'Crisping' up the research pitch

Architects of Innovative Learning Environments: A Descriptive Case Study

Doctoral Research Question:

How do teachers make sense of their experiences with new and emerging technologies (innovation and change) such as the iPad?

1. Background

(Perhaps because I am a teacher I believe your experience is important)

· I wish to clarify the complexity of your teaching experience as you engage with innovation and change.

· I also wish to promote understanding and empathy of your experience and your perceptions, within the iPad project

(Because a teacher’s experience is both unique and common, your story has the potential to “teach”)

· Your story will be the foundation for my doctoral dissertation

· Your story may inform future strategies to support fellow teachers

· The lessons learned may inform future school reform and professional development opportunities for teachers

2. What you will be asked to do

(Because understanding is social, takes place over time and best done within it natural setting)

· Participate in ongoing dialogue within your school day 6-8 weeks

· Share your choice of apps and how the iPad is used in teacher administration such as lesson plans, day plans, calendars

· Allow me to take photos to describe the classroom and iPad use (no students) I will ask for your permission before any photos of you are used in future presentations

3. My Role

Because I believe I will not learn your story by becoming a burden or making you uncomfortable

· I am only interested in your experience with the iPad, however I am willing to participate in any classroom activities (an extra set of supportive hands in a busy classroom)

· My presence will provide an opportunity for dialogue and perhaps personal reflection

· I will be keeping field texts to describe setting, make observations, capture conversations and reflect on my own experience

· I will try to capture and honour your voice and provide opportunities for you to clarify your story

4. My Beliefs

· We are connected through story, we make sense of experience by telling stories

· We do not make it easy for students to be innovative by making it difficult for teachers to be innovative

· Technology changes quickly, teachers will regularly come into contact with technology they have no experience with

· Innovation (Architects of learning) requires teachers to teach differently than they were taught

· People not technology will be the solutions to problems

Architects of Innovative Learning Environments: A Descriptive Case Study

The Case: How do teachers make sense of their experiences with new and emerging technologies such as the iPad to enhance their teaching practice?

· It is hoped that this study will clarify the complexity of teacher experience as they engage with innovation and change.

· It wishes to gain insight to inform future strategies to support teachers

· It may potentially inform future school reform and professional development opportunities for teachers

· It is an inquiry to promote understanding of teacher experience, and thus take the form of a descriptive case study.

· My interest is intrinsic.

· The emphasis will be on my interpretation within an already familiar landscape (elementary school use of technology).

1. My Role

· Participant observer with a position of privilege and familiarity

· I am interested in understanding the ongoing experiences and perceptions of teachers in the iPad project

· Spend time (2 months) in the classroom environment during planning and instruction time in order to establish a narrative relationship and make observations within a natural teaching environment

· My experience is one voice among many

2. The Setting and Actors (Bounded and Natural)

· In one elementary school already selected to meet the criteria of the iPad project

· One or two willing teachers already involved in the iPad project.

· No recruiting - part of an existing study

· Include conversations with other staff that support the teacher (principal, IT)

· Both unique and common (family resemblance)

· Three dimensional inquiry space

3. Artifacts of Interest

· Look at choice of apps

· Look at how the iPad is used in teacher administration such as lesson plans, day plans

· Take note of classroom organization, how is the iPad used in instruction and the documentation process of inquiry

· Look for opportunities to personalize the iPads use

· Keep dual field texts supported with digital pen recordings of observations and conversations (natural language description)

· Include Teacher thoughts and insights from project journals

· Include photos to describe setting and iPad use

4. Method

· Case Study with emergent design

· Naturalistic and Interpretive

· Continuous dialogue, listen and interpret teacher stories of experience

· Enter the scene with familiarity

· An inquiry to promote understanding of ‘case’

· Study the particular and capture complexity in it’s natural setting

5. Assumptions

· Knowledge is gained through social construction (experience happens narratively)

· Learning is contextual and fluid

· Tacit knowledge while difficult to articulate is critical for understanding

· Qualitative research turns the world into a series of representations in order describe and open an understanding

· Interpretation is concerned with re-generation of meaning that comes from new understanding within the already familiar (prior knowledge)

· Technology changes quickly, new and experienced teachers will regularly come into contact with technology that they have no experience with.

· Becoming architects of learning requires teachers to teach differently than they were taught

· We are connected through story, we make sense of experience by telling stories (narrative mode of thinking and knowing)

· People not technology will be the solutions to problems

A Self-Study Method?

The Problem:
“Why when we are asked as teachers to be innovative with technology we are not?”
The Question:
“What conditions need to be in place to support an innovative technology classroom?”
The Method:
Self-Study?

I have been called an innovator when it comes to student use of technology in my elementary classroom yet I feel more pressure each day to teach and measure my students work by traditional methods, as well I doubt my own strengths and abilities for integration. My ideas and concerns seemed to be trapped in my own classroom. In the Alberta Programs of Studies (1995-2009) teachers currently are being asked to make a fundamental shift in our practice away from a teacher centred delivery of content to a more generative and collaborative exploration of content. This shift the curriculum requests requires a major adjustment of the traditional power relationship between myself and my students. We are also being asked in the Learning and Technology Policy Framework to “develop the competencies to integrate technology successfully into their teaching and to guide students in the use of technology to achieve learning goals”(2004).Even though I am willing why is it so difficult for me to connect my student’s questions to the current read and write tools I know are available through technology and how do I share my story with others? There have been many arguments for and against the use and cost of technology in classrooms but all of that in my mind is completely beside the point. We live in a technological world and all of us need to learn how to participate in it and that means learning to use the authoring tools available through web 2.0 technologies, yet if seems so hard. This question is extremely personal, yet I do not believe that I am alone with this question. I am not looking for a universal truth but a shared one. I also believe the only way to get inside of this problem is to reflect on the borders of my own practice and experience and mix it up with dialogue with teachers who are attempting to be innovative .


Given my assumptions as a teacher/researcher I believe the method I need, will involve collaborative dialogue where I bring my experience as a classroom teacher along as a resource. I think it will be kind of an improvisational critical autoethnography. Too wordy I know, but in using the term improvisational I am not referring to jazz music per say. It just means that the way I am looking at my problem is coming from the interpretive nature of social research; it will allow me to be reflective about my own situation and contains the notion of shared understanding and lived knowledge. I use the word critical to mean that it is not enough to merely describe this issue; I hope to bring about change. And autoethnography speaks to the first hand knowledge I need to answer this question and the need to examine my question with others in the place it exists. However this place is personal, I am the subject (knower) and also the object (place) so while I need to bring my own voice I will not understand without the inclusion of other voices. Explanations may contain the seeds to solutions but people are the solutions to the problems that confront us. I want to see if a narrative study with other teachers can be not just a meaning making event but a catalyst for change in our own practice.

I could also approach this problem from a narrative inquiry tradition. Can I make myself (the narrator) the protagonist as an actor in this story? As I am to understand a narrative inquiry is verbal action, “a process of collaboration involving mutual storytelling and re-storying as the research proceeds. In the process of beginning to live the shared story of narrative inquiry, the researcher needs to be aware of constructing a relationship in which both voices are heard” (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990 p.4). This description underlines the importance of relationship in research and social construction, a relationship in which both teachers and researchers feel cared for and have a voice with which to tell their stories.

Then again the method that seems to be the most functional fit at this point is self-study. Self-study is an extension of both narrative and reflective practice. It goes beyond normal professional development and it speaks to a much wider audience and consideration of ideas (p. 106 Craig 2006). In the end I need to take my practice somewhere else because of this experience. It is important to tell my story but to be changed by the telling. What makes this method useful to me is that it is a sequence of reflective moments. It will allow me to place my personal problem out in public. There with collaborative, critical voices it can be reframed and redefined in community because of this participation. It will be a shared adventure. It will not be an expert-novice relationship or just critical friends. In this case I need to assume a ‘working with’ stance through narrative threads. In self-study, “The participants will be jointly involved in developing the study and learning through collaborative experiences (Loughran, J., & Northfield, J. 1998 p.14-15).

Critical Questions:

Can I create the kind of collaborative experience that is required for self-study? Can I make my personal struggle to make sense of my practice with the current ICT curriculum public? Who will share it with me? How will I find my critical friends? What will they get out of this experience? How will I measure what I gained at the end of my research?

Any thoughts anyone?

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Some theoretical roots

Dewey
• Teacher as ‘knower’
• Knowledge is embedded in situation revised through social interaction and adapted over time
Schön
• Reflective practitioner


Alberta Learning. (2000-2003). Information and communication technology, kindergarten to grade 12: Program of studies. Curriculum Standards

Alberta Learning. (1995-2009). Programs of Study. http://education.alberta.ca/teachers/program.aspx

Alberta Learning. (2004). Learning and technology policy framework. http://www.learning.gov.ab.ca/reading/policy/techframework

Craig, C.J. (2006). Change, Changing, and Being Changed: A Self-study of a teacher educator’s becoming real in the throes of urban school reform (pp.105-116). Houston: Routledge.

Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (1990). Stories of experience and narrative inquiry. Educational
Researcher, 19(5), 2–14.

Ham, V., & Davey, R. (2004, June). Are we the very models of the modern teacher educator? Paper presented at the fifth international conference on Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices,
Herstmonceux Castle, England

Loughran, J., & Northfield, J. (1998). A framework for the development of self-study practice.
In M. L. Hamilton (Ed.), Reconceptualizing teaching practice: Self-study for teacher education
(pp. 7–18). London: Falmer Press. Google Books

Taking a step outside your door...

Those of you who know me know my connection to "Lord of the Rings". There is a line in the Fellowship that the character Bilbo Baggins says that I am often fond of saying. "It's a dangerous business, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no telling where you might be swept off to."
I think that is just what Bilbo was after...not the dangerous business but the adventure of what you could not see from the couch.
So I wonder is that what draws us to research, the adventure part not the danger. I think it could be exciting ending up where I did not intend to be.