The POD model: Using communities of practice theory to conceptualise student teachers’ professional learning online

Abstract

This paper focuses on the broad outcomes of a research project which aimed to analyse and model student teachers’ learning in the online components of an initial teacher education course. It begins with discussion of the methodological approach adopted for the case study, which combined conventional data gathering techniques with those which are facilitated using the ‘panoptical’ tools of the VLE. The author has synthesized case study evidence, learning theory (Community of practice theory) and the advice of a key theoretician, to produce an original model of student teachers’ learning online within a professional online district (POD). The most distinctive feature of the POD model is the learning-curriculum dichotomy which recognises the potential of a VLE as a venue in which student teachers, working together in a community of practice, construct their own curriculum (both formal and informal/’hidden’. The paper also examines the key technological and pedagogical issues which affect students’ online learning.

Introduction

This paper focuses on a research project which allowed the author to develop a model of student teachers’ online learning. The researcher embarked on the study with the aim of improving her understanding of her students’ learning within the online components of an Initial Teacher Education (ITE) course. The Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) in Geography at the University of Ulster is a 36 week ITE (Initial Teacher Education) course which is delivered partly face-to-face, through university-based tutorials and school-based practical learning, and partly online, within a virtual learning environment (VLE). It is beyond the scope of this paper to present the full detail of the case study, as provided elsewhere (Clarke, 2007). Instead, the purpose here is to highlight the key outcome of the project: a broad conceptual model (The POD model) of student teachers’ learning online. The acronym ePGCE is used here as a convenient shorthand for the online elements of the PGCE course.

Student teachers are particularly competent to comment on their learning within online contexts. Loughran (1999, p. 19) asserts the primacy of student experience and the need for teachers at all levels to be attuned to student experiences. Student teachers are perhaps a singularly well-informed and perceptive student group whose interest and enthusiasm for education can serve to improve the quality of their opinions. Today’s student teachers are more ICT literate than ever before, (Kay & Mellar, 1994; Lienard, 1995; Mellar and Jackson, 1992, Simpson et al., 1998), possessing, as they do, a literacy which has been developed through a mixture of school-based learning and through extensive leisure use of ICT. It is ironic that, as technology proliferates; multiple digital divides between teachers, students and pupils (BECTa, 2001) are exacerbated. One key divide is aptly described by Prensky (2001, p. 38) as that between digital natives (pupils) and digital immigrants (tutors/teachers):

…the single biggest problem facing education today is that our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language.

Today’s student teachers are well placed to bridge the gap between the immigrants and the natives.

A recent report by the Teacher Training Agency (TTA) suggested that an increasing number of ITE courses incorporate the use of VLEs. In January 2004, 58% of all providers of approved Initial Teacher Training (ITT) in England, submitted bids for developing e-learning communities in ITT (2004). Virtually all Faculties of Education which submitted bids were already involved in e-learning developments.

The current study has its origins in favourable local infrastructural affordances and policies. These have ensured both technological provision and high-level organisational support for e-learning in ITE in Northern Ireland. Classroom, 2000 (C2K, www.c2k.org.uk), the organisation in charge of developing ICT infrastructure in Northern Ireland’s schools, has been keen to involve ITE tutors in the use of their VLE provision, and tutors have been equally keen to use this provision rather than the university’s VLE since they are preparing teachers to teach in the school sector. The current study involved the use of both a C2K supported pilot of Blackboard (by students in the 2004–2005 cohort) and the bespoke C2K VLE, LearningNI (LNI, http://learingni.net/) VLE (by students in the 2005–2006 cohort. These technological affordances are backed by favourable policies. Both the Education and Training Inspectorate’s Survey of the Induction and Early Professional Development of Beginning Teachers (DENI, 2005) and The Policy Review of Teacher Education in Northern Ireland (Osler, 2005) advocate the use of online environments to support teacher development across the three phases of early teacher education (ITE, Induction and Early Professional Development, (EPD)) and, indeed, beyond. In addition, a recent Department of Education Circular highlights the need for schools to explore:

… opportunities for teachers and leaders to undertake some elements of their continued professional learning online. (DE 2007:3)

Further support for both e-learning in teacher education and for the social, situated learning paradigm of the current study comes from the General Teaching Council for Northern Ireland (GTCNI). This approach appears to stand in marked contrast to the standards/competences approach to teacher education which is used throughout the UK, and is increasingly prevalent worldwide (Beyer, 2002). The competences/standards approach is critiqued in a recent article by Yandell and Turvey (2007, p. 534) as having an abstracting, decontextualising effect, and they cite other authorities in the field who suggest that the standards model represents a narrowing conception of the teachers’ role (Cochran-Smith, 2004) that involves an attempt to measure a uniformity of outcomes (Bullough, Clark, & Patterson, 2003, p. 49). Yandell and Turvey suggest that Communities of Practice theory provides a more useful approach with which to analyse the complexity of new teachers’ experiences. The GTCNI is to be commended because, in publishing the revised list of teacher competences for Northern Ireland (GTCNI, 2007), it also highlights the potential of communities of practice (both online and face-to-face) to sustain the early professional development of teachers:

They [the competences] also emphasise the growing collective responsibilities inherent in the development of professional communities of practice, within which the individuals’ growing professional competence is situated. The [General Teaching] Council takes the view that it is within these wider professional communities that school improvement is promoted and sustained. (GTCNI, 2007, p. 16)

The context of the study in relation to the use of VLEs in initial teacher education and to learning theory is explained below. The next section, however, outlines the methodology of the study.