Skill Development

Many of the teachers, regardless of their teaching approach or style, associated themselves with the parent bird breaking down knowledge into digestible chunks or the watch maker building parts into a working whole. Knowledge was seen as extensive and thus teachers needed to break it down into manageable chucks to present to the learners.

T2: I would say that I’m probably a parent bird. Sort of putting out the knowledge to learners, but I always make it so that each week a sizable chunk of activities for them to do, not too big as to overwhelm them and not too small where they could finish half way in and get bored or what ever

T14: The ‘parent bird’ I normally break things down and the description I say is I don’t give you a Mars bar to swallow in one whole bite; I give you little fun sized bites. So I use a similar metaphor there.

Several of the teachers talked of ‘building’ knowledge. T2’s own metaphor of teacher was as a set of steps which the learners ascended at their own pace.

T2: And it works practically well with ICT teaching because that is what you’re basically doing when you are learning ICT, you are stepping from basic level and then using those kinds of skills to do more advanced things. You cannot do the advanced until you know the basic and so on and so forth, and so you can keep building up your knowledge and skills in a step by step way.

This staged development combined with the image of breaking down knowledge into manageable chunks created an image of the teacher as a bricklayer building the individual bricks of knowledge into a wall and emphasized ICT skills as progressive

T14: I think anything with computer it’s very logical in the process and you cannot do step 3 before you’ve done step 2. So again them bite sized chunks do naturally lead on to another and obviously without even thinking that they’ve done it they just do little bits at a time till they’re getting the whole.

This quote identifies the progression as serialistic; that is each step is clearly defined and has to be experienced in the right order. Such an image is explicit in step-by-step manuals and was echoed by several of the teachers. This serialistic emphasis again associate learning progress as linear route and could contribute to the prevailing models of differentiation discussed earlier.

The component nature of the tests also appeared to reinforce the perception of serialistic progression.

T4: I suppose the watchmaker; I’m building the component parts into a working whole. You teach them how to do cut and paste and then feed it into what they need to be able to do with their bit of text or whatever.

T17: It has a lot to do with the course as well. I mean for example something like the HEFC course there’s a big element of the parent bird because there’s so much stuff that they’ve got to get through and you’ve got to give it to them in manageable chunks each week. And there’s a syllabus that they’ve got to achieve in a very, very short time space so, you know, there’s a lot of this is the little bit that you need to get through this week. Put all the bits together and you’ll get your qualification.

The bricks of knowledge were seen as coming together to form the whole but in this instance could also refer to filling gaps in knowledge.

T4: my ladies really don’t need a huge amount of teaching. They’ve kind of dabbled in a lot of the things, it’s just that they’re perhaps not sure on odds

and ends and there are certain things that we have to be able to do just to get through the exams, you know.

T1: I would get people who are –quite confident with IT and what I’m doing is possibly not filling them up but ‘topping them up’. So they’ve got a half tank and I’m - , because they are self taught and have the confidence to find it themselves, but there are chasms in their knowledge

The teacher’s role here appeared to equate to applying the pointing to fill the gaps and finish off the wall. The concern is, as these examples indicate, that the gap filling might be more to do with filling in examination knowledge gaps than developing ICT user skills. This again places the teacher as examination expert rather than ICT user expert.

To conclude there was generally agreement on what skills were valued for ICT users. The practical skills to manipulate applications were seen as very important. The teachers whose ICT qualifications involved teaching skills seemed to place less emphasis on these skills perhaps indicating that they were more concerned for the individual learner than for subject skills. By and large, the teachers placed strong emphasis on skill transfer statements, especially the ‘old hand’ teachers which might indicate they had a greater understanding for the need for subject application. But these differences were not marked and may not be hugely significant. Despite their personal emphasis on skill transfer many saw the syllabuses as placing less emphasis on this area. It seemed, then, to be up to the teacher to signpost transfer and to ensure skills were acquired in the ‘correct’ sequence. The concept of teacher as bricklayer was an example of the way that the teachers’ perception of teaching was influenced by their understandings of subject but perceptions of learner and institutional needs also impacted on teaching style. Chapter 7 will continue to explore how teachers construe ICT teaching by examining the teachers’ pedagogical understandings, while Chapter 8 will explore wider institutional influences such as funding and syllabuses.

Moving on from the teachers’ subject constructions, this chapter will explore their pedagogical interpretations. Teaching and learning combine to form the classroom experience, the learners’ perspective, deduced from questionnaire and interview, will therefore also be considered. The discussion here is concerned with the perceived aims of ICT user education, the teachers’ professed responsibilities and the teachers’ and learners’ interpretations of their respective roles and will begin with a brief profile of the learners involved.