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Christina Preston
A shorter version of this article appeared in The Independent on 19 November 1998
Teachers are overwhelmed with advice on how to do their job from government officials, inspectors, parents and journalists. Teaching is no longer a profession, it's a job that everyone, it seems, knows how to do better than a teacher.
The teacher beleaguered with all this unsolicited advice has no professional body which can develop good practice and promote mastery of a changing role. A self-regulating General Teaching Council has often been suggested but seems to be no nearer fruition. Meanwhile, teachers have few platforms to speak, unless the tabloids unearth a sinner.
Opportunities to meet their peers to exchange good practice have decreased since the local management schools' policy gave heads the power to direct staff professional development. Heads are reluctant to pay the cost of a cover teacher. Teachers themselves worry about the disruption to their classes when they are absent. Many teachers, with families, cannot commit to evening or weekend classes to up date themselves. As a result, many local training centres and in service courses in the universities have disappeared. This leads to professional isolation, a major causes of demoralisation.
Teachers teaching teachers
There are some professional groups based in the universities which aim to alleviate this isolation by promoting school based research into school effectiveness. Conferences to celebrate effective change in schools in London are held by the Effective Schools and Standards Unit and the Leadership Centres led by the Institute of Education, London University, Sheffield and Bath. The British Computer Schools Committee also supports working groups of teachers and teacher educators who are publishing on current topics. This years subjects include Schools of the Future, The Internet, Early Years as well as the internationally recognised Glossary.
MirandaNet is another professional development organisation designed to provide an opportunity to mentor and support teachers as they make changes in the classroom using Information and Communications Technologies. Shortened to ICT, this new name for IT emphasises world wide communications with peers. This aspect of computers has a wide appeal amongst teachers, especially women.
For example teachers in MirandaNet have found the benefits of using a web site to publish their case studies for others. In a closed conference group they debate teaching and learning issues and to mentor their peers. They also partner curriculum exchange projects with their peers all over the world, opening the intellectual windows of their classrooms and creating real audiences for the pupils.
Teachers as Learners
The impressive government strategy to connect all schools and libraries by 2002 on the National Grid for Learning can provide a strategy for the teaching profession to change its image and alleviate its isolation. NGFL offers an opportunity for teachers of all subject to receive these professional benefits and improve classroom learning.
The NGFL document, 'Open for Learning, Open for Business', published last week, boasts that one billion pounds is being invested in the hardware and in raising the competence of teachers and librarians "to develop ICT confidence in school-leavers and make Britain a world leader in the field of digital learning."
Or is this a virtual bridge beyond the teachers reach? The authority of a teacher is challenged by the vast repository of current information which reposes on the Internet. Do established, traditional teachers who see themselves as experts and authorities want to be formal learners again?. If they fear the changes that computers might bring BT's Peter Cochrane will not comfort them. "In the future there will only be two types of teacher: ICT literate or retired." But statistics from a US study by Market Data Retrieval are a warning: 85% of schools have Internet access but only 14% of teacher use the Web as a teaching resource.
Computers are one catalyst in the inevitable changes in the teachers' role. Tony Blair's preface to 'Open for Learning, Open for Business' suggests, "We are all learners. This paper presents a challenge to all of us as individuals to engage with new ways of learning and working". The key to new learning strategies lies in multimedia communications technologies. But if this government seriously wants teachers to make a paradigm change in the way they operate, politicians will have to start appealing to teachers' hearts and minds, starting with a celebration of the teachers' art, rather than unrelieved assessment and inspection.
What do expert teachers of teachers think? At a conference, organised by the British Education Research Association and MirandaNet in London last week, Does the Net add value to Learning? teachers agreed that computers provide exciting learning opportunities. The conference was sponsored by BT and Oracle whose education products are improving the on-line provision of classroom resources. The teacher delegates liked demonstrations of learning environments offering remote on-line teaching modules, measured and tested electronically.
Changes in the classroom
But these teachers, already expert and enthusiastic in the use of electronic networks in staffrooms and classrooms, did not accept that teaching is merely the authoritarian transmission of knowledge. Their teaching and learning on-line involved refining traditional classroom roles as well as identifying new professional skills. These roles were described as instructors, content-providers, learning managers, facilitators, cheer-leaders, moderators, creators, inventors, learners, researchers, entertainment officers, verifiers and validators.
In the ICT context teachers saw themselves as lion-tamers, pretending control in classrooms with unpredictable computers. They also have to come to terms with constantly asking their pupils for assistance with the 'lions'.
The teachers had some advice for the Teacher Training Agency which is about to review bids for providing ICT teacher training resources on-line. John Meadows, a teacher educator at South Bank University, reported that teachers wanted their own computers on line for use from home so that they could teach themselves the skills. They wanted guidance in a pedagogical overview of how ICT should change their role. They valued on-line peer tutoring, advice on classroom management and information on what outcomes are required. Significantly, they wanted to read about other teachers' experiences and debate strategies.
John Cuthell, a MirandaNet Fellow, explained how MirandaNet helped this process of sharing. From the experience of the Intranet at his school, Boston Spa, West Yorkshire which is heavily used and constantly changing, he thought that on-line learning was more effective for teachers than children.
" On-line instruction requires the skills of a good primary school teacher. The pedagogical and social requirements promote the features necessary to maintain a learning environment in a class room where individuals move at different speeds. This is, perhaps, the shift for adults learning to teach on-line: that content becomes of less importance than process for the teacher - or instructor, or trainer. Learning to teach on-line is essentially experiential, and those learning how to do so need to experience the potential sufferings of our students."
But time is essential for professional development. Squeezing teachers learning space into the school day and edging the rest of the family off the home computer is not a trivial matter. Teachers recommended on-line computers for all teachers, the standardisation of systems, flexitime and scaleable technologies as reliable as the telephone.
Incentives for teachers to learn
Motivation is a key factor in teachers' learning These teachers were tempted by the promise of an adventure for the mind. The appeal of these services was the opportunity to engage with other teachers in debate, to maintain independent critical review of publications, services and tools, the chance to publish their own work and to fly intellectually beyond the classroom walls.
These professionals wanted confidentiality as well. They all disliked the Grid's registration form that asks for age. nationality and other personal details. To avoid the Big Brother syndrome one idea which has developed from the teaching community is a TeacherNetUK, a service designed to provide continuing professional development just as regional Teachers Centres, where they still exist, provide support for teachers. Conceived as an independent organisation run by teachers for teachers, TeacherNetUK would act as a bank for teachers' information as well as storing lifelong learning accounts. In partnership with Oracle Corporation, TNUK have been developing 'profiling' and 'push' systems which will respond intelligently to the teachers expressed interests in professional development. The 250 million pounds Loterry money set aside by government to create resources for teacher training should ensure appropriate software and materials. Does the profession need an independent service of this kind to provide a grassroots infrastructure for a General Teaching Council by promoting a genuine debate across the profession? If the National Grid for Learning supports services that celebrate and support the profession, teachers might find that sufficient incentive to get wired and 'go'.
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