Developing teachers' competences for designing inclusive learning experiences

Inclusive education, namely the process of providing all learners with equal educational opportunities, is a major challenge for many educational systems worldwide. In order to address this issue, a widely used framework has been developed, namely the Universal Design for Learning (UDL), which aims to provide specific educational design guidelines to ensure accessibility of all learner types to the learning environment. On the other hand, nowadays teachers are provided with ample opportunities for freely accessing a wide number of Open Educational Resources (OERs) that are available through existing OER initiatives. Within this context and following the UDL principles, teachers are expected to be able to select and transform and/or augment, OERs to fit their learners' diverse needs towards delivering inclusive learning experiences. This calls for developing specific teachers' competences that are aligned with existing competence frameworks such as the Competence Framework for Inclusive Teachers (CFIT) towards effectively engaging them in the aforementioned process. To this end, the scope of this paper is to present the design, implementation and evaluation of a teacher professional development program (PDP) aligned with CFIT for designing inclusive OERs by applying the UDL principles. The evaluation results of the teacher PDP demonstrated its added value for developing teachers' competences towards designing inclusive learning experiences for their students

¿Pueden los MOOC cerrar la brecha de oportunidades?: La contribución del diseño pedagógico social inclusivo

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are open courses made available online at no cost to the user and designed to scale up, allowing for a large number of participants. As such, they are a disruptive new development which has the potential to widen access to higher education since they contribute to social inclusion, the dissemination of knowledge and pedagogical innovation. However, assuring quality learning opportunities to all cannot be simply reduced to allowing free access to higher education. On the contrary, it implies assuring equitable opportunities for every participant to succeed in their learning experience. This goal depends on the quality of the learning design. To be successful, a massive open online learning experience has to empower learners and to facilitate a networked learning environment. In fact, MOOCs are designed to serve a high heterogeneity of profiles, with many differences regarding learning needs and preferences, prior knowledge, contexts of participation and diversity of online platforms. Personalization can play a key role in this process. In this article, the authors describe the iMOOC pedagogical model and its later derivative, the sMOOC model, and explain how they contributed to the introduction of the principles of diversity and learner equity to MOOC design, allowing for a clear differentiation of learning paths and also of virtual environments, while empowering participants to succeed in their learning experiences. Using a design-based research approach, a comparative analysis of two course iterations each representing each model is also presented and discussed.Los cursos en línea abiertos y masivos (MOOC) son cursos abiertos disponibles en línea sin costo para el usuario y diseñados para ampliarse, permitiendo un gran número de participantes. Como tales, son un nuevo desarrollo disruptivo que tiene el potencial de ampliar el acceso a la educación superior, ya que contribuyen a la inclusión social, la difusión del conocimiento y la innovación pedagógica. Sin embargo, garantizar oportunidades de aprendizaje de calidad para todos no puede reducirse simplemente a permitir el acceso gratuito a la educación superior. Por el contrario, implica asegurar oportunidades equitativas para que cada participante tenga éxito en su experiencia de aprendizaje. Este objetivo depende de la calidad del diseño de aprendizaje. Para tener éxito, una experiencia de aprendizaje en línea abierta y masiva debe empoderar a los alumnos y facilitar un entorno de aprendizaje en red. De hecho, los MOOC están diseñados para servir a una gran heterogeneidad de perfiles, con muchas diferencias con respecto a las necesidades y preferencias de aprendizaje, conocimiento previo, contextos de participación y diversidad de plataformas en línea. La personalización puede jugar un papel clave en este proceso. En este artículo, los autores describen el modelo pedagógico iMOOC y su derivada posterior, el modelo sMOOC, y explican cómo contribuyeron a la introducción de los principios de diversidad y equidad en el diseño MOOC, lo que permite una clara diferenciación de las rutas de aprendizaje y también de entornos virtuales, al tiempo que permite a los participantes tener éxito en sus experiencias de aprendizaje. Usando un enfoque de design-based research, también se presenta y discute un análisis comparativo de dos iteraciones del curso, cada una representando cada modelo

Promoting learner autonomy through multiliteracy skills development in cross-institutional exchanges

This contribution presents findings from two empirical case studies, which followed a task-based telecollaborative learning format. Participants included student teacher trainees, tutors, and language learners from colleges/universities in Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The projects aimed at promoting learner autonomy through awareness raising of modes and meaning-making online and multiliteracy skills development based on hands-on analysis of web resources and social networking tools. It was hoped that this awareness would foster the teachers' own autonomy in virtual learning environments and enable them to design tasks which—in turn—would promote learner autonomy as understood by Palfreyman (2006): the informed use of a range of interacting resources in context. We argue that this awareness is reflected in enhanced multimodal communicative competence, i.e., “the ability to understand the combined potential of various modes for making meaning” (Royce, 2002, p. 92), and multiliteracy, with the latter allowing teachers and learners to realize the potential of blended and online only settings for language acquisition purposes. Ideally then, while becoming gradually more versed in multimodality and multiliteracy, learners can also take over more control and self-direct their own learning when working online (Benson, 2001) which are also characteristics of autonomy

A review of teacher evaluation beliefs

Teacher evaluation beliefs have received a substantial amount of attention in the educational literature, but comparatively little attention from the belief research topics specially. As the driving force, evaluation resembles belief mention but lack the systemic description. On the base of the student-centered and teacher-centered philosophy, in the present paper, we provide a literature review to explore the essential factors of teacher evaluation beliefs (why, what, who, when and how), followed by the key problems of Chinese New Curriculum Reform as “why-aim”, “what-content”, “who-student-teacher relationship”, “how-method” and “when- time”. In line with the discussion of five factors of evaluation beliefs, we proposed six perspectives to inform educational researchers for the further researches

Defining teaching for a global educational world: the development of professional standards

In August 2013 the General Teaching Council for Scotland launched a revised suite of standards for the teaching profession (GTCS 2012a,b,c). These sets of standards cover initial teacher education, full registration, advanced teaching and leadership and management. There is a danger that professional standards focus on narrowly defined behavioural competences and so reinforce a technicist approach to the practice of teachers and leaders in school (Murphy, 2005). The policy emphasis in Scotland (Donaldson 2011), however, is on the use professional standards as developmental tools to enhance practice (Ingvarson, 2005). A key element in the revision process of the professional standards has been to position the role and practice of the teaching profession in a global setting thereby fostering a future orientation in the development of teaching that reflects increasing social and cultural diversity. The foundation of this suite of standards has been the agreement of a common set of values for the teaching profession: “Professional Values are at the core of Professional Standards. The educational experiences of all our learners are shaped by the values and dispositions of all those who educate them. Values are complex and the ideals by which we shape our practice as professionals” (GTCS 2012a p. 10). The set of professional values cover the ethical dimensions of professional practice such as integrity, professional commitment, trust and respect. Importantly the professional values also cover wider issues related to social justice and sustainability. However, there is a question of how we move from these being a set of espoused values to a set of ‘values-in-action’. This paper examines the potential of this set of professional standards to bring to the fore issues of social justice as a means of developing culturally responsive teaching

Lesson Study and Service Learning in Teacher Preparation

The aim of this paper is to share an teacher preparation experience that combines Lesson Study (LS) with a Service Learning methodology. This experience is interdisciplinary and includes three subjects from first-grade Childhood Education, carried out at University of Malaga since academic year 2014-2015. Within this framework, our students carry out Service Learning projects for schools in our area that are designed and developed following the LS methodology. Service Learning projects go through the following phases (Puig, J., Martín, & Batlle, 2008): 1) Preparation by the teachers involved in the project; 2) Implementation, i.e. developing the project with the students; 3) Evaluation. The implementation phase also has three sub-phases: preparation, implementation, and round-up. It is here that the LS is developed through the following phases (Soto & Pérez, 2015): 1. Define the problem; 2. Co-operatively design an experimental lesson and its observation process; 3. First experimental lesson; 4. Analyse and review the lesson; 5. Second experimental lesson; 6. Analysis and drafting of conclusions; 7. Presentation in extended context. We were able to gather evidence on how students teachers resolved different cognitive conflicts during the process. We saw how the LS process, with its phases and cooperative work, allows them to combine creativity and unique talents in a common project that acquires meaning and relevance thanks to Service Learning. This provides a framework that facilitates the construction of solid structures related to the meaning of the educational process, and which can be used to recalibrate what it means to be a Childhood School teacher: a creative, relevant, complex experience that requires recreating the knowledge and experience that students bring with them to the University about what it means to be a Childhood School teacher.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Teaching geography for a sustainable world: a case study of a secondary school in Spain

Geography has a major responsibility in delivering education for sustainable development (ESD), especially because the geographical concepts of place and space are key dimensions for the analysis and pursuit of sustainability. This paper presents the results of a research that investigated how the teaching of geography in secondary education in Catalonia (Spain) contributes to ESD. For the development of this research it was explored what is involved in understanding and resolving issues about sustainable development and how geography teachers might best conceptualize and teach in this new domain. As a result of this theoretical reflection it has been defined a proposal or model for reorienting the geography curriculum from the basis of the ESD paradigm, which is based and structured in four groups of criteria and recommendations as follows: recommendations for defining competences and learning objectives; criteria for selecting geographical contents and themes; criteria for selecting geographical areas and for the use of scale; and finally, recommendations for choosing the most suitable teaching and learning approach

Integrating modes of policy analysis and strategic management practice : requisite elements and dilemmas

There is a need to bring methods to bear on public problems that are inclusive, analytic, and quick. This paper describes the efforts of three pairs of academics working from three different though complementary theoretical foundations and intervention backgrounds (i.e., ways of working) who set out together to meet this challenge. Each of the three pairs had conducted dozens of interventions that had been regarded as successful or very successful by the client groups in dealing with complex policy and strategic problems. One approach focused on leadership issues and stakeholders, another on negotiating competitive strategic intent with attention to stakeholder responses, and the third on analysis of feedback ramifications in developing policies. This paper describes the 10 year longitudinal research project designed to address the above challenge. The important outcomes are reported: the requisite elements of a general integrated approach and the enduring puzzles and tensions that arose from seeking to design a wide-ranging multi-method approach