Rosamund Sutherland

Graduate School of Education

University of Bristol

ros.sutherland@bris.ac.uk

Digital technologies: Learning, teaching, leadership and

professional development

A person-plus perspective

The environments in which humans live are thick with invented artefacts that are in constant use for structuring activity, for saving mental work, or for avoiding errors or they are adapted creatively almost without notice. These ubiquitous mediating structures that both organise and constrain activity include not only designed objects such as tools, control instruments, and symbolic representations like graphs, diagrams, text, plans and pictures, but people in social relations, as well as features and landmarks in the physical environment” Pea, 1993 p 48

Extension of human capability

“Computer-based technologies can be powerful pedagogical tools – not just rich sources of information, but extensions of human capabilities and contexts for social interactions.”

Bransford et al, 1999, page 218

ESRC Teaching and LearningResearch Programme

Policy for ICT in schools“The mandate for ICT in education has overwhelmingly been interpreted by schools as a licence to acquire equipment” Dale et al, 2004, InterActive Education

This has been costly, but in addition, has detracted from an emphasis on teaching and learning.

Structure of presentation

The potential of digital technologies

Learning out-of-school

Learning and teaching in schools

The role of leadership and professional development

Digital technologies

An ever expanding resource

•productive tool•information resource•communications tool•entertainment device

Many young people have access to digital technologies out-of-school

Learning as a ‘by-product’

•Engagement with digital technologies inevitably leads to some form of learning.

•This learning is usually incidental and non-intentional — not the purpose of the activity.

This ‘informal’ learning often overlaps with what schools are trying to teach.

Use of digital technologies potentially provides access

to new skills (Jenkins, 2009)

• to experiment with the surroundings as a way of problem solving

• to interpret and construct dynamic models of real world processes

• to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities,

• to pool knowledge and compare notes with others towards a common goal

• to search for, synthesise and disseminate information

Participatory culture

“A growing body of scholarship suggests potential benefits from these forms of participatory culture, including opportunities for peer-to-peer learning, a changed attitide towards intellectual property, the development of skills valued in the modern workplace, and a more empowered conception of citizenship”. ( Jenkins, p xii)

Access to new knowledge?

Young people’s use of digital technologies out-of-school relates to their own personal interests.

This may or may not include:

mathematics, science, languages, music, history, geography………….

Eroding boundaries between out-of-school and

in-school

• The hard boundaries between out-of-school learning and in-school learning are being eroded by young people’s use of digital technologies?

• What are the implications for schooling?

The participation gap

“The unequal access to the opportunities, experiences, skills and knowledge that will prepare youths for full participation in the world of tomorrow”

Jenkins, p xii

Creative tension between incidental and intended

knowledge• Young people can work with ICT for

long periods of time, investigating their own questions and experimenting with ideas.

But• There is a creative tension between

incidental and intended learning.

Learning science -influenced by out-of-school

game playingTeach: It’s not real, it’s like a

simulation.So it’s a bit of a…

James: It’s a bit like a game

Teach: It is a bit like a game

We gotta beat people

Jessica I bet you mine isn’t gonna last five minutes. Oh, what’s going on? Where’s he gone?

Liam Give him food, he’s going crazy. He is going crazy. He’s getting really thin.

Sunita Give him some food!

Liam No let him go. When our fish dies

Sunita Don’t die! We gotta beat people.

Data handling in the primary school

Does Every Tube Of Smarties Contain the Same Number of Each Colour?

They sorted, and counted

their smarties.

Children worked in

pairs

They entered this data into

Microsoft Excel, to create

frequency charts. BUT!… then the

unexpected happened!

Learner as teacher

How can I use Excel to represent my data?

They used drag and drop, and

wizards to create charts.

Some children began to

use previously developed windows TM experience to explore the tool.

This became an opportunity to encourage the

children to become the

knowledgeable other, or expert and teach the

class

Creating a knowledge world

•To enter the world of science you have to learn to speak, to theorise, to act with the tools of science. This is the same for music, for English, for mathematics, for geography, for history……..

•People are central to the creation of these knowledge worlds which are constantly evolving because of the invention of new (increasingly digital) tools.

•From this perspective teachers are key architects in building the knowledge-base for an information society.

The teacher is central

“No educational reform can get off the ground without an adult actively and honestly participating — a teacher willing and prepared to give and share aid to comfort and to scaffold. Learning in its full complexity involves the creation and negotiation of meaning in a larger culture and the teacher is the vicar of the culture at large. You cannot teacher-proof a curriculum any more than you can parent-proof a family”.

Bruner 1996 p 84

Leadership and knowledge building

One of the major roles of leaders is to create the context (and culture) conducive to sharing and creating knowledge. Much valuable knowledge is tied up in people in the form of so-called tacit knowledge. Capitalising on these individual riches requires a culture that fosters exchange and collaboration.

Professional development as sharing knowledge

You will remember from school other students preventing you from seeing their answers by placing their arm around their exercise book or exam paper.

The problem with hoarding is you end up living off your reserves. Eventually you’ll become stale.

Somehow the more you give away the more comes back to you.

Ideas are open knowledge. Don’t claim

ownership.

Professional development

•Professional development needs to enable teachers to take risks with digital technologies and learning.

•Teachers can work within the constraints of available technology to transform learning.

•Language is the master tool.

Teachers as enabled practitioners

The InterActive Project showed that a successful model for professional development is to create networked communities in which teachers and researchers work in partnership to design and evaluate learning initiatives which use ICT as a tool for learning

New models of professional development

Such professional development requires people to break out of set roles and relationships in which researchers are traditionally seen as knowledge generators and teachers as knowledge translators or users.

A digital tool potentially transforms

But

People have to learn to use the tool in a transformative way.

Some concluding remarks• There is nothing inherent in digital technologies that guarantees

the intended learning

• The teacher remains key to the successful use of digital technologies for learning in schools

• There is a two-way exchange of knowledge between home and school use of digtal technologies that impacts on learning in school.

• Effective teaching and learning with digital technologies in schools involves building bridges between ‘incidental’ and ‘intended’ learning.