Group workshop

The one-day group workshop was held in the first week of the second school term in 2011. It was designed to be only one day because of the cost of releasing teachers from their classes. It was deemed important to conduct the workshop on a school day rather than ask participants to attend in their own time as this would help show that the time and effort of their voluntary involvement was valued. It was also anticipated that this would help maintain a positive relationship with the participants and retain their interest and willingness to be involved.

Planning the agenda for the day (see Appendix G) was therefore challenging as there would be no second opportunity to bring the teachers together in the early stages of the project, and it was a short time frame to achieve the intended outcomes. There was a need to have a good balance of activities so that teachers had opportunities to share ideas and experiences, process new ideas and co- construct new understandings about integrating WBRs, contribute to discussion and interact with one another. The range of activities was designed to facilitate collegial relationships among the group members and establish a professional learning community. The day would also support the first stage of the participants’ social development and professional development to occur (B. Bell & Gilbert, 1994).

The tight time frame for the workshop necessitated prioritisation of the intended outcomes and careful planning to ensure the outcomes could be achieved efficiently. The intended outcomes were for participants to:

 get to know one another and develop positive relationships both with each other and with the researcher (initial social development);

 understand the expected outcomes of the research, the commitment required, their role in the research and the role of the researcher (initial social and personal development);

 feel affirmed and valued as teachers, motivated to be involved, and supported by and encouraged to work collaboratively with the other members of the group (initial personal and social development);

 develop an understanding of key ideas in the literature about effective integration of ICT in education, including TPACK, to provide support with planning how and where to integrate WBRs in their teaching (initial professional development); and,

 have opportunities to contribute and share their experiences (initial personal and social development).

There were two parts to the professional learning component of the workshop. First, an overview of the current situation in terms of technology integration was presented so that participants could consider the general trends and the challenges facing teachers and relate these to their individual situations. This included:

 key findings from literature that indicate the transformational potential of technology and the largely contrasting reality of minimal change in classroom practice and student learning; and,

 participants sharing their individual classroom, department and school contexts, including challenges and support in their use of technology. Second, key concepts identified in the literature as underpinning effective integration of technology were introduced to provide new ideas and strategies for participants to discuss and later draw on in their planning and implementation of a unit of work. These included:

 unpacking the concept of TPACK as a framework for understanding what teachers need to know about technology, pedagogy and content and their interrelationships, and discussing the challenges for teachers developing their knowledge in each of these components;

 participants sharing an example of their own practice using WBRs (preparation task) followed by analysis and linking with the components of

TPACK in smaller groups and reflecting on their own strengths, weaknesses and areas for development;

 introducing the concepts of affordances and constraints of technology, their complementarity and interrelationship with other classroom elements and how these relate specifically to WBRs;

 discussing the critical role of the teacher in managing affordances and constraints to optimise learning for individual students; and,

 working in small groups to critique a self-selected WBR and presenting back to the whole group advice for teachers on how to use the resource in the classroom with reference to components of TPACK, and examples of teaching strategies to scaffold learning.

Clarifying roles and expectations

Researcher and participant roles and expectations were clearly communicated in the workshop so that participants were fully aware of the tasks they were expected to undertake before returning to their schools. Understanding roles was expected to eliminate notions of a hierarchical structure, help participants feel more comfortable and supported in their endeavours, and contribute to the sense of belonging to a professional learning community.

The researcher’s role across the three stages of the research intervention was multi-faceted. First, there was a managerial aspect of planning, communicating and facilitating. A second aspect of the role was to provide some expertise in terms of relevant theoretical and practical ideas. A third aspect was that of a co- learner alongside the participants. There was also a support and encouragement aspect to the role, an important component of successful teacher development, in order to sustain the participants’ interest and willing participation for the duration of the intervention and through to the final evaluation. Importantly, the researcher’s role was also to evaluate the outcomes in terms of teacher learning and change in practice.

The role of the participants was to process, trial and evaluate new ideas and strategies for integrating WBRs in the classroom as co-learners, and secondly to

collaborate with the other participants to provide support and encouragement and enhance learning. Explicitly defining the participants’ role as co-learners was expected to convey the sense that their contributions could lead to valuable insights and new knowledge, and that their experience and ideas were valued and important. It was intended that this would help the participants to view their involvement in the research as learning rather than remedial (B. Bell & Gilbert, 1994).