New Technologies and Learning Environments for Teacher Professional Growth

1
New Technologies and Learning Environments for
Teacher Professional Growth

• Roy Pea
• Center for Technology in Learning
• SRI International
• NECC
• Chicago
• June 27, 2001

2
Overview

• The national context of teacher workforce
  development and the appearance of for-profits
• Addressable market size and issues
• How to think about the key technological
  developments
• Emerging designs for teacher learning
  environments
• Closing questions

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What is happening to teaching?
There is a national crisis in teacher
professional development -Glenn Commission, 1999

• Huge turnover and new workforce preparation
  need2 Million new teachers needed by 2008-2009
  (3.1 Mil today)
• Increasingly accountable, but unprepared for new
  standards and assessments
• Weakly-defined professional career path for
  lifelong learning
• Yetemerging higher standards for teaching
  (NBPTS, INTASC)
• And rapid growth of alternative certifications
• Changing roles of post-secondary institutions and
  the private sector

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U.S. teachers . have no time to work with or
observe other teachers they experience
occasional hit-and-run workshops that are usually
unconnected to their work and immediate problems
of practice. Effective TPD cannot be
adequately cultivated without the development of
more substantial professional discourse and
engagement in communities of practice.
Darling-Hammond and Ball (NEGP, 1997)
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Current state of in-service TPD

• Teachers continually isolated rare mentoring
• Dominant mode of delivery is one-day off site
  workshops with no follow-up
• Teaching strategies too rarely linked to content,
  advances in learning research, standards, or
  modeled in classroom settings
• No assessment tools or results orientation
• Market dominated by fragmented, local
  non-scaleable solutions
• Little use of technology
• No just-in-time teacher learning support
• District level TPD planning or management tools
  are lacking

6
Addressable Market, Available Funds

• 3.7 billion (37 of all in-service TPD funds)
  available to purchase TPD services
• 750 million in teacher expenditures for TPD
  services
• 4.5 billion total addressable market
• Growing at 15 per annum
• Excludes all public high schools and all
  private, parochial, charter and home schools.
  Also excludes approximately 6Bil spent on
  teacher salaries to attend TPD events
• Sources McKinsey Co., National Commission
  of the States, US Department of Education,
  Merrill Lynch

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What key technological developments are
catalyzing the changing roles of post-secondary
institutions and the private sector in teacher
education?
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Fourth Wave Internet (Sarnoff Labs)

• 1960s First Wave - Fundamental Net protocols
• Led by government agencies and contractors
• Driven by computer-to-computer file transfer and
  messaging
• Nobody imagined the Net as becoming a mass medium
  
• 1980s Second Wave - Bulletin Boards Online
  Services
• Led by Proprietary Commercial Online Services
  Ventures
• Text and crude graphics driven by access to
  programs and data from computer hobbyists and
  serious techno/business users
• 1990s Third Wave - WWW (content, community,
  commerce)
• Led by Garage Startups and Media Empires - they
  ran circles around big technology companies and
  labs
• Rich text, graphics, images
• Driven by info hungry business and consumers
• Race to capture eyeballs and create cyberspace
  brand identity
• The Fourth Wave...

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Fourth Wave Internet
A multidimensional explosion
Media Richness
3D interactive objects
Audio and video
Text and Graphics
Smart Service
PC connected
Browsers
Several things connected
Search Engines
Everything connected
Media based searches
Ubiquitous Connectivity
Personalized Web View
Process 100s MIPs Storage GB Speed Mbps
Personalized Search
Process MIPs Storage MB Speed kbps
IT Capacity
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Key Technological Developments for Teacher
Learning Environments

• Market penetration of low-cost networkable
  multimedia computers and Internet access
• Easy-to-use Web Browsers as user interface
• Streaming media standards, tools
• Community tools
• Web hosting and ASP model (Application Service
  Provider) to improve QOS
• Personalization (profile-specific features)
• Integration with back-office systems (e.g.,
  authentication, student records, e-commerce)

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Emerging designs for distributed teacher
learning environments

• Uses of generic course platform shells (e.g.,
  Blackboard, WebCT)
• Special-purpose proprietary course platforms
  (e.g., Teachscape, Classroom Connect)
• Use of web-accessible video materials of teaching
  practices (e.g., Teachscape, Teachstream, PT3
  grantees, PBSTeacherLine)
• Use of on-line community tools for meetings,
  moderated events (e.g., TAPPED IN, Teachscape,
  Classroom Connect)
• On-line course malls (e.g., ATT Learning
  Network)

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Benefits of on-line TPD services

• Convenient, self-paced learning to meet
  in-service certification requirements (typically
  30 hours TPD per year)
• Access to professional communities of practice
• Ongoing, on-line mentoring with district TPD
  professionals or faculty
• Districts may better scale the certification of
  teachers, at lower cost per teacher than off-site
  models

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Addressable Market Capacity

• Nearly all teachers use a computer at home and/or
  at school for professional activities 2/3rds of
  public school teachers report using computers or
  the Internet for classroom instruction. (1)
• 77 of schools have sufficient bandwidth to
  access on-line services with 128kbs or better
  connectivity.(4)
• 61 of school computers have processors able to
  support streaming media today.(2)
• 80 of all teachers have computers at home (3)
• 59 of all teachers have Internet connections at
  home. (3)
• 66 of all U.S. teachers received up to 8 hours
  of basic technology training last year (2)
• (1) U.S. Department of Education, NCES, Teacher
  Use of Computers and the Internet in Public
  Schools, April 2000.
• (2) Market Data Retrieval, 1999.
• (3) Center for Research on Information
  Technology Organizations, UC Irvine, November
  1999.
• (4) U.S. Department of Education, NCES,
  Internet Access in U.S. Public Schools and
  Classrooms 1994-2000, May 2001.

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As an example

• http//www.teachscape.com

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A new approach to teacher professional development

• A scaleable, Web-based, teacher professional
  development system that offers teachers
  just-in-time access to annotated video cases
  and distributed learning courses, linking
  pedagogy to content, while also providing tools
  for school administrators to plan and manage
  professional development
• A company based in New York with partners
  including AFT, NBPTS, Intel, SRI International,
  ABC News
• Focused efforts to bring learning sciences and
  educational research as well as practical
  knowledge on teacher communities into
  Teachscapes products and services

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Approach for TPD

• Video case studies of research-informed and
  standards-based teaching strategies in literacy,
  math, and science
• Annotated with teacher reflections, expert
  commentaries
• Embedded assessment activities with rubrics
• Structured community discussion around case
  materials
• Distributed learning courses built up from
  collections of video case studies from digital
  library -- for use in schools and at home
• Partner with districts to develop plans to meet
  distinctive needs of their schools and teachers
  and build PD capacity with existing staff
• Supported by on-site and on-line mentoring by
  participating districts
• Supported by on-line communities of practitioners
  -- enabling peer-peer collaboration and
  continuous feedback for teacher reflection on
  practice
• Teachers can earn CEUs, academic credits

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Living Cases

• Visible models A video-based narrative account
  of how one or more teachers experienced a
  problem, the strategy used to deal with it, and
  the outcomes
• Principles underlying the teachers practices

• Guided practice Guidance in reflective use
  comparing cases to experience is instrumental to
  changing teaching practices.
• Reflective community Cases created as fertile
  soil for reflective community dialog,
  elaboration, multiple interpretations-- not as
  sterile packages of inert wisdom. They extend
  the published case-and-commentary model with
  on-line commentary, dialog.

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Augmenting collective intelligence for teacher
learning using interactive video case studies
with community
Research-based teaching practices
Standards-based curriculum
Capture distributed expertise in web-based
video cases
Add Gems from community discourse
Exemplary teachers and practice artefacts
Use with on-line community
School-site use
Case-based learning theory
Establish and refine models of case use
Documentary film-making
Embedded assessments
Expert commentaries
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Teachscape Connecting Video Models of
Instructional Strategies with On-Line Community
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Opportunities and questions for schools of
education

• Opportunities
• Scaleup your best teacher programs in partnership
  with for-profits
• Use digital assets of for-profits in new on-line
  courses that augment your teacher programs
• Create state or regional alliances between
  post-secondary institutions and for-profits
• Procure federal grants for experimental programs
  with for-profit partners
• Questions
• Can you go it alone and do it yourself?
• What are business models for public-private
  engagement?
• Quality review issues in designing and reviewing
  courses, and commitment to research and
  evaluation

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Can you do it yourself?

• Caution is due Its more than a website
• Scaleability of web-based TPD services
• Costs of course production are significant and
  need many users to amortize costs
• Faculty challenges authoring tools and interests
• New talents for running online community
  services
• Maintenance and upgrade of web platforms,
  browsers, media servers
• Authentication and security
• Technical support and quality of service (QOS)

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Business model possibilities

• Sharing of costs and revenues relating to the
  production, distribution and sale of on-line
  courses
• Payment of a royalty to your university on
  revenues generated by the co-developed courses
• University can negotiate for warrants to purchase
  equity in shares of its for-profit partner

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Summary

• A convergence is underway between traditional
  on-site teacher education programs and on-line
  teacher professional development services
• New media web-based publishing enables broad
  access to research-based teaching practices, and
  community tools make new learning networks
  possible
• Complementary strengths of public and private
  sector may be highly leveraged for improving
  teacher learning and professional growth

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Questions

• What will be the most effective use models for
  on-line TPD services?
• What is needed to support teachers documenting
  and reflecting on their own practices routinely,
  on-site and on-line, as recommended by NBPTS?
• What are appropriate forms of formative and
  summative assessment of whats working in uses
  of on-line TPD services?