Transcript Cultivating a Community of Practice amongst Smart School

Cultivating a Community of
Practice amongst Smart School
Teachers: Problems and Challenges
Puvaneswary Murugaiah
Thang Siew Ming
Hazita Azman
Carol Hall
Radha Nambiar
Azizah Yaa’cob
INTRODUCTION
• The e-CPDelt Vision 2020 model
• Collaborative participation - community of
practice (CoP).
COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE
• Wenger (1998) defined a CoP as:
…a group of people who share a concern, a
set of problems, or a passion about a topic
and who deepen their knowledge and
expertise in this area by interacting on an
ongoing basis.
• Knowledge building via interactions
COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE
Wenger (1998) elaborated:
• CoPs are formed by people who engage in
a process of collective learning … a tribe
learning to survive, a band of artists
seeking new forms of expression, a group
of engineers working on a problem, a
clique of students defining their identity in
the school, a group of first-time managers
helping each other to cope…
Virtual Community of Practice
• Hunter (2002) – a VCoP is a group of
people who interact with each other, learn
from each other’s work, and provide
knowledge resources to the group related
to certain agreed-upon topics of shared
interest online
KEY COMPONENTS OF A CoP
1. Mutual engagement – mutually engage in
activities related to daily practices
• - have opportunities to contribute and
react to decisions related to practice
KEY COMPONENTS OF A CoP
2. Shared repertoire of practices – all
members share similar practices
- their practices continually change as they
gain more experience by sharing
KEY COMPONENTS OF A CoP
3. Joint enterprise – shared goals of a
community
- members are both learners and
practitioners
- focus on achieving common goal; e.g.
improving instructional methods
Cultivation of a CoP via e-CPDelt
Media Mix:
Blogs, VIP
Teacher
Collaboration
Mentor Support
Amount & Type of Online Interaction
Development of Cognitive Presence,
Social Presence
Forming a Community
Problems
Poor response to blog activity – till Feb. 1
Communities No. of
Members
No. of Blog No. of
Entries
Comments
English
6
5
1
Science
9
4
0
Mathematics
5
5
4
Participation
• Read & contribute
• Read contributions
• Neither read nor contribute
Active participation = sense of belonging
and community
Mentors’ Reactions
• Examine reasons for poor participation
• Propose ways to overcome the problem
i. Online discussion
ii. Brainstorming workshop
Mentors’ Perspective on
Contributing Factors
• Lack of trust and closeness - between teachers
M6: They seem to lack confidence about the
quality of what they post. Five teachers said
their biggest worry was they were not very sure
whether their posting would be interesting
enough for the other teachers. They feel they
need to think of something good to put up; if
not they would be embarrassed…because they
don’t know each other well.
Mentors’ Perspective on
Contributing Factors
• Lack of rapport - with mentors
M3: I strongly feel that we need to establish
good rapport with the teachers as they
need encouragement to proceed with this
‘new’ way of sharing and learning practice.
Mentors’ Perspective on
Contributing Factors
• Task – too general
M5: I think we may have been a little ambitious in
asking them to come out with blog entries out of
nothing.
• Relevance of task
M7: They can’t see how they can benefit from just
blog entries and discussion as well as the VIP.
M5: Perhaps they don’t see the relevance of what
they are doing to their own professional
development.
Mentors’ Perspective on
Contributing Factors
• Time constraint
M3: The teachers were busy with examinations
and administrative work: SPM marking
in
November and December and new school term
in January.
• Internet availability and accessibility problems
M3: Some of the teachers informed me that they
had problems with the internet connection in
their schools. One teacher doesn’t have internet
at home.
Proposed Immediate Measures
1. Submit more blog postings
• M9: to promote more sharing is to share
yourselves…. make more postings,
commenting and encouraging views from
others… this will encourage greater
rapport and genuine emotional as well as
intellectual contact which most people find
more rewarding
Proposed Immediate Measures
2. Informal face-to-face meeting
• M5: We need to investigate what is the issue
with the teachers, in my opinion. Why are they
not participating? They seemed interested in the
initial stage itself so what is the problem now.
Perhaps we need to have another face to face
session and using whatever we already have in
the blogs point out the relevance of this project
to what they are doing. Once they see the value
of what some have done it might help.
Contributing Factors – Mentors’ &
Teachers’ Perspectives
• Contributing Factors:
- Lack of trust/closeness
– Task-related problems
– Time Constraints
– Technical glitches
• Congruent with that of teachers’
Teachers’ Perspective on
Contributing Factors
• Lack of rapport/trust
E2: I think it boils down to being afraid to show
our weaknesses. Not sharing because we’re
afraid that people will judge us. We think that
people will analyse us, judge us…this shouldn’t
be done, they should not have a lesson
conducted this way. Probably because of that,
we are very careful of what we write. You see,
we are not from the same schools, we do not
know each other, their backgrounds.
Teachers’ Perspective on
Contributing Factors
• Task: Relevance of information
E1: I think one of the things is we are all
teaching different levels. Sometimes when
we want ideas, we realize our friends are
not teaching that particular level. They
can’t give us ideas for that level.
Teachers’ Perspective on
Contributing Factors
• Task: Doubts on expected outcomes
E1: When we saw member X’s comments,
we thought that’s what’s expected of us. I
was afraid if I were to write something
simple, it’s way far from her standard. I
printed out the tasks and was wondering
how to write….must be long and formal.
Teachers’ Perspective on
Contributing Factors
• Time Constraint
– Burdened with administrative and other duties
S4: We don’t have enough time because we have a
lot of duties in school. For example, in my school
there are a lot of functions and teachers have to
work for the functions. Also a lot of paperwork…
- Slow response
Mt1: Either there is no response or it is very late in
coming… and mostly they don’t comment. Instead
they ask questions.
Teachers’ Perspective on
Contributing Factors
• ICT & technology glitches
Mt2: When someone sends a message, there’s no
alert system in our e-mail, like some others.
E3: I keep forgetting the address.
S1: We have our own building without any
facilities, computers. So for any facilities we
have to come to the main block. By the time we
come to the main building either a teacher is
using the computers or the computers have
broken down. Always break down.
Teachers’ Perspective on
Contributing Factors
• Work climate
E1: We worry about what the administrators will
say. You see, like you ask me a problem, what
problems I face in the IT class. Sometimes the
students will go to other websites when I tell
them not to…I get very tired scolding them. Of
course, I don’t want to put this in the problems
that I face. Then the principal might say, ‘why
do you want others to know about the problems
we face in the school’. That’s our fear.
Ways to Reduce Problems
• Support – social networking, emotional,
technical
• Task-related problems – teachers’ views
• Time constraint - subjective
Impact of Measures Taken
Significant increase in the number of blog postings.
* Parentheses – number prior to actions taken
Communities No. of
Members
English
6
No. of Blog No. of
Entries
Comments
6 (5)
24 (1)
Science
9
10 (4)
6 (0)
Mathematics
5
5 (5)
8 (4)
Challenges
• How to sustain the community well?
– Paradigmatic
– Purposes and needs must be balanced
• Independence rather than dependence
– ‘at what point does a vision of empowerment
become a vision that directs teachers to
empowerment?’ Pedretti (2002)
Challenges
• Designed vs emergent community
– Communities are natural
– Developing VCoPs, need facilitation
• Initial design plans vs what happens in
real practice
• Dealing with problems peculiar to online
interactions
Conclusion
• Cultivating a CoP via e-CPDelt – hope or
hype?
• Hope – to build a community that would
promote CPD for teachers, by teachers?
• Hype - with little chance of success?
• Based on progress thus far, a CoP is
being cultivated and there’s hope it would
be a reality