ICT Professional Learning Past

Most curriculum guides emphasise the centrality of pedagogical issues to effective use of ICT; however, over the last two decades it is probable that most of teacher time assigned to learning about ICT has been absorbed in learning to use the technology rather than how to apply it in the curriculum. This feature of ICT professional learning is exacerbated by the constant need to upgrade skills as new applications appear. Obviously, until these skills are mastered it is impossible to apply the technology to teaching and learning. But the separation of how to use the technology from why it should be used is a major issue.

The problem of learning how to use the technology is compounded by the limited access most teachers have to ICT for their own learning and student learning. Teachers can find themselves tantalised by the potential of new technology but unable to bring this potential to fruition due to lack of access to the technology for themselves and their students.

To address this issue and provide an overview of the range of teacher skills and understandings that are needed, a number of systems have developmental surveys for teachers. Examples of these are EdCap[ii] in South Australia and e-Potential[iii] in Victoria, which identify the learning that is appropriate to individual teachers.

Unfortunately, but understandably, these detailed lists of skills have tended to be the major focus of ICT learning for many teachers. The imperative to learn the skills can easily displace the more important and in the longer term more relevant discussion of how the tools can be applied to enhance learning. A focus on ICT 'standards' can easily be a serious distraction for teachers.

Workshops that provide hands-on training in the use of ICT have been widely used. They are often external to the school because of the need to access reliable and appropriate equipment. The workshops are frequently delivered by IT experts who have a good understanding of how to use the software and hardware, but who may have less knowledge of the curriculum application of these tools. Despite their frequent use, there is widespread recognition that workshops and similar activities have limited impact.

An extensive study of literature conducted for the New Zealand Department of Education found that '... it is generally accepted that listening to inspiring speakers or attending one-off workshops rarely changes teacher practice sufficiently to impact on student outcomes.'[iv] The New Zealand report went on to provide evidence for the higher effectiveness of professional learning communities:

'Effective professional communities were characterised by two conditions. Firstly, participants were supported to process new understandings and their implications for teaching. Sometimes this involved challenging problematic beliefs and testing the efficacy of competing ideas. Expertise external to the group brought new perspective and assisted in challenging prevailing dialogical norms.

Secondly, the focus was on analysing the impact of teaching on student learning. This focus was assisted by grounding discussions in artifacts representing student learning and by teachers having high but realistic expectations of students and believing they could make a difference. Norms of collective responsibility for student learning replaced those of individualism and autonomy, focused on teachers. [v]

In other words, the relevance of the teacher's learning to their classroom practice is critical if it is to have a lasting impact. It is difficult for workshops to be relevant to teachers' current curriculum needs.

It has seemed logical that teachers and leaders are first introduced to new technologies and subsequently integrate the technologies into their teaching. This sequence enables educators to understand the technologies' capabilities prior to integration. This approach to professional learning for ICT has been widely used for several decades, both in large scale system wide digital literacy projects and in countless school based staff development workshops and conferences. This apparently logical approach, however, means that educators learn about the technical aspects of an ICT solution separately from seeing the need in their teaching. Some educators readily make the leap from discovery of an ICT capability to being able to integrate it in the classroom. Many others do not, as evidenced by the relatively slow integration of ICT into curriculum delivery discussed above.

An alternative approach is for teachers to focus on curriculum outcomes and to learn about ICT applications that have the potential to directly support them. Relatively strong integration of ICT into some secondary subjects illustrates this point. In many senior secondary art, music and design classes ICT is well integrated into programs. In each of these subjects, applications have been integrated as basic productivity tools that provide powerful enrichment to learning. Teachers were able to see how these tools contributed to student productivity and were motivated to undertake complex learning in order to gain the benefits in their teaching.

On a more modest scale the ubiquitous word processor has been mastered to at least some degree by nearly all teachers because of its obvious direct benefits to students’ writing as well as for teachers’ personal productivity and learning. Most of the learning about using word processing in teaching has been informal and is most effective when it is just-in-time learning. This might occur when, for example, a teacher discussing the need for students to review and revise their writing is shown by a colleague how to use the track-changes function in Microsoft Word. The teacher has a long standing interest in encouraging students to review and edit their work and to respond to feedback. The discovery of the track-change function is fortuitous for the teacher and likely to be enthusiastically embraced.

These example illustrates a key discovery in observing teachers' ICT learning - that teacher motivation to learn and the quality of what they learn is closely linked to the connection of their ICT learning to classroom practice and student outcomes.

[ii] Teacher Educational ICT Capabilities Survey (EdCap). 2009. Department of Education and Children’s Services. (South Australia) Recovered on 13/3/09.

http://www.decs.sa.gov.au/learningtechnologies/pages/ProfessionalLearning/edcap

[iii] E-Potential. 2008. Department of Education and Early Childhood Development. (Victoria) Recovered on 13/3/09.

http://epotential.education.vic.gov.au/index.php

[iv] Timperley, Helen. Wilson, Aaron. Barrar, Heather. Fung, Irene. Teacher Professional Learning and Development Best Evidence Synthesis Iteration [BES]. University of Auckland.

[v] Timperley, Helen. Wilson, Aaron. Barrar, Heather. Fung, Irene. Teacher Professional Learning and Development Best Evidence Synthesis Iteration [BES]. University of Auckland.