The potential of mobile phones to transform teacher professional development

Futures thinking is used by governments to consider long-term strategic approaches and develop policies and practices that are potentially resilient to future uncertainty. English in Action (EIA), arguably the world’s largest English language teacher professional development (TPD) project, used futures thinking to author possible, probable and preferable future scenarios to solve the project’s greatest technological challenge: how to deliver audio-visual TPD materials and hundreds of classroom audio resources to 75,000 teachers by 2017. Authoring future scenarios and engaging in possibility thinking (PT) provided us with a taxonomy of question-posing and question-responding that assisted the project team in being creative. This process informed the successful pilot testing of a mobile phone-based technology kit to deliver TPD resources within an open distance learning (ODL) platform. Taking the risk and having the foresight to trial mobile phones in remote rural areas with teachers and students led to unforeseen innovation. As a result EIA is currently using a mobile phone-based technology kit with 12,500 teachers to improve the English language proficiency of 700,000 students. As the project scales up in its third and final phase, we are using the new technology kit—known as the ‘trainer in your pocket’—to foster a ‘quiet revolution’ in the provision of teacher professional development at scale to an additional 67,500 teachers and 10 million students

Creating interaction in online learning: a case study

This paper uses the case‐study method to examine detailed data related to student and tutor usage of an asynchronous discussion board as an interactive communication forum during a first‐semester associate degree course in applied psychology at the City University of Hong Kong. The paper identifies ‘what works’ in relation to discussion board use, demonstrating how students might gradually create an online community of their own, but only if prompted in a timely and appropriate way by the course structure. It also identifies three distinct phases in online interaction and suggests these might, to some extent, be mediated by assessment tasks

Communities of practice and virtual learning communities : benefits, barriers and success factors

A virtual Community of Practice (CoP) is a network of individuals who share a domain of interest about which they communicate online. The practitioners share resources (for example experiences, problems and solutions, tools, methodologies). Such communication results in the improvement of the knowledge of each participant in the community and contributes to the development of the knowledge within the domain. A virtual learning community may involve the conduct of original research but it is more likely that its main purpose is to increase the knowledge of participants, via formal education or professional development. Virtual learning communities could have learning as their main goal or the elearning could be generated as a side effect. Virtual communities of practice (CoPs) and virtual learning communities are becoming widespread within higher education institutions (HEIs) thanks to technological developments which enable increased communication, interactivity among participants and incorporation of collaborative pedagogical models, specifically through information communications technologies (ICTs) They afford the potential for the combination of synchronous and asynchronous communication, access to -and from- geographically isolated communities and international information sharing. Clearly there are benefits to be derived from sharing and learning within and outwith HEIs. There is a sense of connectedness, of shared passion and a deepening of knowledge to be derived from ongoing interaction. Knowledge development can be continuous, cyclical and fluid. However, barriers exist in virtual CoPs and these are defined by the authors and illustrated with quotes from academic staff who have been involved in CoPs. Critical success factors (CSFs) for a virtual CoP are discussed. These include usability of technology; trust in, and acceptance of, ICTs in communication; a sense of belonging among members; paying attention to cross-national and cross-cultural dimensions of the CoP; shared understandings; a common sense of purpose; use of netiquette and user-friendly language and longevity. The authors recognise the enormous potential for the development of CoPs through e-mail discussion lists and discussion boards but have themselves experienced the difficulties inherent in initiating such a community. These are corroborated and illustrated with text from interviews with academic staff. Much of the literature on CoPs emanates from outside Europe, despite the fact that e-learning articles have a large diffusion around Europe. The authors suggest further exploration of this topic by identifying and studying CoPs and virtual learning communities across EU countries

By design : negotiating flexible learning in the built environment discipline

The term ‘flexible education’ is now firmly entrenched within Australian higher education discourse, yet the term is a contested one imbued with a multiplicity of meanings. This paper describes a process designed to elucidate how the idea of flexible education can be translated into teaching models that are informed by the specific demands of disciplinary contexts. The process uses a flexible learning ‘matching’ tool to articulate the understandings and preferences of students and academics of the Built Environment to bridge the gap between student expectations of flexibility and their teacher’s willingness and ability to provide that flexibility within the limits of the pedagogical context and teaching resources. The findings suggest an informed starting point for educators in the Built Environment and other creative disciplines from which to traverse the complexities inherent in negotiating flexibility in an increasingly digital world

Isolated learners from diverse language backgrounds in the mainstream primary classroom: A sociocultural perspective

This paper focuses on the linguistic and cultural (‘languaculture’, Agar, 1994) challenges faced by learners from diverse language backgrounds (DLB) in New Zealand schools. It describes the typical learning context in primary classrooms terms of interactional, instructional, and cognitive dimensions. It then presents vignettes of four DLB learners and explains their relative competence in terms of Cummin’s (1981) distinction between BICS and CALP (Basic Interactional Communication Skills and Cognitive-Academic Language Proficiency). It goes on to discuss the extent to which such proficiency is the result of linguistic and cultural distance, and how that distance might be bridged by applying key constructs from sociocultural theory, and the implementation of Individual Languaculture Plans for DLB learners. The paper concludes with discussing the issue of where responsibility lies for coping with the challenges face by DLB learners

Maximising Social Interactions and Effectiveness within Distance Learning Courses: Cases from Construction

Advanced Internet technologies have revolutionised the delivery of distance learning education. As a result, the physical proximity between learners and the learning providers has become less important. However, whilst the pervasiveness of these technological developments has reached unprecedented levels, critics argue that the student learning experience is still not as effective as conventional face-to-face delivery. In this regard, surveys of distance learning courses reveal that there is often a lack of social interaction attributed to this method of delivery, which tends to leave learners feeling isolated due to a lack of engagement, direction, guidance and support by the tutor. This paper defines and conceptualises this phenomenon by investigating the extent to which distance-learning programmes provide the social interactions of an equivalent traditional classroom setting. In this respect, two distance learning case studies were investigated, covering the UK and Slovenian markets respectively. Research findings identified that delivery success is strongly dependent on the particular context to which the specific distance learning course is designed, structured and augmented. It is therefore recommended that designers of distance learning courses should balance the tensions and nuances associated with commercial viability and pedagogic effectiveness

An investigation of transnational higher education in Hong Kong : developing transnational intercultural communities of practice

Driven by globalisation and neoliberal agendas (GATE, 2000; WTO, 2015), Transnational Higher Education (TNHE) has emerged to meet the educational demand of markets around the world, including those in Hong Kong (Lo, 2017; UK Higher Education International Unit, 2016). In view of the rapid development of TNHE over the past decade, focus has turned to quality and the purpose of TNHE (Leung and Walters, 2013a, 2013b), with scholars advocating the development of throuintercultural collaboration and interaction in order to bring distinctive value to TNHE (Djerasimovic, 2014; Keay et al., 2014; Montgomery, 2014).This study aims to enable a new understanding of the phenomenon of TNHE in Hong Kong, with particular focus on how different TNHE models of provision offer intercultural experiences to staff and students and how they develop interculturality, through intercultural communities of practice (Keay et al., 2014). The conceptual framework of this study is built on the concept of communities of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). The unique nature of communities of practice as a social form of learning is essential to the development of interculturality in TNHE communities (Kim, 2009) and presents a new perspective through which to interpret TNHE. This study adopts a qualitative method and is set within the interpretive paradigm. Case study approach have been adopted to include universities from the United Kingdom and the USA delivering TNHE programmes in Hong Kong, under the models of branch campus, joint delivery and franchised delivery. Prior to the data collection, a review of documents was carried out to explore the institutional mission and internationalisation strategies of the selected universities, and to contextualise the case studies. Individual interviews and focus group interviews with TNHE staff and students were conducted to explore their perceptions of intercultural interaction in TNHE.The findings of the study reveal that diverse models of transnational education, namely: branch campus, joint delivery and franchised delivery, have a significant impact on the development of perceived intercultural communities of practice. In these models, members of the communities of practice are engaged in diverse rhythms of intercultural interaction, according to which distinctive communities of practice are formed with different forms of interculturality. The study also shows the distinctive value of TNHE in developing positional advantage for graduates in the global labour market, through the nurturing of intercultural and professional competence (British Council, 2013; Mellors-Bourne et al., 2015; Jones, 2013).Central to this study is the innovative contribution in reconstructing the framework of communities of practice, to develop the concept of transnational interculturality in TNHE communities of practice. This concept illustrates a set of processes of intercultural interaction between TNHE communities of practice, which may contribute to the long term benefits and distinctive value of TNHE as a form of education