Replacing Strategic Development Planning with Teacher Collaboration, with a little help from online tools
[presented at ACEC08 Conference]
Abstract
School leaders face a daunting task in coming to terms with the digital revolution. A large and diverse set of issues has to be dealt with. The issues are interdependent, the state of play in terms of technology and learning goals is evolving rapidly, the home-school IT interaction is complex, not to mention budget and building issues. Elaborate Strategic Planning has failed to address this task on a school-wide basis. There is a renewed attention to learning-organisation development in which teachers focus on specific learning outcomes, rather than the elements of a complex Strategic Development Plan. In this approach to staff development, teacher collaboration is central. And serendipitously, collaboration is being supported by the wave of new Web 2.0 tools. This presentation discusses these broad issues of school development strategy and then briefly relates these to some grassroots school tactics for development, demonstrating some online tools that are being used to support professional networking among teachers.
Problems in ICT development
Over the last ten to fifteen years ICT development has been a major focus in most Australian schools. Huge amounts of money have been spent, education systems have launched major development programs yet there has been a very mixed bag of results. This is not surprising because the task is exceptionally difficult. The purpose for which schools are engaging in ICT development is not clear. Is it to provide students with a basic set of standardised skills? Is it to provide students with skills they will need in the workforce? Or is it to facilitate a change in the nature of the school curriculum towards a more constructivist problem solving approach to learning?
But possibly the greatest area of confusion is that many of the main players and leaders in this are working towards different purposes. Aviram and Talmi from the Centre for Futurism in Education, Israel, have suggested that two mind-sets dominate the thinking of leaders in ICT development: those of Technocrats and Reformists. Technocrats mainly see the technical aspects of ICT and are in love with the use of technology and see it as an unambiguously good thing, but they see it as simply delivering the traditional curriculum in a more engaging manner, and fail to reflect on whether the nature of knowledge and learning may be changing. Reformists are a smaller group who see technology as a tool that will inevitably transform education in radical ways - an answer to their progressive dreams for education. When reading system-wide plans for the integration of technology in schools it is clear that the Technocrats are in the ascendancy. There is little reference in them to the specific benefits that will flow from the use of the technology. Aviram and Talmi are critical about the Reformists too, who they say are often romantics who believe that powerful technologies like the internet will of themselves sweep away old ways of learning. But as a study by elearning Europa for the European Commission, points out, ICT can be used to reinforce traditional ways or support a change in pedagogical methods. Its reformist influence is not inevitable at all.
Strategic Planning
In this confused environment the first choice of administration has often been Strategic Planning, a logical process where an elaborate cycle of Needs Analysis leading to a Vision, then Goals and Objectives are defined and Action Plans are developed and are followed up by Evaluation. Schmoker and others claim, with considerable support, that Strategic Planning is a costly failure. Because,
‘strategic planning promotes an often thoughtless, hasty commitment to a dizzying abundance of (so-called) goals, initiatives, and projects. This may explain the speculation that less than 10% of what gets planned actually gets implemented.’
Large systems are attracted to Strategic Planning because it deals with, or appears to deal with, very complex systems. However as the evidence Schmoker assembles suggests, and a large amount of anecdotal evidence from principals and teachers says, Strategic Planning overwhelms participants with detail and irrelevant business. As Schmoker bitingly puts it,
‘…strategic planning presumes that the most vital, high-leverage thinking is done primarily by “planners” before the school year begins, rather than by teaching practitioners throughout the school year.’
Staff development under this regime tends to focus on workshops where teachers are trained to use the tools and to apply them. The workshops are often a long way from the classroom in terms of location, control and purpose.
Learning Communities
The solution that this paper takes up is the notion of learning communities. The concept of a learning community is very simple. Many observers have noted that teachers are highly influenced by their peers. They learn best when they engage in high level discussion, directed towards teaching, that is focused on student performance. Collaboration is certainly not unique to teachers but may be particularly important in teaching which suffers from imprecise goals and imprecise methods of achieving them. It is a messy business. But when teachers focus on what they want students to be able to do, and they compare notes and outcomes with colleagues, they tend to be successful in improving their skills - and in student achievement. Schmoker provides research evidence to support this.
A learning community focus in school development is not a denial of the importance of leadership; in fact it depends on it. There needs to be single-minded leadership focus on student performance and on grass-roots teacher development based on collaboration in learning communities. This grassroots approach to learning is different from workshop learning: the former is focused on the classroom and informal meetings and training while the latter is focused on formal training away from the classroom.
Learning Communities and ICT
So what has this to do with the integration of ICT into the curriculum? The case was made above that ICT is a particularly complex area of development. A particular problem in using ICT is that new users have to learn quite difficult technical skills as well as methodological ones and the former can dominate the latter. Putting the focus on what we want students to be able to do (with the help of technology) can go some way to shifting the balance to the more important issues.
If, for example, some teachers want students to communicate powerful stories about their lives, they can turn to digital storytelling as a good way to achieve this. If they spend time thinking about what makes a powerful film story - images, voice, music etc - they can build a sense of what they are looking for in terms of expression. When they then turn to the ‘how’, the learning about the software is focused on what they want the students to achieve. Students’ first products are views against the teachers’ prior goals. The more the focus is on what student can do rather than how to use the tools the better. This approach contrasts with the workshop approach that tends to focus attention on the technical skills involved. The key process element is collaboration.
Social Networking Tools
If it is accepted that collaboration is an important element of teacher development, there are now some powerful and flexible online tools to support and encourage collaboration among teachers. The Social Networking phenomenon has engaged a large proportion of the young in online networking via sites like MySpace and Facebook. The Horizon Report 2007 on new technology impacting the education sector identified social networking as a major trend that will have a significant impact during 2008. The report Social Software for Learning 2007 said that in relation to the VET sector in Australia, social software is a major opportunity for student and staff learning. me.edu.au is an adaptation of social networking tools to professional networking. Teachers establish their profile, connect to colleagues with similar interests, join communities of interest, and express themselves via whiteboard and blog entries. A group of people can form a Community for their own specific purposes, share information and observations in a simple and flexible environment. The experience of social networking is that it is not just for maintaining remote networks. It works very well between people who meet each other face to face regularly as well as online. This type of tool seems to offer fruitful ways for teachers to meet and share ideas on their work.
Teaching is unusually isolating work with little time to meet colleagues. The online world offers new ways to do this, reinforcing the success of local learning communities to pursue observable goals rather than pursuing other people’s goals in strategic plans.
Aviram R Talmi, D, 2004 ‘Are you a Technocrat A Reformist or a Holist?’ eLearning Europa, recovered 1/3/05 http://www.elearningeuropa.info/index.php?page=doc&doc_id=4965&doclng=6&menuzone=1 e
Learning Europa, Study of Innovative Learning Environments in School Education, recovered from http://www.elearningeuropa.info/directory/index.php?page=doc&doc_id=5947&doclng=6
Flexible Learning Framework, Social Software for Learning Final Report, 2007, recovered from www.flexiblelearning.net.au/…/Final_Report_Social_Software_for_Learning17April_summ.pdf 23/2/08
me.edu.au, http://me.edu.au New
Media Consortium, Horizon Report 2007 recovered from http://www.nmc.org/about 23/2/08
Schmoker M, Tipping Point: From Feckless Reform to Substantive Instructional Improvement, recovered 18/2/08 from http://mikeschmoker.com/tipping-point.html
2 Comments
Hi John,
I attended your ACEC presentation. I agree I see a great value in learning communities as a way in which peer conversations can enhance the sharing of tacit and explicit knowledge. a Grassroots community of maths teachers have proven this with highly productive workshops bringing together teachers with a shared recognition of the need for improving student outcomes and also shared needs for increasing competency and confidence in teaching practice. We are delving now into online communities and I see great value in social networking. Unfortunately at the moment most sites do not offer all the elements I see as being important to effective communication and collaboration. These include: a discussion forum, a wiki (for open editing of content) and a file repository for resources.
So far grou.ps and Ning offer quite good features, with Grou.ps pipping Ning with the inclusion of a more functional wiki. I think the potential is great, particularly in remote communities as is they case for much of the NT.
We will be a blended community with f2f and online modes of interaction. I think this is valuable with conversations that can be transferred from one medium to the other.
I think there is also potential in broadening the use of the online environment (I like to term it an e-professional learning community or ePLC) to include personal learning pages that allow a teacher to take control and monitor (and actually engage in) their personal professional development. Here they can track achievement, change and improvement, collate reflections from observations made of the practice of others (e.g. videos of teachers trying out pedagogies or new content in their classrooms or lessons stored in the community repository).
I agree that there is high value in the application of online communities for teachers involved in ICT education. I see that in addition to the potential for sharing of ICT integration and application strategies, the actual involvement in a leanring community with its associated use of wikis forums, etc. means that the teachers will upskilsl and be more able and likely to introduce these increasingly socially relevant tools into the classroom.
Regards,
Marcel Bruyn
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