Developing teachers to teach now

The dialogue in educational communities is often around how do we best develop teachers for the future?

This question can arise when reflecting on the pace of the growth of technology and its place in student learning.

How do teachers keep up? How do teachers prepare students for their future in a world very different from the one in which they live now?

This is a very noble and worthwhile question, but in many ways it misses the point.

Arguably the key question we should be asking is: How do we develop teachers to teach now?

Why in this blog are we taking this perspective and not the more common perspective of developing teachers for the future?

Let’s consider the classroom of 20 to 60 years ago or more. Except for the very brightest in the class most teachers “knew more” than the students they taught and therefore the challenges of teaching were not as great as they are today. 

Today because of the pervasive nature of technology, its accessibility and its power for learning there is now a huge group of students who know more than their teachers in many areas and this group is not limited to the very brightest. It encompasses a very wide cross section of student ability.

This is an incredible challenge for teaching – now. How do we develop teachers now to teach these students now?

We do not want to be misunderstood. Many of our current teachers of course are perfectly capable of teaching this group of techno savvy students, but we argue that a substantial number of teachers are not.

There is urgency to the knowledge and skills some of our teachers must develop now to adequately teach this current group of students. We cannot fail them!

What are some of the key pre-requisite knowledge and skills our current teachers should have?

Firstly, today’s teacher needs to know a lot about technology, its potential for learning and must not be afraid to experiment with it in the classroom. This pre-requisite may not get into a traditional list of the top 10 essential qualities for a good teacher, but we can’t see how you can argue this one away. We encourage you to embrace technology in your teaching and get on with it now – quickly!

Are you a serious, competent learner yourself? If you aren’t, your ability to assist your students is diminished. The best teachers today model learning for their students now.

Today’s teacher must be able to teach a student how to learn so that every student can move along at their own pace. Have your students learned how to learn? Are you teaching them the strategies for this?

Of course we know this list of pre-requisite knowledge and skills can go on and on and we may not have picked the three you would pick, but if the above three key things are the three key things you do as a teacher, you are going to go a long way in developing yourself as a teacher for today’s students now.

BYOD – Hot trend getting hotter

Technology trends come and go, but one educational technology trend that is hot at the moment is BYOD (or Bring Your Own Device).

Clearly the BYOD phenomenon in schools is not black and white or cut and dried.

The practice of BYOD by schools across Australia lies on a spectrum from little or no engagement with BYOD, to BYOD practices which result in sophisticated teaching and learning programs. 

At the lower end of the spectrum students are bringing their own devices to school, but still some schools are demanding that students place these devices in bins at the front of the classroom to resist the temptation of texting, watching videos or playing games. These schools have not embraced the potential of these devices to make an instructional difference.

At the upper end of the spectrum things look very different. Here schools appreciate the enormous benefits of students using their own devices for learning – proven benefits such as increases in productivity, engagement and opportunities for personalized instruction to name a few.

To get to this point, schools operating at the upper end of the BYOD spectrum have had to overcome some well documented obstacles.

Firstly these schools have succeeded in gaining school leader, teacher and parent acceptance of the BYOD phenomenon, which is not an easy task.

They are managing the equity issues which inevitably arise. They have found a way for each child to have access to a device and have provided the connectivity to access resources from home.

Security for these schools is an issue but not an insurmountable obstacle. Through mobile device management and other ways of protecting and strengthening the school’s infrastructure, they have managed to calm some of the security fears about BYOD.

As BYOD programs gain momentum, schools save money on devices. Astute schools funnel any savings into growing the network capability and network expertise – ensuring the sustainability of these BYOD programs and the quality of student learning.

The Flipped Classroom - the other side of “the flip”

There are many definitions of the flipped classroom and as many views about what constitutes one.

A strong and coherent statement about the flipped classroom should focus on both sides of “the flip”:

• What should go on in the classroom?
• What should be pursued outside of the classroom?

In class time

The main reason, maybe the only reason, to flip a class is to provide more class time for learning, where the teaching and learning professional – the classroom teacher – engages with the students to help them develop higher orders of critical thinking. Students spend class time engaging with the teaching and learning professional and fellow students, to work on assigned problems and interactive activities to illustrate concepts.

In short, students receive more, personalized, instructional support in the classroom from the expert and practice applying key concepts with feedback.

It is difficult to argue with this view of the in class time side of “the flip”.

It is how it should be! The professionals use their knowledge and skills to support and guide students as they occupy their in class time with collaborative work and concept mastering exercises.

Outside class time

Arguably it is on this side of “the flip” that the deficiencies of the flipped classroom are most exposed.

Typically on this side of “the flip” lecture style teaching is banished from in class time and delivered outside class time – usually to the home – via current technologies such as video, live lectures online, video podcasts and more.

These lecture style teachings provide the base content for the concepts students must learn and manipulate in their in class time. If the students aren't exposed to this base content, and many won’t be, where does that leave them?  They will not have the necessary pre-requisite knowledge to move to the next crucial step of working with the professional in class time on assigned problems and interactive activities to illustrate concepts – and consequently they will not develop their higher order critical thinking skills.

More work needs to be done on how to structure and monitor the activities assigned to outside class time. There are many ways in which this could be done – and if the flipped classroom is to survive as a credible teaching paradigm – it must be done.

How do you structure and monitor this other side of “the flip”?

The interactive digital teaching space – teaching “from the front” at critical times

If your classroom looks like those seen in the popular TV program “Home and Away” then your students are missing out. Why?

How long ago was it when people began talking about “dismantling the four walls of the classroom”?

This has not come to pass. Most classrooms have four walls, one teacher, 20–30 students and are resourced from well to poorly. The walls have not been dismantled and many more decades will pass before they are.

However the walls have become porous. Assisted by today’s technology, many classrooms are now reaching out through the four walls to expand learning opportunities.

As long as we have classrooms with four walls and a teacher, there will be a need to teach to the whole class “from the front” at critical times. Gone are the days when this style of teaching is the only style of teaching. However no-one can say that it is a thing of the past. It is not! Nor should it be! It complements other current styles such as mobile learning, flipping, iPad programs, one to one laptop programs and individualized and personalized tuition. It has an important place in effective teaching and learning.

When teaching the whole class “from the front”, hopefully teachers will use more than a blackboard or an ordinary whiteboard and they won’t do it 6/5 (6 hours a day 5 days a week) like depicted in “Home and Away”.

The community expects teachers to use technologies that reach beyond the four walls to bring the outside world in, to improve teaching and learning.

A teacher’s teaching space that is resourced only with a blackboard or ordinary whiteboard has not been designed for 21st century learning. It must be an interactive digital teaching space.

Currently, an interactive digital teaching space is usually resourced with an interactive whiteboard in one of its many forms. In the future the interactive whiteboard or its successor will still take prime position.

How will the interactive whiteboard evolve? Will it morph into interactive walls, interactive projectors, 3D or holographic technologies? It is hard to tell, but we can be certain that what teachers will still require is a piece of 21st century technology that will allow the teacher to teach “from the front” in their own interactive digital teaching space at critical times during the day– very different from the classrooms seen in “Home and Away”.

We are interested to know - in relation to an interactive whiteboard:

Are you using one?

Is yours in moth balls?

Are you dusting one off?

Are you considering buying one?

Or have you skipped the interactive whiteboard era altogether? 

Screen time: curse or blessing?

There is no longer much doubt that digital technology or “screen time” takes away from the time we spend on our personal interactions in favour of our online life. You have seen it - people in trains, in restaurants, walking along the street their heads hovering over the screen – not for seconds, not for minutes, but for hours. Do they want to speak to you or make eye contact with you? No way!

Over exposure and excessive exposure to the screen causes children to lose significant time on creative play and the time they spend on manipulating and mastering their physical environment. For young children this is a dire situation as there is plenty of evidence to suggest that neural pathways that would be beneficial to them in later life will not develop. 

For teenagers, excessive screen time can lead to sleep deprivation leaving them with all the physiological and psychological problems that that can bring.

This is the curse.

As school leaders and classroom teachers, can we hide behind this curse and use it as an excuse to do very little or even nothing when it comes to positively influencing learning with digital technology?

Let’s hope not!

As responsible educators we must be aware and wary of the curse and treat it with respect. But we have an even more important job to do than that.

We must embrace the blessing of digital technology – and there is much to bless.

Even though research on the impact of technology on learning is in its infancy, we are beginning to see a body of work emerge which points to many blessings.

For example, both research based and anecdotal evidence points to students learning more in less time when they use digital technology well; students like their classes more and develop more positive attitudes when their classes include digital technology; students in digital technology rich environments experience positive effects on achievement in major subject areas; and students who use simulation and higher order thinking software show gains in their learning.

Who can remember trying to grasp some complex concept at school using pen and paper only?  For example geometry and physics: we would have killed for the software available today to teach the complex concepts involved. We would have passed!

With such obvious benefits it is our professional responsibility to seek the professional development we need to keep up with the advances in technology that will improve the way we teach and our students learn. We should also appreciate the facility our children have with digital technology and steer them in a positive direction as they try to master it.

There is no option for any teacher to deny a child this.

After these arguments, would you knowingly send a child of yours into a school/classroom where the prevailing attitude of the principal/teacher was that digital technology did not add much value to learning, with the outcome being that it was not used or not used sufficiently to improve the learning of your child?

If you knew that this was the prevailing attitude, would you want your child to stay or leave that environment?

Please don’t be insulted if you are “with it” as far as teaching with digital technology goes. We know heaps of you are.

We do however challenge those who have more to do.