A Self-Organizing Network of Schools that Transform Teacher and Student Learning through Socio-Technical Co-evolution

Scaling up educational innovations through networks has attracted much interest in diverse research and education policy communities. Literature on scaling are often associated with top-down or partnership models of change, and the goals, resources and technology tools used are generally defined and developed by stakeholders outside of schools. This paper reports on the sustained efforts of a self-organizing network of special needs schools in Hong Kong that has worked together for more than a decade to realize the vision of providing the same educational opportunities to children with various degrees of learning disability. The analysis focuses on how their engagement in the development of a collaborative platform for teacher learning started a journey of socio-technical co-evolution that resulted in exponential scaling of the innovation both qualitatively and quantitatively. The evolution trajectory of this network shows characteristics and susceptibilities similar to those in the socio-technical innovation literature.published_or_final_versio

Collaborating to transform and improve education systems: A playbook for family-school engagement

This playbook on family-school collaboration makes the case for why family engagement is essential for education systems transformation and why families and schools must have a shared understanding of what a good quality education looks like. By providing evidence-based strategies from around the world and other hands-on tools that school leaders and partners can adopt and use in their local contexts, it aims to help leapfrog education inequality so that all young people can have a 21st-century education

Developing the scales on evaluation beliefs of student teachers

The purpose of the study reported in this paper was to investigate the validity and the reliability of a newly developed questionnaire named ‘Teacher Evaluation Beliefs’ (TEB). The framework for developing items was provided by the two models. The first model focuses on Student-Centered and Teacher-Centered beliefs about evaluation while the other centers on five dimensions (what/ who/ when/ why/ how). The validity and reliability of the new instrument was investigated using both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis study (n=446). Overall results indicate that the two-factor structure is more reasonable than the five-factor one. Further research needs additional items about the latent dimensions “what” ”who” ”when” ”why” “how” for each existing factor based on Student-centered and Teacher-centered approaches

Invention Pedagogy – The Finnish Approach to Maker Education

This collection, edited and written by the leading scholars and experts of innovation and maker education in Finland, introduces invention pedagogy, a research-based Finnish approach for teaching and learning through multidisciplinary, creative design and making processes in formal school settings. The book outlines the background of, and need for, invention pedagogy, providing various perspectives for designing and orchestrating the invention process while discusses what can be learnt and how learning happens through inventing. In addition, the book introduces the transformative, school-level innovator agency needed for developing whole schools as innovative communities. Featuring informative case study examples, the volume explores the theoretical, pedagogical, and methodological implications for the research and practice of invention pedagogy in order to further the field and bring new perspectives, providing a new vision for schools for decades to come. Intermixing the results of cutting-edge research and best practice within STEAM-education and invention pedagogy, this book will be essential reading for researchers, students, and scholars of design and technology education, STEM education, teacher education, and learning sciences more broadly

Teacher and Technology: The Computer In Education

This article is results of the research carried out between the years 2000 and 2001 in a Chilean high school, with the objective of studying the role of the computer in teaching. The focus was to understand and to describe the technologies used for teaching in high school, identifying them and seeing how they operate, their possibilities and limitations and the contradictions that may emerge as part of the natural development of the activity. The approach used for the methodological design was the cultural-historical Activity Theory, this being the reason why the investigation was structured in two phases: (a) the cultural-historical reconstruction of the teaching activity and (b) the empirical description of pedagogical practice in a specific context.This article is results of the research carried out between the years 2000 and 2001 in a Chilean high school, with the objective of studying the role of the computer in teaching. The focus was to understand and to describe the technologies used for teaching in high school, identifying them and seeing how they operate, their possibilities and limitations and the contradictions that may emerge as part of the natural development of the activity. The approach used for the methodological design was the cultural-historical Activity Theory, this being the reason why the investigation was structured in two phases: (a) the cultural-historical reconstruction of the teaching activity and (b) the empirical description of pedagogical practice in a specific context

Look, Think, Act: Using Critical Action Research to Sustain Reform in Complex Teaching/Learning Ecologies

This paper argues that educators interested in sustainability should look to complexity science for guiding principles. When we view our classrooms and campuses as living, dynamic ecologies, we can, as insiders, make sense of what might otherwise seem chaotic or meaningless. This perspective enables us not only to describe and explain what is happening around us, but also to use our findings to influence emerging patterns across our classrooms, campuses, or our larger communities. We suggest that educators use a Look, Think, Act cycle recommended by Ernie Stringer to encourage and support sustainable school reform

Teacher and Technology: The Computer In Education

This article is results of the research carried out between the years 2000 and 2001 in a Chilean high school, with the objective of studying the role of the computer in teaching. The focus was to understand and to describe the technologies used for teaching in high school, identifying them and seeing how they operate, their possibilities and limitations and the contradictions that may emerge as part of the natural development of the activity.The approach used for the methodological design was the cultural-historical Activity Theory, this being the reason why the investigation was structured in two phases: (a) the cultural-historical reconstruction of the teaching activity and (b) the empirical description of pedagogical practice in a specific context.This article is results of the research carried out between the years 2000 and 2001 in a Chilean high school, with the objective of studying the role of the computer in teaching. The focus was to understand and to describe the technologies used for teaching in high school, identifying them and seeing how they operate, their possibilities and limitations and the contradictions that may emerge as part of the natural development of the activity.The approach used for the methodological design was the cultural-historical Activity Theory, this being the reason why the investigation was structured in two phases: (a) the cultural-historical reconstruction of the teaching activity and (b) the empirical description of pedagogical practice in a specific context

Invention Pedagogy – The Finnish Approach to Maker Education

This collection, edited and written by the leading scholars and experts of innovation and maker education in Finland, introduces invention pedagogy, a research-based Finnish approach for teaching and learning through multidisciplinary, creative design and making processes in formal school settings. The book outlines the background of, and need for, invention pedagogy, providing various perspectives for designing and orchestrating the invention process while discusses what can be learnt and how learning happens through inventing. In addition, the book introduces the transformative, school-level innovator agency needed for developing whole schools as innovative communities. Featuring informative case study examples, the volume explores the theoretical, pedagogical, and methodological implications for the research and practice of invention pedagogy in order to further the field and bring new perspectives, providing a new vision for schools for decades to come. Intermixing the results of cutting-edge research and best practice within STEAM-education and invention pedagogy, this book will be essential reading for researchers, students, and scholars of design and technology education, STEM education, teacher education, and learning sciences more broadly