In conversations with online contacts and colleagues who are technology focused, I find discussions around around ‘sustainability’ to be very frustrating. From a technology perspective sustainability is all about computer to student ratios and network reliability. During these conversations all I can think is ‘this is not really a challenge’ the answer to these problems is found simply in innovation, standards and budgets. These responsibilities lye solely in the realm of a supplier not a school. When I talk sustainability what I really care about is sustainability of professional learning to support ongoing innovation in teaching and learning, the sort of questions that go running through my head:
- What happens when the Digital Education Revolution wishing well runs dry?
- Are we preparing teachers for the ongoing evolution of technology hardware/software?
- Are we changing school structures and cultures to enable native adaption to future changes?
To bring you to my position here are some questions for reflection:
- If the professional learning at your school is focusing on the variations between ApplicationX version 1.0.21 & its upgrade to version 1.2.0.0 are you ready to provide professional learning for every application and every upgrade that will happen, ever?
- Calculate the gross financial cost of professional learning. Gross financial cost = cost of course ($300avg) + relief teacher ($325) + ½ days preparation & recovery ($162.5). Now multiply that for 4 days per teacher per year in your school, for every 10 teachers in your school that is $31,500pa (don’t forget to add travel & accommodation if your more than 2hrs from a hub).
- Calculate the net educational cost = gross effect of a day’s professional learning on professional practice and educational outcomes – Gross Financial Cost – lost learning time – travel. In your experience is the result always a positive net educational outcome?
- A staff member attends professional learning 2 months later it had no effect on their practice do you collegially work out what was ineffective and avoid similar professional learning?
- Name a profession that has a greater structural and psychological dependence on externally provided professional learning?
- While you’re still thinking about question 5, ask yourself what as teachers, is our core skills set?
What could professional learning look like?
We are at a cross road with professional learning. Down Status Quo Avenue we can continue to feed, structure and support our dependence on the 16th century professional learning models. The alternative path leads down ‘New Directions’ street requires us to evaluate our position, and then most importantly we need to play our position. The following is a series of ‘new directions’ that enables every school to play their position:
- Program time in weekly staff meetings for Show and tell
- Provide extra relief time post professional learning for teachers to pay it forward making it part of school culture.
- Build a culture of play and exploration by time tabling 15 minutes play, better still build a Genius Bar providing an environment for play.
- Connect teachers across schools to develop and share resources.
- Swap teachers with expert skills with other schools to share expertise, you may be letting go of an asset for a few days but you’ll be gaining a new asset.
- Collaborative and exploratory professional learning structures such as: Japanese Lesson study, Shadowing, Mentoring & Action Learning.
- Timetable professional learning time and incorporate the time into the TARS (Teacher Assessment and Review Schedule) process.
- Teacher camp: give teachers time, space and a goal.
- Mobilise your Teacher Librarian, ubiquitous connectivity creates a ubiquitous library which needs a ubiquitous Teacher Librarian.
- Individual professional learning plans, documented in a digital portfolio. Tracking professional growth and helping every teacher identifying the professional learning that works for them.
- Teachers create their own Professional Learning Network (PLN) enabling on demand just in time professional learning.
Imagine the potential of a range of these strategies concreted interdependently in a school professional learning policy and plans.
A final question to ponder; mentally list the above opportunities in preference of what you would like to do and would get the most professional benefit, so where does spending a day listening to someone tell you have to use applicationX version 1.2.0.0 sit?
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I worked out similar Math a year or so ago, and not naive enough to think the government hasn’t some similar. The size, scale and plurality of mass-professional-development is simply not affordable. As authorities are evidence based, it is easier to account for ‘technological revolutions’ in terms of expenditure on assets, and the subsequent right-off of those later.
All the strategies you suggest are valid. There is still no standard of ICT literacy in teaching within Australia; we in fact means that everyone is currently competent and National Curriculum is clearly passing that issue down the chain. In the draft, which contains only motherhood statements about ICT they state ” It will be the responsibility of jurisdictions and schools, not the National Curriculum Board”.
This leads to the central problem encountered globally
Jacobsen, Clifford, and Friesen (2002) is that ‘[i]t is simply not good enough to teach the next generation of teachers in ways we were taught because they will live and teach children in a different age’ (p. 367).
This is the imperative; that some will acknowledge, however
Johnson (2002) calls this ‘the ambiguous embrace’ saying education authorities in numerous studies would ‘clearly identify the use of ICT as the weakest aspect of professional practice. On this evidence, despite initial certainty of political purpose and considerable optimism regarding its effects on teaching and learning, ICT remains, after twenty years, a marginal force in the education’.
What works is when a school defines and strives to achieve goals that everyone can understanding and participate in.
* To infuse technology into a clusters of schools so that learning with technology becomes a deeply accepted part of daily school life for all members of the school community.
* To actively support the development of exemplary teaching approaches that complement the aims of the school and nation’s educational goals and make good use of technology.
* To develop research-based knowledge of technology infusion–needed supports, suggested processes, and potential outcomes–to share broadly as recommendations or models.
Today, it’s possible, and perhaps more fun to help and collaborate globally; then apply that to your own instance … being much more rewarding than working in your own school perhaps. We can’t get away from the fact that savvy teachers wanted to be savvy to work with students. Professional Development roles are complex, messy and often unpleasant at the local level.
When the money runs out; then questions will be asked – and the answers will no doubt be provided by school inspections – as they are in the UK, post National Curriculum. Right now, it saddens me to think we are in an era of agitation with regard to technology potential in public education. We are in fact – in a golden age – if teachers continue with the option, or wait for funded PD with time off, then that time will end as the government’s imperative will be to prove their investment is working at a macro, not micro scale.
Love you passion, love your work Ben … so much achieved in a short time; to accelerate it – DET needs pedagogical PD at the scale of it’s DER rollout, and that needs as much maintenance as the hardware itself. The issue I see is not teachers, students, gear or policy – it’s the brain-missing Human Resources that have no clue on how to hire gun slingers.
Teacher Librarians have been advised for years that part of our role is to “teach the teachers”.
I have seen this as one very cost effective model for professional development. Part of the added attraction in this mode of delivery is that the TL is aware of the school culture, teachers’ strengths and areas of need, the schools’ priority areas and the resources available to support the learning.
I love the strategies that build a strong and supportive school culture especially timetabling 15mins play and “pay it forward”!!
Good post Ben.
The PLN concept, supported by the librarian, is the model that makes most sense on a professional and economic level. The ‘teach a persn to fish…’ saying results in a ‘life-long learning’ above and beyond the rhetoric.
Still believe that the leaders need to model and ‘walk the walk’. All the leaders.
Sobering comments, Ben.
Ongoing sustainability of the IT infrastructure, support for ICT, the cost-effectiveness of PD, modelling (lots of it), a realistic appreciation of teachers’ every increasing work-loads and duty-of-care responsibilites, the provision of timely support in meaningful contexts are all part of building effective PD and the provision of even more effective support.
As Darcy says in his post above, the online PLN actively supported/encouraged by key roles within schools (Librarians, ICT-support teachers, lighthouse teachers AND leaders) is a core element of providing ongoing professional growth in any learning environment and organsiation that cares about its staff.
School leaders should be out front and if they aren’t, they need to get out of the way.
Mira Danon-Baird
Reminded me of the “Lifelong Learning” post I did almost a year ago. http://paralleldivergence.com/2009/06/14/lifelong-learning-is-not-a-9-to-5-job/
Don’t you just wish that we could all just stop talking about this because teachers have realised it and are actually getting on with it?
Wishful thinking in 2010. Sad.
I love the strategies and of course, the biggest constraints are the usual: time and budget.
I worked in IT longer than I have been in teaching and know that the question of sustainability is a thorny one. It must always be in context because some things should not be sustained – not a question of time or budget but requirement. Sustainability is not just about the technology but the processes and people that go with it.
I think the biggest cultural change is happening now and this incurs the biggest cost in professional learning terms – even for those not too far out of teaching school.
I could be wrong but I think that even if technology changes as quick (or quicker than) as it does now, educators will become better adept at adapting and hence will need less expensive PL strategies – likely to move towards to PLN-style. In other words, the costly PL solution required now possibly does not need to be sustained forever.
Ben, great post – lots of thought as a result. Although I am attempting to drive innovation and change at a much smaller scale then you are at the moment, I can see definite strategies that could work to my advantage. I am particularly concerned within my context of the ability to “spread” the learning from the person who has experienced it first hand amongst the remainder of the staff. This has been a particular concern with my staff in the Transformative Learning project. Some of your ideas and links above will certainly encourage and enable me to formulate a purposeful strategy regarding this. Cheers.
Shane, I also am ‘challenged’ by my apparent inability to get as many people to take ‘opportunities’ as is needed by the students we teach. Or, I could say that not everyone is as enthusiastic about the opportunities presented as I ;O)
Having said that, the ‘goers’ really do ‘go’ and it is a pleasure to share enthusiasms with this ‘type’ of colleague.
The reason teacher would prefer to outsource Professional Development is the feeling that it is proactive when leaving the school site.
We don’t value our own experitise and we are time poor and therefore the sense that the expert is time rich.