Implications for CPD Practice

Because of the increasing prevalence of technology in everyday life, it is no longer appropriate to talk about "ICT training" as intermittent sessions given out whenever a local area adviser deems that it may be good to show that some training has been organised. Teachers need on-going exposure to the constantly changing usage of ICT in education. Continued Professional Development (CPD) should no longer be considered optional for schools to organise, it should be seen as an imperative.

Hunt (1971), recognises two types of staff development – what is often called CPD (In Service Education and Training) which focuses on changing a skill or applying a specific strategy, presenting

a ―package of skills and strategies to be learned and practiced by the teacher (and which are) often promoted as being ‗teacher-proof‘- in other words, individual teachers cannot ‗mess things up‖. The implication is that the strategies will work in just about any classroom‖ (McKenzie, 1991). This

concept, highlighted through the NOF (NGfL, 2000) training was the approach used in this case

study‘s teachers‘ initial training where the teachers were expected to work through a series of tasks

designed to familiarise them with ICT – ―the customer was fitted to the basic training model….

rather than fitting the model to the customer‘s needs‖ (Davis et al, 2008). The resulting antagonism

towards the approach was only alleviated by the promise of a laptop at the end, even though the

‗package‘ bore no relations to ‗how‘ the technology could be used or what the long term implications to the teachers‘ work in the classroom was going to be – and this was, after all, going to be one of the

single, most important (and costly) shifts in approach in education that the British Government had introduced since the introduction of the National Curriculum in 1988. That having been said, the end result of having a laptop available for use in their own time proved a positive influence in the

their [laptop] computers‘ teachers confidence and competence changed radically for the better and most felt that their knowledge of ICT had increased ‗substantially‘‖ (Harrison, et al 1998, P4).

The second approach has been highlighted by the responses by this study‘s teachers and would build

on an appropriate match between the teachers‘ levels of development and experiences taking into account what McKenzie (1971) calls the ‗special demands of Room 236‘ – the individual teacher.

This approach aims to move the teachers towards a new paradigm – a new way of teaching that

involves the recognition that ―teachers are adult learners with individual learning styles, different

stages of development and quite divergent interests and needs‖ (Bents and Howey, 1981, p18). Taking into account the emotional level of each teacher has been shown by other research to be a major contributor to effective CPD (Bradley and Russell, 1997; Rosen and Weil, 1995). Such CPD is not just for the pedagogy, there also has to be some level of appreciation of how to deal with

hardware problems. The teachers in the case study cited the lack of their own expertise in this area and, although there was weekly visit from a technician to deal with larger issues, when the hardware malfunctions in the classroom, some level of knowledge is required to ensure that the abandoning of

the lesson was due to a technical problem and wasn‘t just down not knowing how to change a printer

cartridge.

The most effective in-service CPD programmes should be school-based, rigorous, sustained, and designed and directed by teachers to match their own specific levels of expertise (see also BECTA, 2008). Equally important, they should balance individual priorities with school and local education authority needs - the responses in this case study clearly show this. The teachers, despite, being held back by lack of technical expertise, are willing to work at effectively integrating ICT into their

students' learning and there is generally a high level of commitment to this innovation. Similarly to the research findings of Williams et al (2000), the comments from the case study teachers for any form of training shows that it will be most successful if the training matches their own level of development and that there is an appropriate level of technical training as well. Although Rogers' (2003) idea that the teachers are at different stages of innovation change is viable, Ertmer and her colleagues (Ertmer et al, 1999) take this one stage further and say that the teacher is also likely to be at more than one level at the same time - making the argument for individually designed CPD all the more important. The use of a localised support team, as envisaged by many LEAs, although not as effective as an 'on demand, in school' resource, does go at least some way to supporting the teachers in schools too small to support their own ICT technician.

However, CPD is not just about the 'how to' aspect - CPD needs to take into account pleas raised by

such as Kenway that teachers need to be not only skilled but ―informed and critical‖ users of the

technology (Kenway,1995, p 57). "Computers in schools are physical artefacts which governments can deliver, can point to as a symbol of action and commitment. The computer is an icon to

demonstrate to parents that ICT is a force in education" (Lloyd, 2003, p2). But it is not the computer itself that is the change agent; rather, it is the teacher being self-reflective about his or her own practices. ICT CPD programmes, ideally, will be designed with Kenway‘s plea in mind while also addressing the issues noted in the present case study; that is, the need to change attitudes and provide basic competencies while keeping in mind the different perceptions, abilities and experiences of the teachers.