Professional Learning: Commonalities
In Powering Up, the author asks this question of 5 computer-using teachers: How did you learn how to do that? Through extensive case study work, she discovered 5 traits that each possessed that helped impact how they learned to use technology and to teach in new ways. These traits are viewed as ‘prerequisites’ to effective technology use.
*the committment to use computers - the belief that technology can be used to effectively solve pedagogical problems
*a definition of pedagogical problems - this wording is clunky, but basically effective computer-using teachers think long and hard about how they can effectively utilize technology in their teaching practice
*scanning for new ideas and practices - these teachers are always out there looking to see what other people are doing, and trying to apply that knowledge to their own specific pedagogical problems
*creating new curriclum and practice - as a result of these beliefs, teachers create new curriculum and new ways of delivering this curriculum to their students
*trying, reflecting, refining - these teachers then take theoretical ideas and apply them to real situations in the classroom; this is followed by reflection on how things went, and subsequent alteration of their thinking to refine the process even further
In this same section of the book there is a quotation that stood out to me pertaining to in-school professional developement. Despite the abundance of workshops, these rarely were mentioned by teachers as effective. Maybe we need to focus more on developing these ‘prerequisite’ skills. “They learned through courses, reading manuals, professional associations, universities, colleagues, their students and conferences. There was very little mention of in-school courses or workshops, although they had participated in quite a few.”
Another interesting quote referred to this growth process in the context of an extended period of time: “Each one of the teachers refined their work over a period of years, during which they would develop better ways of teaching, more powerful ways of using the technology, new ways of assessing learning. This freedom to try new uses, reflect on them, and refine them over a period of years was critical to their learning and developing high-quality, appropriate uses of classroom technology.” Again, these changes take place slowly, over an extended period of time; not in a workshop or two.
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