Using Emerging Technologies to Develop Professional Learning

Jean Murray, Warren Kidd

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317287254
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Internationally, there is a growing body of research about learners' responses to, and uses of, emerging technologies. However, the adoption of these technologies in teachers' professional development is still largely under-researched. Much of the existing literature still positions teachers as playing 'catch-up' in terms of using technology for teaching and learning in an ever expanding and changing world, and ignores the roles that these emerging technologies can play in teacher, and teacher educator, development and learning.

This book aims to address the lack of research in the area, and it contributes to the new knowledge area of how emerging technologies can effectively address professional learning, drawing on case studies and perspectives from across the world. Contributors use a wide variety of approaches to analyse the potential for emerging (and established) technologies, including digital, Web2.0, social media, and IT tools, to develop 'effective' or 'deep' professional learning for pre- and in-service teachers and teacher educators. This book was originally published as a special issue of Professional Development in Education.

Second look – second think: a fresh look at video to support dialogic feedback in peer coaching

Jennifer Charteris and Dianne Smardon

Faculty of Education, The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

This case study, concerning peer coaching for sustainable professional practice, utilised video to enable teachers ‘deep learning’ during peer coaching sessions. While the use of video is not a new tool for continuing professional development, this research employs a fresh way of using it. Teachers reflected on their learning process by watching video footage filmed during group peer coaching sessions. The study explores how this reflection with peers influenced the teachers’ thinking and decision-making. Findings indicated that teacher participants were able to ‘see’ themselves thinking, becoming more explicitly aware of their peer coaching role and their own professional learning processes. This paper links strongly to the theme of this special issue, advancing that the use of video can enable teachers a unique opportunity to review and reflect on their positioning in their professional learning. The research recommends ongoing exploration of practices that afford teachers opportunities to develop metacognitive awareness and an agentic role in their own learning.

Introduction

In this paper we argue that digital tools can afford teachers new ways to promote deep learning during peer coaching situations. It is our contention that teachers can go beyond superficial learning in collaboration with their colleagues to grow sustainable practices though the use of information technologies. In this research paper we address how a collaborative community of inquiry can be enhanced through the use of video as a tool for reflection. In the New Zealand teacher professional learning context, video has been utilised predominantly to examine teacher classroom practice. The teacher participants in this study use video to reflect on their learning from previous collaborative peer coaching sessions. This opportunity, to have a ‘second look, second think’, allowed teacher participants to think further and more deeply on their learning dialogue, affording additional insights. This is a fresh approach to the use of video. While classroom video footage has been used for stimulus recall in teacher peer coaching (van Es 2010, Cutrim Schmid 2011, Stover et al. 2011), the specific use of video in the development of teacher peer coaching skills is less prevalent. In this study, video is an integral tool that enables teacher participants to reflect on the process of peer coaching, their roles in it and, at the same time, have a further chance to engage with their professional learning inquiry. Through viewing peer coaching video footage, teachers became more aware of their own professional learning processes. This opportunity to have a second look supported the teachers to think further and more deeply on their learning dialogue, affording further insights and realisations. The use of video supported and strengthened the teachers’ communities of inquiry.

Situated in a New Zealand context, the writers from The University of Waikato Assess to Learn team have been involved in providing ‘assessment for learning’ continuing professional development (CPD) for teachers over the last nine years. Here, students are positioned at the heart of the assessment process where they actively collaborate with their teachers to develop their capability to assess their own learning (Absolum et al. 2009). While many definitions of assessment for learning prevail, we draw upon a short, second-generation definition where:

Assessment for Learning is part of everyday practice by students, teachers and peers that seeks, reflects upon and responds to information from dialogue, demonstration and observation in ways that enhance ongoing learning. (Klenowski 2009, p. 264)

In our work with teachers we have observed that the use of a dialogic process to interpret and make sense of student voice and teacher talk data has potential to enhance teacher engagement, stimulate a careful and thorough analysis of the data and support practitioners to identify next steps in their professional learning. As CPD providers we assist teachers and school leaders to develop cohesive school-wide assessment practices and processes, give effect to the New Zealand Curriculum and develop their expertise with ‘Teaching as Inquiry’ (Ministry of Education 2007, p. 35). These practices and processes include a peer coaching model that we facilitated as in-service teacher educators.

We are concerned with teachers’ perceptions of what deliberate actions support their professional learning processes. Teachers are often positioned as the passive consumers of research that will assist them to make decisions. As educators strive to ‘get it right’ in a performative culture, they are marketed research that defines quality and shapes their practice. Embedded in a technical rational approach to schooling improvement and reform is the mantra ‘what works will work’. However, research can only show us what has been possible; it can only tell us what has worked but cannot tell us ‘what works’ generically (Biesta 2007, p. 8). According to Wiliam:

… researchers have underestimated the complexity of what it is that teachers do, and in particular, have failed to understand how great an impact context has on teachers’ practice. That is why ‘what works?’ is not the right question, because everything works somewhere, and nothing works everywhere. (2006, p. 8)

In this paper we share the findings of our research into how reflections with peers influenced teachers’ thinking and decision-making. While these findings relate specifically to this research situation, it is our hope that our readers can make connections to other contexts. We observed that through the use of video teachers became explicitly aware of peer coaching as a dialogic process that enhanced their professional learning. The teachers engaged in metacognitive reflection, ‘seeing’ themselves thinking and noticing their decision-making processes. They recognised when they determined their next-step actions for their teaching. Through viewing videoed peer coaching footage the teachers were able to transform what had previously been subjective into an object for examination. Furthermore, the video allowed the teacher participants to have a ‘second look’ and ‘second think’. The video as a mediated tool afforded the teachers additional insights into their previous dialogue and thinking. They were able to think further about both peer coaching as a learning process and their actions for their own classroom practice.

The research suggests that there is value in the use of video to support a dialogic feedback process, where teachers are agentic co-learners and co-constructers of knowledge. This contrasts with a position in which teachers are ‘absorbers’ or passive recipients of knowledge constructed elsewhere, which has been described as a transmission process or training model of CPD (Kennedy 2005, p. 237). We acknowledge that there is an inherent complexity in teachers identifying and recognising what is at the forefront of their colleagues’ thinking and this research positions itself within a transformative model of CPD. This is a teacher-centred, context-specific model of CPD with a focus on communities of inquiry, a step beyond the traditional communities of practice notion. It draws from coaching and mentoring, communities of practice and action research models for the CPD as a transformative approach to professional learning (Kennedy 2005). The transformative model is at the opposite end of a continuum to the transmission model of CPD with its focus on teachers as agentic inquirers.

When we think about the notion of active learners we consider Mezirow’s (1997) theory of transformational learning, which as a process of exploring assumptions enables practitioners to become more reflective and critical, being more open to the ideas of others and accepting of ideas, which is the foundation of deep learning as conceptualised in this study.

Dialogic peer coaching

According to Robbins (1991), collaborative peer coaching is a confidential process in which two or more professional colleagues work together to reflect on current practices, expanding, refining and building new skills, sharing ideas, teaching one another, conducting classroom research or solving problems in the workplace. Peer coaching has nothing to do with evaluation. It is not intended as a remedial activity or strategy to ‘fix’ teachers (Robbins 1991). Rather than giving ‘how to’ advice, we view this ‘sharing’ as a peer coach to be more like active listening, a stance that enables peers to struggle to make sense of their own practice. McArdle and Coutts (2010) critique individualistic notions of reflective practice, advocating for the added dimensions of shared sense-making and collaborative engagement for professional renewal. This idea of shared sense-making for action and change is a self-monitoring and self-monitored social process that extends the concept of reflective practice.

Dialogic peer coaching relationships can support teachers’ reflective dialogue where they co-construct new ideas, ways of thinking and new learning. In these dialogic relationships it is possible to see things from at least two perspectives at once (Wegerif 2008), one’s own and a peer coach’s. Teachers can take time to explore and ponder ideas with their peers as a resource (Carnell and Lodge 2002). Nehring et al. (2010, p. 400) define reflective dialogue as, ‘reflection with others characterised by careful listening, active questioning and an openness to potentially profound change to one’s beliefs’. Active listening is central to reflective dialogue. Freed (2003) describes four behaviours integral to reflective dialogue. These comprise suspending judgment, voicing issues, listening actively and respecting others. An active listening process is one that enables participants to risk take in disclosing their own views:

Listening means allowing what the other says to break through one’s own preconceptions and prejudgments. And speaking involves risking one’s own ideas by offering them to the group as a potential way to interpret truth or right action. Quality conversation is a dialogue in which each participant risks changing one’s mind or attitudes in the process of working towards mutual understanding. (Deakin Crick and Joldersma 2007, p. 92)

Through dialogue, teachers can reflect on their own experiences through the lens of others and, in doing so, engage in cumulative talk. Borrowing from Alexander’s (2005) classroom-based notion of cumulative talk, we use this term to describe how teachers’ thinking connects with the thinking and ideas of their peers.

The most promising forms of professional development engage teachers in the collaborative investigation of genuine problems over time, in ways that significantly affect their practice (Lom and Sullenger 2011). According to Wiliam (2008), teacher learning communities appear to be the most effective, practical method of changing day-to-day classroom practices. A process of collaborative inquiry can enable practitioners to critically reflect on the evidence they gather, enhancing their own and their students’ learning. A key feature of this collaborative inquiry is the use of video to stimulate this reflection. The peer coaching approach outlined in this paper is embedded in the socio-cultural environments of classrooms, schools and communities.

A critical aspect of reflection can be integral to teachers’ learning. We draw from Brookfield (1995), who suggests that by utilising different lenses on our thinking we can critique our assumptions. Collaborative critical reflection enables a dialogic community of peers, who share a commitment, to explore their assumptions. This process is based on personal experiences. It involves imagining and exploring alternatives to current assumptions. Those who reflect critically are self-aware and often become more sceptical of the world around them (Franz 2007). Wagenheim et al. describe the impact of transformational inquiry for teachers:

Through a regular cycle of reflective inquiry – surfacing and challenging assumptions – teachers seeking improvement seek transformative change; change in their ‘way of being’ as a teacher, not just in their ‘way of doing.’ Becoming a better teacher is about reflecting on and questioning deeply held assumptions in an experiential cycle of inquiry, developing new strategies, testing in action, and learning. It is through reflection and resultant self-knowledge that one can leverage greater awareness of others and course content in the journey toward becoming a better teacher. (2009, p. 504)

Video is a tool that can support peer coaches to grow in their role. Peer coaches need to know when and how to pose questions (Robertson 2005) that may assist reflection. Through viewing videoed footage, peer coaches can observe how they question to promote thinking and engage in active listening. This process of active listening and questioning is a form of dialogic feedback that contrasts with the frequently adopted collegial role of ‘advice dispenser’ and ‘solution provider’. Feedback as advice serves as an external evaluation and can be described as a ‘gift’ that may be neither wanted nor acted upon. This often uninvited form of feedback may not necessarily be the learner’s focus. Watkins (2000) suggests that at times the responsibility of the two parties in the feedback process can become distorted, with the peer giving feedback taking responsibility for the other person’s development, setting targets for the other person to achieve while the recipient is positioned passively. The use of video can enable teachers to construct their own feedback utilising primary data rather than receiving feedback through the lens of another. In this way the traditional power relationship of giver and receiver of feedback is destabilised.

In contrast, Game and Metcalfe (2009) view every response and every recognition in a dialogue as feedback. This form of symbiotic feedback where learners engage in reciprocal peer coaching is meaningful because it is a simultaneous process where people are learning from each other. Askew and Lodge (2000, p. 13) take a ‘co-constructivist’ view of feedback, describing how it can be constructed through loops of dialogue and information exchanged between peers. Orland-Barak (2006) highlights that any one utterance may encompass not only the ‘voice’ of the person talking, but also the voice of the person the utterance is directed to, the voice of the addressee, as well as other voices gained from previous life experiences, from our history and...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Introduction – Using emerging technologies to develop professional learning
• 1. Second look – second think: a fresh look at video to support dialogic feedback in peer coaching
• 2. The ‘trainer in your pocket’: mobile phones within a teacher continuing professional development program in Bangladesh
• 3. Professional learning to support elementary teachers’ use of the iPod Touch in the classroom
• 4. Research capacity-building with new technologies within new communities of practice: reflections on the first year of the Teacher Education Research Network
• 5. Pushing the envelope on what is known about professional development: the virtual school experience
• 6. Framing pre-service teachers’ professional learning using Web2.0 tools: positioning pre-service teachers as agents of cultural and technological change
• 7. National models for continuing professional development: the challenges of twenty-first-century knowledge management
• Index