Trainee teachers and impact learning

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Trainee teachers and impact learning

• Roy Barton
• Terry Haydn
• School of Education
• UEA

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Outline of the presentation

• Introduction and context Terry
• What doesnt work Terry
• Data from trainees in the study Roy
• Interview data Roy
• Key findings at this stage Terry Roy

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Sadler, P. (1994)

• If you are going to teach something, you have
  got to think about how to do it effectively.

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Gravity
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Planetary motion
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We each of us receive a constant and varied
stream of experiences throughout our waking
moments, each one of which can potentially give
rise to learning, yet most of which apparently
vanish without trace from our mental lives.
Fontana, D. 1993 Psychology for teachers, London,
Macmillan 125.
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Audit?
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(No Transcript)
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Progress?

• Yes (it would be surprising if they did not make
  progress).
• But what interventions to they find helpful and
  what do they find unhelpful?

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Throwing information at the problem?

• 38 kilos
• Hundreds of competences (4/98)
• Thousands of pages and web pages
• LEA building programmes to house strategy
  documentation
• Cookery books
• Bookmarking websites

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Naughton, J. (Observer 22 March, 1998)

• Its not every day that you encounter a
  member of the government who appears to
  understand the Net. Most politicians (Clinton,
  Blair, Blunkett, to name just three) see it as a
  kind of pipe for pumping things into schools and
  schoolchildren.

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Annex B?
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Online ICT skills test?
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Comments

• Very, very, very unhelpful
• Insulting
• Pointless, pathetic and utterly ridiculous
• Futile
• A waste of time another hoop to jump through
• Unrelated to subject or to common sense
• Unhelpful and patronising

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Did you read the information about ICT?

• Trainee A (laughs and shakes head) did anyone
  read right through them? No just too much to take
  in. not much use really.
• Trainee B No, theres just too much to read.
  It needs condensing or summarising more.
• Trainee C Not really I did glance through it
  but there was too much to take in- perhaps if it
  had just been 2 pages but it was quite
  off-putting.
• Trainee D Not very a bit dense really..
  off-putting, too much to take in.
• Trainee E I dont think I even looked at it.

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What did have an impact then?
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Working in groups?

• You felt you were all learning together..
  gradually getting to grips with things.. things
  like the session on making web pages how to
  write code, step by step. I was with J. he knew
  how to paste clip art into slides it was just an
  easy and relaxing, non-threatening way of quickly
  picking things up, sharing expertise. You could
  make mistakes or not know things together and it
  didnt matter.
• Working as part of a group? It helped for me
  working in groups, I learned loads from R.
  prefer that to struggling on your own.

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But.

• One of the problems was that the group I was in
  had someone who was really good at ICT, but they
  went too quickly you just got lost.
• Working as part of a group? Depended on the
  composition of the group, if you were all about
  the same it worked well, if you were with one of
  the stronger ones, they tended to do most of
  it..

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Seeing someone doing something you wanted to be
able to do

• When you showed us that picture where you could
  blow bits of it up using PowerPoint.
• When X came in and showed us how to make a web
  page in HTML when you say it change from code to
  a screen.
• When we used PowerPoint and the net to do
  presentations on significance- good fun and
  easier than you thought it would be.

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Data from all trainees in the study

• Sample -
• 47 Science 24 History PGCE trainees
• At the start of the course -
• All but one owned a computer
• All were e-mail users
• 88 had Internet access at home

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Positive initial attitude to ICT

• Using the scale
• 1strongly disagree 2disagree 3neither
  agree or disagree
• 4agree 5strongly agree
• I like to use computers for studying and/or
  recreation av. score 4.1
• I find it easy to learn how to use new software
  av. score 3.6
• I find I can learn effectively when using a
  computer av. score 3.5
• I am looking forward to using computers in the
  classroomav. score 3.6
• I think computers are important teaching tools
  av. score 4.1
• (Similar scores for History and Science trainees)

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At the start of the PGCE course
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End of first school placement

• No significant differences between Hist. Sci.
  for data on this slide
• Very high levels of use of ICT by trainees
• 97 created resources 79 taught using ICT
• Comparison with staff teaching using ICT
• (more than 28 about same 63 less than 9)
• Discuss ICT with mentor 86
• Felt there was a role model in dept. 53

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Barriers identified

• Lack of resources
• (Science 1st 22 times History 1st 7 times)
• Limited access
• (Science 1st 5 times History 1st 7 times)
• Many other factors identified
• (complex and context dependent situation)

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Helpful factors

• Much larger number of factors identified and no
  clear favourites identified
• Attitude and experience of teachers (significant
  for both sets of trainees)
• Useful software (significant for both)
• Data projector - (significant for both)
• Specific web sites (History)
• Large number of other factors identified
• (complex and context dependent situation)

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Key factors identified by mentors

• Story about access
• trainee timetabled in an ICT lab
• impact of trainees buying their own laptop
• Story about a role model
• watch my presentations and then produce their own
• Story about good intentions
• lots planned but nothing happened yet

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Focus group - Why do some trainees make more
progress than others?
Some not being able to see the link between what
they are to teach and ICT
How can I apply ICT to what I have to teach?
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Role of mentor in relation to ICT
Making it available even if they dont know how
to use it themselves. Show us what they have.
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Practicalities
Need to be shown these are the CD-ROMs - these
are the web sites Need to encourage you a bit
more and early on in the placement.
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Need to be shown how to use it
It just didnt come up you had to ask Need
help with setting up No one to show me - they
didnt use it - yet they were very well equipped
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Supportive framework
Depends on your confidence I could have done
with a more supportive framework It was the very
opposite in my school I didnt see a single
teacher doing anything
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It worked really well
I never expected to be doing this I cant even
work the video at home Im quite proud of being
able to do that
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Role for HEI based training
Give us examples make us more confident Show
us what is possible Less sceptical after seeing
examples more open to the idea of using it
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Key findings at this stage

• Terry
• Harm done by information overload
• Seeing something they wanted to be able to do
• Modes of use- within ordinary classroom
  teaching (data projector not ICT room)
• Roy
• Key area is the trainee/mentor relationship
• Need to identify core activities for the mentor
• Trainees need to see models of ICT in use

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E-mail address

• Roy Barton r.barton_at_uea.ac.uk
• Terry Haydn t.haydn_at_uea.ac.uk