda: ‘vision sharing’
• Focus on individual needs as well as school priorities
• Deployment of ‘non-expert’ staff as key players in CPD
• Use of small groups to plan and review teaching together
• High differentiation
• Frequent talk among staff about their practice
• Inclusion of whole workforce in CPD activities (buying in TA hours)
• Divide between primary and secondary schools on deployment of ICT
co-ordinators in CPD
• Easier to achieve within primary school contexts – the ‘walk through’
Ineffective school-based ICT CPD
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This was reported to be the experience of nearly all the teachers
Lack of leadership vision or only ‘vision delivery’
Focus on skills development – boredom with ‘practising’
Lack of relevance to own classroom and subject areas
No time to think and discuss how to use the technology for
learning
• No opportunities to observe how other teachers use
technologies
• Where external providers were involved, lack of prior negotiation
about individual needs
Inward-looking school-based CPD
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Extremely inward-looking ICT CPD was a trend
Teachers never left the school to see other practice
Leadership convinced they have the only solutions necessary
Complacency and reluctance among leaders to be open to other
ways of working
• Suspect practices advocated as ideal because school results
improve
• Often strong links with commercial companies and MSPs who
provide the total CPD environment geared to their products
External
Players
involved
shared
extensive
school development
planning
planning
course-based
in-house whole school INSET
sessions
demonstration
practice across schools
learning pre-determined peer
skillscomparing
in-house expert modelling
peer online
observation
collaboration
expert modelling
‘one size fits all’ provision
mentoring
using by
Web 2.0 to collaborate and
reproducing ‘best practice’
one-off sessions
share resources
lunch-time and
demonstration by expertsbreak-time,
skills training
after-school
teachertalk
enquiry
responding to skills audits
incorporating ICT into a fixed
curriculum
visits
CPD
to other
leadership
schools‘non-experts’
‘one size fits all’ provisionvoluntary
reproducing ‘best practice’
usingexperts
pupil expertise
collaborating in class
accreditation
activities shaped by school
development
working
shared
flexibly
critical
withreflection
the curriculum
mastery of new technologies
plan
shared
peer
critical
discussion
reflection
fixed staff roles for ICT
CPD
digital
digital
creativity
creativity
addressing deficits in‘playing
generic
skillskit’
‘playing
with
with kit’
audits
groupgroup
work work
- ‘mixed
- ‘mixed
ability’
ability’
shared
shared
lesson
lesson
planning
planning
informal
informal
talk talk
accreditation
Schoolbased Low
Vision-delivery
Collaboration
High
Vision-sharing
CPD providers interviewed
• ASTs / LAs / CLCs
• Professional associations
• Hardware and software developers
Barriers to ICT CPD – providers’ views
• Problem is not the lack of money or the lack of kit – the issue is
organisational
• ICT is not a priority on inspection schedules – superficial CPD agenda
• Lack of CPD time beyond bursts of ‘INSET’ or occasional days
• CPD not commercially viable – not valued, and expensive for schools
• Changing/conflicting policy priorities – difficulty in articulating needs
• Increasing standardisation of teaching – anti-experimentation ethos
• Emphasis on remedying deficit rather than achieving excellence
• Fragmented market and fragmented products – many CPD providers in
each school, many types of kit.
• Difficulty of moving on from the teaching of technical skills
Aspects of CPD models which were
reported to work
• A long-term CPD strategy: the developmental model, the ‘withdrawal’
model, the ‘researching practice’ model – requires upfront investment /
intellectual engagement
• An integrated approach to ICT, not a product focus – favours hardware
suppliers, large companies, LAs, professional associations
• Establishing long-term relationships with schools, teachers, LAs
• Training of senior leaders, not just teachers
• Choice of CPD for teachers individually – innovation rather than deficit
treatment
Local Authorities
• Huge inconsistencies in reports of CPD experiences
• ‘the provision is amazing’, ‘[the school managers] think the LA has not
got much to teach us’ ‘the LA doesn’t like our school’
• Examples of LAs taking the lead in proactive ways through
– a ‘brokering’ role in deployment of ASTs
– the use of ASTs with high credibility levels
– highly differentiated CPD based on auditing needs
– focus on in-class CPD and ‘real world’ implementation
– essential compensation for poor in-house provision
But…..
• School leaders and teachers did not like LA restrictive
policies on firewalls, accessing YouTube
• LA policies on use of laptops for personal internet access
was criticised
• Some leaders thought they were ‘way ahead’ of the LA
• Some school leaders adopted a shared responsibility to
‘give back’ to the LA and provide dissemination and CPD
• Others did not want to have anything to do with outsiders.
Supporting other schools was not their way of doing things
CLCs
• There was evidence of some excellent CPD practice in
London boroughs where some schools were unable to
provide effective CPD
• Approaches were extremely varied, including
– a year long programme of enquiry-based CPD, based on Web 2.0
– an online accredited course in media creation
– a programme of after-school weekly courses in a variety of software
which was very highly praised and over-subscribed
We need to find out more about the future of CLCs and
their impact on CPD.
The Transformation Teachers Programme (TTP)
• One of the most deprived London boroughs with high levels of
socio-economic disadvantage and teacher turnover
• Run by a City Learning City with expert provision both
technically and pedagogically
• A strong vision of ICT CPD as
– Collaborative
– Critically informed
– Personalised
– Based on enquiry
The programme
• Heads from every secondary and special school in the borough
nominate 2 teachers to take part (24-28 teachers per year)
• Web 2.0 is a basis for CPD pedagogy
• Mixture of generic skills training and personalised choices
• ‘Having kit’ is essential – Macbooks with PC and Mac platforms,
digital cameras, visualisers, voting kits plus range of software
• Teacher enquiry is built in from the start
• Teachers work with ‘triads’ in their schools (2 teachers + SL)
• Fronter VLE is used to host the project and share outcomes
• The TTP participants become ‘transformation’ leaders in their
schools – not ICT experts
Collaboration is a core strategy
Builds on a community of practice model (Wenger, 1998)
– Talk within practice
– Informal as well as formal learning
– Variety of social groupings for learning (within schools; cross-school
local ‘cluster’ meetings; CLC cohort sessions, option sessions)
– ‘Bottom up’ as well as expert-driven
– Permeable boundaries (developing practice across contexts – at the
CLC; in own classrooms; with wider staff in school)
– Local Authority ICT advisor and HE partners have supportive roles
– Web 2.0 is part of the collaborative strategy
Two significant contextual factors
affecting forms of ICT CPD
• The shift to school-based provision
– Gains and losses
• The impact of commercial providers
– Gains and losses
Summary recommendations
1. CPD needs to be designed on the basis of meeting
teachers’ individual needs as a priority.
2. Collaborative approaches should be core to design.
3. School leaders should be encouraged to value outwardlooking relationships in their approach to ICT CPD.
4. Subject specialism needs to be catered for on a much
wider scale than is currently the case.
5. There is a need for (some) school leaders to learn about
learning communities within schools to support ICT CPD.
6. Strong recommendations need to be made regarding the
purchasing of hardware to support CPD & student learning.
7. Rationalisation is needed of the amount and diversity of
policy-making both within ICT and across education.
8. There should be a commissioned study of the contribution
made by CLCs to ICT CPD.
9. There should be a commissioned study of the impact of
commercial providers on ICT CPD.
10.There should be a scoping study of the current use of
online professional development communities for ICT CPD
and the potential of online learning and Web 2.0.
Summary of key principles of effective ICT CPD
Shared practice, collaborative & critical
 a range of participants, locations and formats for collaborative work
a variety of stakeholders have a role to play
Enquiry-based
CPD needs to be focused on individual learner needs. Critical, reflective
processes should be embedded in learning activities. This is needed to
overcome the ‘implementation dip’ (Fullan, 2001)
HE has a role to play in supporting CPD based on teacher enquiry
Embedded within school ethos of learning and teaching
School leaders need to be fully engaged with CPD processes throughout
Leadership which is informed, distributed and principled
Integration of personal and professional use of technologies
 Access to Web 2.0 and flexible and informal as well as formal learning
Summary of effective core design principles
• Shorter, smaller, more frequent CPD engagements
• Flexibility & meaningful choices about the focus of ICT CPD
• Skills training using Web 2.0 to underpin shared learning
processes, and having individualised options
• Working in groups – within and across schools/subjects
• Equipment and up-to-date software for teachers’ long-term
skills development, to integrate personal/professional use
• Time for teachers to participate in enquiry-based CPD
• Responsive support for technology skills training is essential.
Provision should be sufficiently flexible to support planned
needs as they arise. Support does not have to be purely the
responsibility of schools – creative LA support can help
• Teachers need to be valued in tangible ways
Issues/challenges
• Informal, genuinely enquiry-based and collaborative practices for
teachers and students require fundamental shifts in the ways that
learning (for students and teachers) is currently organised in schools
• The roles of ‘catalysts’ within effective learning communities for
technology-related CPD are vital and complex. CPD practices are not
necessarily ‘transposable’ or ‘transferable’
• How teachers appropriate technologies in their personal/social lives
impacts on their use in the classroom but is not harnessed
• The role of a variety of stakeholders in models for ICT CPD needs to
be better understood
• Financing CPD which is long-term and transformational is costly in
time and HR