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Aims
The aims of this strand of the project were:
- to investigate teachers' implicit theories and intuitive understandings about teaching
and learning with ICT within their subject in order to develop an explicit dialogue
about teaching and learning which gives rise to a community of practice;
- to investigate how teachers transform research evidence to inform their practice;
- to investigate what teachers need to know about learning processes, the technology and
their students;
- to investigate ways in which designing learning initiatives and assessment affect
practice and student learning outcomes;
- to characterize teachers' out of school uses of computers and the relationship to
in-school practices;
- to investigate the role of video and other reflective practices (eg. Peer observation,
journals etc.) in supporting professional development.
Preamble
This strand addressed a central issue within the interactive education project:
how can professional teaching and research communities work together to promote mutual
professional learning and development? In so doing it sought to challenge the traditional
(Mode 1) type of knowledge production and utilisation which has historically relied on
university based researchers to generate knowledge and for teachers to absorb and
incorporate it into their practice. The alternative (Mode 2) eschews a linear set of
stages preferring instead to see knowledge creation, validation, dissemination and
adoption as an integrated process. In this conceptualization there is a genuine interest
in seeing knowledge production as a shared responsibility of the practitioner and
researcher. This mode is referred to as knowledge creation through applied partnerships
(Gibbons et al., 1994).
Definitions and Distinctiveness
What is professional development? The phrase suffers from ambiguity as
most double nouns are apt to. It might refer to how individual teachers develop in the
process of their careers or it could apply to the specifics of skill and knowledge
enhancement. To locate the term in a wider context we must distinguish between development
and change. Teachers obviously change - they grow old, become wiser, more cynical, more
skilful or some even less skilful. Some of these changes can be brought under the rubric
development but not all of them. Development in a professional sense, is a sub-class of
changes that tend to cluster around increases in certain skills and abilities, knowledge,
wisdom, insight and intuition. Throughout the project these were defined as: visible
changes and improvements in expertise.
How distinctive is this strand? This strand attempted to produce an
overview of the project while at the same time conceptualising and investigating the ways
in which professional development takes place. In so doing the focus was not only on
the mediation of knowledge and the ways in which innovatory practice emerges but also on
the sorts of generic impediments that block change, and how new forms of practice and
learning impact on the nature of teacher professionalism. This was predicated on the notion
that the strand must retain a generic dimension that transcended the subject specific
elements of the project. This focus was operationalized on two levels: first
through the carrying out of various meta-analyses of the data being collected. The purpose was to avoid replication while simultaneously giving
the strand the latitude to explore key issues that were central to the project as a whole.
Second by carrying out empirical investigations in areas that were considered to be novel,
and where an outcome related to the above principles was likely.
Theory and Method
The work of the strand was informed by two complementary literatures. First that
pertaining to research production, dissemination, and utilization; and second what has
become known as the 'situative perspective.' Both underpin the methodology used. Here the
strand used a combination of the following:
Case studies: Here the focus is on the pre-active, interactive,
and post-interactive elements of teaching and the ways in which innovatory practice
develops across subjects. A cross-case/subject analysis was used to theorise the
professional development process and the ways in which research and practice interacted in
the thinking and practice of the participants.
Elaborating personal theories: The methods
included in-depth interviewing, participant observation and stimulated recall
methodologies.
Process Tracing: Close, fine-grained descriptions of the ways in which
teachers (across subjects) used particular ICT packages. 'Talking out loud' and other forms
of self-report data; video-analysis and stimulated recall were deployed.
Project Team
Peter John
Richard Brawn
Graduate School of Education
University of Bristol
35 Berkeley Square
Bristol BS8 1JA
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