Working Documents

1. Combating failure	2. Converting new knowledge into practice
3. Common factors in ability to change	4. Flexible approaches

Document 3: Common factors in ability to change

Statements:

Experience from the SocraTESS ODL Project shows that Open and Distance Learning (ODL) can enable teachers to meet new challenges, because it can:

• give them first-hand experience of using networked computers;
• make them aware of international research and enable them to apply its findings to their own classrooms;
• enable them to join a learning network of teachers both within their own locality and across Europe, and to do so at times which suit the teacher or group of teachers;
• enable enthusiastic teachers to work with colleagues to improve their own schools.

This might mean that

• Schools become ‘learning networks’ where knowledge and experience are shared between colleagues and ‘problems’ are re-defined as opportunities;
• A progressive move away from schools as ‘buildings’, used between set hours, to schools without walls where pupils can learn when they need to.

Introduction

• One of the prerequisites for teachers being able to take initiatives towards changing their teaching practise is that they acknowledge the necessity of such a change, with a view to both taking into consideration the expectations of the younger generation towards the school system and society's needs with regard to developing the potential of pupils - varying as these might be: the development of these potentials will enable pupils to live up to the requirements of competence set by a society of the future.

• This kind of acknowledgement ought to use as a starting point the fact that it is intolerable, both from a human and societal perspective, that in a democratic society in which the focus should be precisely on entering into a dialog with the individual pupil regarding the development of personal potentials and responsibility for one's own learning, a steadily increasing number of pupils are pushed out - or are allowed to wander out - of mainstream schooling when they become bogged down in their progress at school.

• In order to support the development towards an inclusive school and a consequent renewal of the curriculum, it is necessary to offer teachers an ongoing in-service training which uses as a starting point their own daily practise, and at the same time mediates relevant up-to-date knowledge to them. The content of an in-service training of this kind must also be aimed at developing the teachers' ability to reorganise, and entail the trying out of different models in their practical teaching so that teachers obtain a realistic experience of what new (co-operative) working methods, teaching methods and strategies will mean in practise.

The vision of school and its teaching practise

In order to be able to solve this task, school must be able to act with forethought and be able to analyse its own development. School must be able to produce a "development plan", in which is set out a rationale for its qualifications through a description of the vision, the culture and the set of norms upon which it bases its curriculum.

It is important that teachers have a full understanding of the fact that school reflects society. For this reason teachers must be competent in being able to analyse societal developments, creating visions for the school which correspond to this development and converting the vision into practise so that this is also manifest in the curriculum.

Today it must be considered as a requirement and necessity that the vision and practical enterprise of school constitute a reorganisation which concretises a number of indicators (mentioned in document 1) of an open, innovative and inclusive school, which builds on human and professional values in both individual and shared developmental spheres.

School must be able to describe the pupil culture and account for ways of tackling the development of the curriculum content within an individual and shared perspective, as pupils must be responsible for their own education; they must learn to find their own bearings, know their own identity and share a common responsibility.

In order that this will function in practise it is necessary that pupils learn this feeling of responsibility in school, through fellowship and teamwork with one another. Pupils must, for example, have an influence on their own academic and personal development and be able to feel that they are able to make a contribution and learn from each other. In other words they must experience being part of a whole, but also being an individual.

Collaboration in networks

Open and Distance Learning (ODL) provides the possibility of teachers and pupils collaborating in electronically based networks, and it is precisely this collaboration which makes possible the opening up of educational institutions so that a larger flow of information, knowledge and know-how is made available to a broader circle of people – in a European context. ODL provides the possibility of teachers using the “idea-bank”, which will be constantly available across national borders. It will be possible to discuss problem complexes with colleagues from outside one’s own school, and to gain access to advisory institutions etc.

If one’s mother tongue is not an international language, this will immediately constitute an in-built language barrier. It must be expected that teachers are competent in one language; a language which is commonly used in international communication. This is important both in terms of benefits for the teacher in using ICT and ODL and for their possibilities for advising pupils.

The first collaboration or contact between pupils will most logically be within the same language area, for example within the same country, but as knowledge of an international language increases, pupils will be able to start using it in a network collaboration which crosses national and linguistic boundaries and furthermore in this way increase their knowledge of the language. Here it will also be important to draw on available support in the form of pictures, film and sound.

Collaboration in networks can help make teachers more open towards the use of different technological approaches in solving teaching tasks and can thus lead to better teaching.

In principle there is no limit to who is able to collaborate via an electronic network: teacher to teacher, teachers and parents, teachers and pupils and pupil to pupil.

In addition there are also possibilities for using ICT to create a “virtual classroom” with a view to helping pupils do their homework, and as previously mentioned it is possible to support children who for one reason or the other are temporarily located outside the usual teaching environment, and help these pupils to keep up contact with their class.

Furthermore, “the virtual classroom” can also be used by teachers while they are doing preparation work.

ODL can be a supportive aid in re-interpreting the concept of “school”, so that the definition of a “location in which children and young people learn” is no longer solely tied to a physical building as the intended seat of learning.

If the indicators (mentioned in document 1) are to have any penetrability, a prerequisite will be a degree of malleability and openness on the part of teachers with regard to changes in their professional profile and teaching practise.

These prerequisites are to a large extent related to the teacher's personality, which will also be influenced to a greater or lesser degree by traditions and attitudes in the school environment.

The openness of European teachers

The openness of European teachers towards changes in their teaching practise can be described as a continuum which ranges from a very closed to a very open teacher profile.

On the numerical plane it can be seen that some of the participant nations in the euroREAD ODL course have a large number of participants, others only few. Whether this in itself is an expression of a greater or lesser degree of openness to change is as yet an open question.

But under any circumstances, by the act of participating in the project one has already demonstrated a personal openness towards new methods of in-service training, changes in one's own teaching practise, international collaboration etc.

The "open" teacher will immediately be in a position to commence work on utilising the possibilities contained in the above-mentioned indicators, while a greater or lesser degree of inducement will be required before one can overcome resistance in teachers who occupy other positions in the continuum.

The teachers who occupy the "closed" end of the continuum can be characterised by the following:

• resistance towards ICT
• no, or only modest participation in in-service training courses
• no, or only modest participation in developmental tasks in school or within a broader forum
• resistance to teamwork in the school
• reluctance to share their teaching practise with others
• limitation of school/home co-operation to a minimum
• definition of "teaching" as one-way communication, teacher to pupil
• in favour of segregating to other forms of provision pupils who cannot keep up

These traits are not necessarily all present in the same teacher, but are mentioned as examples which can be used to describe teacher profiles.

Team formation and teamwork on an in-service training course are the fulcrum around which teachers with more closed profiles can be swung out of isolation, provided that the teams are put together so that both "open" and "closed" teacher profiles are represented.

The teachers' teamwork can therefore be viewed as a very important lever in influencing resistance to changes in some teachers.

In the work with TESS Network, it has been demonstrated that there is a considerable difference between the openness and flexibility of various teachers when it comes to suggestions involving renewal of their teaching.

There are also differences in the way teachers in the individual countries react to, for example, international surveys which compare the results from country to country or from school to school within the individual countries.

During the analysis the euroREAD expert group registered reactions to the international reading survey (IEA, 1993) that varied from national strategies for new texts and improved text book materials (Iceland and Spain) to a considerable reluctance to accept the international position indicated relative to the IEA’s results (Denmark).

These differences could be due to different factors like, for instance, particular cultural factors, the pedagogical environment in the country or at the school, the educational level of the teachers, the degree of self-esteem etc.

The reactions can have diverse manifestations. Some will react by looking to the future, using the survey results as a starting point, and asking themselves what they can do to improve their teaching. Others will react by looking to the past and getting bogged down in providing explanations of reasons underlying the poor results.

In TESS Network's ODL activities we have seen both types of reaction, but have as yet been unable to explain unequivocally the reasons for these diverging attitudes. In addition it must be presumed that teachers who participate in transitional pioneering work represent a sample of the teaching population who alone by their presence in the project must be in possession of a certain level of openness and flexibility.