Reimagining teacher professional development : communities of practice

Communities of practice (COP) are groups of people who share a concern or passion for something they do, and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. The presentation broadly covers how to facilitate new learning methods through teacher forums as a community of practice in India

Reimagining teacher professional development : communities of practice

Communities of practice (COP) are groups of people who share a concern or passion for something they do, and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. The presentation broadly covers how to facilitate new learning methods through teacher forums as a community of practice in India

Domination and emancipation : a framework for assessing ICT and education programs

At IT for Change (ITfC), which works with ICTs and education, one focus has been to examine the capacity of digital technologies to support the goals of social justice and equity. ITfC has attempted to develop and strengthen understanding of the role that digital technologies can play in promoting a progressive education agenda. Results suggest that ICT enabled education programs with public (local) ownership and decentralized implementation are more effective in gaining support and engagement of teachers. The paper draws data from ICT in education projects, relating program design to the manner in which it supports teacher agency and autonomy

School leader – academician or administrator?

s work sites became larger and complex with the industrial revolution, Fredrick Taylor envisioned a new class of employees whose primary responsibility was to maximise output from given human (‘workers’) and material resources, giving birth to ‘scientific management’.Management is increasingly considered a body of knowledge and practice, a process comprising of planning, organising,staffing, directing and controlling 2 . Large school system have come into being, which present complexities, requiring considerable energies on administration or management 3 activities at both school and system levels. A ‘school head’thus is seen to need management skills – how to make school plans, organize required resources to implement these, assess implementation and feedback for planning the next period. This skill set is seen as a full time specialisation distinct from ‘academic’ tasks like teaching learning,preparing to teach, teacher support etc. Many schools suffer poor management, which affects institutional effectiveness- absence of rigorous long term and short term (annual)planning impacts focus and alignment of work of teachers,poor organising impacts implementation, poor monitoring and feedback mechanisms affect the school’s learning fromits work/experiences which in turn affects planning. Thus every school needs a good manager

SP5 - Collaborative co-creation of OER by teacher educators and teachers in India : a participatory action research study

15,000 teachers from 6,000 schools trained to participate in “Subject Teachers Forums (STF)” for sharing experiences and seeking ideas and resources. Afterwards, they networked with each other through subject specific google groups. Teachers share ideas, experiences and resources; mentor and seek help of peers; explore new areas of learning, and network with teacher educators and state functionaries in the STF programme. This presentation provides a review of the study as part of Research in Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D)

Professional learning communities : a participatory approach to OER in Karnataka

The presentation reviews action research and capacity building with a group of 67 Mathematics, Science and Social Science Government High School teachers in Karnataka, India, who are part of a larger professional learning community of teachers created by the ‘Subject Teacher Forum’ in Research in Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) program. Policy recommendations include: 1) Implement Professional Learning Communities (PLC) approach to teacher professional development in in-service teacher education; 2) Implement the Collaboration OER Adoption (COA) model for OER adoption; 3) Copyright policy should make open licensing as the default; 4) Implement a free and open technology environment

Computer learning programs in schools moving from BOOT models to an integrated approach : perspective paper on ICTs in education

The paper is written primarily for decision makers in the education department regarding computer learning programs in schools (CLPS). Its focus is on the 'rollout' aspects of programmatic design. It analyzes the planning and implementation processes of CLPS in the Indian public education system. Putting computers in schools, and providing 'training and technical support' through an animator external to the school has by and large been a failure. CLPS design needs to be directed by those who understand the system well and work with it – educationists, including teacher educators and teachers, at both the program design level and the school levels

School leader – academician or administrator?

s work sites became larger and complex with the industrial revolution, Fredrick Taylor envisioned a new class of employees whose primary responsibility was to maximise output from given human (‘workers’) and material resources, giving birth to ‘scientific management’.Management is increasingly considered a body of knowledge and practice, a process comprising of planning, organising,staffing, directing and controlling 2 . Large school system have come into being, which present complexities, requiring considerable energies on administration or management 3 activities at both school and system levels. A ‘school head’thus is seen to need management skills – how to make school plans, organize required resources to implement these, assess implementation and feedback for planning the next period. This skill set is seen as a full time specialisation distinct from ‘academic’ tasks like teaching learning,preparing to teach, teacher support etc. Many schools suffer poor management, which affects institutional effectiveness- absence of rigorous long term and short term (annual)planning impacts focus and alignment of work of teachers,poor organising impacts implementation, poor monitoring and feedback mechanisms affect the school’s learning fromits work/experiences which in turn affects planning. Thus every school needs a good manager

ICTs in school education : outsourced versus integrated approach

Academics are increasingly using the Internet as an aid to teaching, encouraging students to retrieve information and undertake research for assignments. Use of research produced in the region appears to be discipline specific with Health and Life Sciences making greater use of outputs from the region. However, universities are not achieving research and publishing objectives due to lack of awareness of availability, and inaccessibility of research resources and platforms for dissemination. Future interventions need to address existing constraints, concerns and fears regarding Open Access, with establishment of a southern African regional publishing and dissemination platform that has appropriate bandwidth and infrastructure

Teacher professional learning communities: A collaborative OER adoption approach in Karnataka, India

This chapter analyses collaborative Open Educational Resources (OER) adoption amongst Indian school teachers by examining the enabling and constraining techno-social, techno-pedagogical and sociocultural factors in an education context characterised by (1) low information and communication technologies (ICT) use in schools; (2) a “textbook culture” in which teachers often act as simply “content transmitters” of officially prescribed texts; and (3) diverse linguistic challenges, in which predominately English language OER may not always be relevant. The study addressed the following research question: Can a collaborative, “bottom-up” approach by teachers working together to create, adapt and share contextually appropriate resources provide a model of OER adoption? This study adopted a mixed-methods approach – primarily through action research – in which the research team collaborated with 67 teachers and teacher educators on an OER adoption process. The team worked with the teachers between June 2013 and December 2015, utilising a combination of face-to-face workshops (19 in total), questionnaires, focus group discussions and online interactions. The participants were selected from different districts of Karnataka state, representing diverse geographic areas of the state and three subject disciplines: mathematics (26), science (18) and social science (23). The impact this collaboration had on teacher practices was compared with a Comparable group made up of 124 teachers who did not participate in the research intervention. Data analysis suggests that teachers are able to use digital methods to adopt OER and to contextualise (revise) OER to suit their needs, if given appropriate training. Their techno-social skills were advanced through greater knowledge and experience with digitally mediated collaborative OER activity. Their techno-pedagogical efficacy improved through greater networking with other colleagues and a sense of openness to having their materials adapted and revised, though teachers acknowledged that linguistic and quality challenges remained. The collaborative OER adoption approach also raised teachers’ sociocultural knowledge concerning copyright and contextually relevant OER. In addition, the OER engagement processes have aided teacher professional development by building a collaborative environment with peers and introducing them to a multiplicity of educational resources. The authors recommend that state education authorities implement a professional learning community approach to teacher professional development within in-service teacher education, implement a collaborative model for OER adoption, suggest that copyright regulations should position open licensing as the default, and implement a Free Open Source Software-based ICT programme in school education.</p