56 research outputs found
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Online communities
âOur online community provides a dynamic forum for you to discuss current topics and concerns with the wider education community.â
This quote is taken from the Teachernet website [ ], but could be claimed to apply to any number of education sites. Increasingly, online content is being complemented by with opportunities for readers to interact with each other or participate in debate. This article will look at the proliferation of such âonline communitiesâ. It will consider how they might be used to support teachers and school managers, how they might be most effectively used and how âvirtualâ communication complements and overlaps with the âreal worldâ. Finally it challenges the very notion of this dichotomy.
What then is an online community? Simply it is community, a collection of people, who are communicating or working together online. Often the term is used to describe the software or online space â âClick here to enter our communityâ â but if it is a true âcommunityâ then it must involve a defined membership, however loose that definition
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Trainee teachersâ engagement in a cross-curricular news project: impact on professional identity
On 7th September at BERA, the above ITTE members presented the findings from their ITTE evaluation project, funded by the TDA into the impact of the BBC News School Report project on trainee teachers.
In short, the project found that the professional identity of trainee teachers, is, in part, defined by their relationship to those who mentor and tutor them. As teachers in training they are in a role with less power than those who are responsible for their training, support and development.
The ITTE evaluation focused on the impact of trainee teachersâ engagement in the BBC News School Report project and how this helped to form their professional identity. This was examined through the roles taken by trainee teachers in the project while on placement in schools, the activities they were consequently engaged in and the types of evidence generated for their assessment against the Standards for Qualified Teachers in England.
The evaluation of the project for Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA), the government agency responsible for teacher training in England, involved the following instruments of data collection - surveys, focus groups and written reports. Respondents included trainee teachers themselves, their tutors as representatives of teacher education providers and their mentors as representatives of schools in which they were placed. The methodological approach was interpretative and phenomenological with qualitative and quantitative data being analysed for emergent themes.
The paper presented at BERA focused on one of the themes found, that of the impact on the professional identity of trainee teachers exposed to taking up leadership roles. The research showed that their professional identity is enhanced through their being in a leading role in respect of curriculum and working with other staff. Their self perception of role was modified to one in which they saw themselves, and were seen, as equals to qualified staff rather than subservient or dependent on them. Furthermore, engagement in such projects led them to collecting richer, more holistic evidence for meeting the Standards as they took greater ownership for this process, situating it in their leading role in the project. Their identity became defined less by the articulation of Standards and by their relationship to others and more by their own notions of professionalism. A new more equal power relationship developed as they took on responsibility for the project
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Designing an elearning space to teach about elearning - how hard can it be?
This paper supports a session given at the annual learning and teaching conference at Nottingham Trent University in April 2009.
It considers the implementation of a Masters-level 30 credit module: PDEP43129 E-learning and teaching in Higher Education.
Our focus here is on the design of a virtual learning space for the module. Our design is informed by the literature and reflection on our own practice. It was implemented under the auspices of the Universityâs VLE policy and strategy. Both the module and the learning environment in which it was implemented were new in September 2008. This posed some interesting challenges which will be explored in the paper.
The module was developed in response to a perceived need for colleagues to experience, study and reflect on e-learning. Development work was supported by a CASQ secondment. We have now had one complete run through of the module (September 2008 to January 2009) and have started on the second. Together, we developed the module and are the only tutors teaching on it at this time. Much of the development work was undertaken during the academic year 2007-08, but the learning space was set up in September 2008. A unique feature of this module is that, apart from an introductory face to face session, it takes place entirely online.
In this paper we discuss what we wanted to do (content and tools), how we wanted to do it (including layout and tools), the constraints that the new VLE imposed and the opportunities that it offered. We want to reflect on what people have said about the module in their evaluations and also in their formative comments in the orientation unit. We can also draw from many rich sources of primary data, both quantitative and qualitative, much of which derive from the VLE and its associated tools eg document access statistics, copies of Chat sessions, records of Discussions, and Blogs. In addition, of course, we have our own experiences and personal blogs to draw from.
The guiding principle behind the learning and teaching strategy is one of construction of knowledge through discussion. The module uses the discussion forum tool in particular along with other collaborative technologies â both synchronous and asynchronous. The ethical considerations in presenting such a paper will require us to anonymised content or seek permission from participants.
At the time of writing, it is still too early to draw firm conclusions though we can state now that it has been time-consuming, exciting, challenging and frustrating. We have learned a great deal from implementing the module for its first run at the same time as the launch of NOW and this paper will, we hope, inform colleagues on the generalisable aspects of the use of the learning space
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Evaluation of the BBC News School Report Project's Impact in Teacher Education: An Evaluation for TDA 2009
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The use of open education resources in higher education programmes of academic practice
Digital technologies provide a wide range of tools which research shows can enhance and support teaching and learning. However, this knowledge is not uniformly available across disciplines. This paper reports on a project which aims to provide materials that are cross-disciplinary, applied in an online context and which are used to support the development of understanding of the power of collaboration and the re-purposing of open educational resources (OERs)
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Virtual communities and professional learning across a distributed remote membership
Headteachers, or Principals, of schools work in isolation from each other yet share common practice and domain of leadership and management. They exhibit the characteristics of a community of practice yet are remote from other members of their community. Similar communities of practice can be identified for other types of school leaders, subject co-ordinators for example, and for professionals in other disciplines â consultant registrars in health, optometrists working in dispensing opticians, museum curators, and so on.
This paper explores ways of using virtual communities to develop professional learning in these communities of practice. We discuss our work in the context of education and formal and informal learning communities of school leaders and explore how the lessons learnt have general application. We present a model for professional learning through online collaboration and communication, and look, in particular, at the concept of time and its effects in the virtual community
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A case study examination of the BBC News School Report project in Initial Teacher Education across three sites for the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA) 2011
Executive summary
- This is the third year in which ITTE have reported on ITT trainee involvement in the BBC News School Report project (BBC NSRP) and on its impact on their training.
- The previous two reports have been an evaluation based on data collected at TDA-hosted meetings. This report takes a case study approach with questionnaire interviews conducted in schools.
- The case study approach provided access to staff who would not otherwise have attended evaluation days and, hence, gave a more rounded picture of the impact on training.
- Involvement in the project developed traineesâ understandings of their own subject knowledge, of cross-curricular ways of working, of project working and of working in non-timetabled informal sessions with pupils.
- The project allows for trainees to develop different, and more rounded, relationships with pupils. This has a positive impact on their teaching, particularly in respect of behaviour management.
- The project enhances traineesâ professional identity in their own eyes, in the eyes of the department in which they are working and, in some cases, in the eyes of the wider school staff and leadership.
- There are a number of different models for involvement ranging from trainees assisting other staff to trainees leading the project autonomously. The assistant model had not been one that had been seen in previous evaluations.
- Project involvement, or leadership, continues to contribute directly to evidence of meeting QTS Standards, especially those around Professional Attributes.
- Project involvement, or leadership, also continues to be seen as important in career development and applications for NQT posts.
- The project provides authentic learning contexts both in-school and with the wider community
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An Evaluation of the BBC News School Report Project in Initial Teacher Education for the Training and Development Agency (TDA) 2010
Executive summary
Overall, the project greatly enhanced traineesâ experiences of initial teacher education, in terms of collecting robust evidence for particular standards and enhancing employability. The project provided opportunities for accelerated professional development of trainees in terms of enhancing leadership and enabled trainees to be graded 1 in Ofsted criteria.
The evaluation indicated the following:
⢠Taking part in the project offers new models of partnership in terms of consortia and rhythms of placement.
⢠The project resulted in enhancement of traineesâ subject knowledge and technical skills, providing evidence for standard Q14.
⢠The project exposed trainees to working in cross-curricular and extracurricular contexts, providing evidence for standards Q17 and Q23.
⢠Trainees engagement in the project led to greater independence of learning (and concomitant personalisation) than in other forms of coursework due to their ownership of tasks. This provided evidence for standard Q31.
⢠The professional profile of trainees was enhanced, as was that of the school. The former led to increased perception of employability.
⢠Trainees were given more freedoms, encouraged to take risks and to engage with authentic tasks. This provided evidence for standards Q8, Q10 and Q30.
⢠The project led to richer reflections on practice than other teaching the trainees had undertaken.
⢠The project accelerated the traineesâ confidence and professional development as evidenced for standard Q7 and led to different relationships between trainees and other school staff
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A report on the ULTRLAB's development of online components in NCSL programmes
This report is one of two produced by ULTRALAB forthe National College of School Leadership (NCSL). Here we discuss the research and development of online components of two NCSL programmes. The other report looks at the Talking Heads project, an online community for Headteachers in England.
This report considers our work on two NCSL programmes. The new model National Qualification for Headship (NPQH) had its first cohort of learners in March 2001. ULTRALAB was involved in consultancy with the DfES, the writers of the programme materials and the ten regional training providers, in setting up the online elements from September 2000. The online community aspects of NPQH were established using think.com software, with the name Virtual Heads chosen for the overarching national community.
The pilot for the Certificate of School Business Management started in February 2002. Our involvement here was to develop the online community and support the tutors in its use.The online community aspects were established using think.com software, with the name Bursarsâ Count chosen for the overarching national community
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Ethnography, education and on-line research
This paper is an attempt to establish the methodological basis for carrying out ethnographies of online education communities, in particular in the Continuing Professional Development VITAL project co-ordinated by the Faculty of Education and Language Studies at The Open University www.vital.ac.uk/
A much shorter earlier draft version of this paper was given at the Qualitative Research For Web 2.0/3.0: The Next Leap! 25 & 26 March 2010 in Berlin. Organised by Merlien.
The arguments and references in this paper are almost all to be found in two books 'one authored and one edited â by Professor Christine Hine of Surrey University, UK (Hine 2000; Hine 2005)
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