C5 again

Here is my draft today. I need to revise it.
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The teacher’s context
One characteristic of effective professional development used to guide the researcher in working with Jack was taking into consideration the individual teacher and his classroom/school context. The idea fits what Borko (1997) and Abdal-Haqq (1995) suggest that the teacher should be treated as an active learner who construct his own understanding. Also, Jack should be treated as adult learner and professional. Both agree that professional development must take into consideration the classroom/school context of the teacher.

The application of this characteristic was evident in many critical events presented in chapter 5. Firstly, with the ethnographic approach (in which the researcher eventually established a good relationship with Jack and was an insider in Jack's class), enabling the researcher to know better Jack's classroom or his school. For example, knowing that the four computers in Jack’s classroom had good Internet connections but they were used rarely by students for learning, and his school provided ICT support, then the researcher often searched opportunities to offer the uses of the Internet by students to gain richer learning. Another example, knowing that his school encouraged professional sharing among teachers; she proposed an idea for Jack to share the websites or his mathematics teaching using the Internet with other teachers.

Secondly, the researcher showed many attempts to treat Jack as an adult learner, to value his constructive ideas, and to treat him as a professional. For instance, the researcher often asked Jack's ideas/judgement on websites before offering them to students. The researcher’s story (e.g. her lack of experience in teaching lower primary school and her willingness to learn from Jack’s experiences) was another example of indicating her respect for Jack’s professionalism.

In addition, the nature of this research considered Jack’s context. The researcher’s entire efforts were based on her reflection on her informal conversations with Jack and her observation in his classroom. For example, because Jack saw only a limited potential of the Internet for teacher professional development and he experienced searching the Internet as being time consuming, therefore the researcher provided him with the online learning resources in many different ways (through blogs, e-mails, annonated table and linked table) and suggested ways to use them.
It appeared that the results of this, Jack’s responses during this research were positive, such as, his confidence in demonstrating the teaching using the Internet with the data projector, his responses in telling me the websites that he got, telling me his participation in sharing ideas with other teachers.

Despite a partial success in implementing this aspect of the theory, the research finding suggests two possibilities. The first possibility is that considering these two things (Jack’s individual context and his classroom/school context) is not enough to promote the uses of the Internet. The second possibility, the definition of the researcher on this characteristic brought to this field was not enough. In fact, understanding the individual teacher is not a finished work. For over one year, working with Jack, the researcher had been developing her understanding continuously about Jack. She found that her insight about Jack changed over time. For example, in the critical event when the researcher offered the integration of the Internet in the free morning activities, she thought that Jack was confident to manage the activities by himself after he had been given websites relevant to his teaching programs, but after about three weeks, the researcher found that he struggled to continue the Internet morning activities. He faced a significant challenge when managing the students in his busy time. the researcher found that Jack’s was unable to embrace the Internet because it did not match his views about effective teaching.

At the same time, I also found that it was not only because of Jack's individual factor, the Internet feature itself influence Jack's decision, since many websites require students to finish some exercises in short time, then if they do not know what to do next, here was the time where students asked question a lot and Jack viewed this as the disruption.

On the case of Ann, the Internet enabled Ann to continue learning in the situation that suit with her individual context as a teacher, as a part of her family and society. As presented previously that with the Internet that available in her home and classroom, Ann enables to learn in her own context without leaving her school or her home. The time to access the Internet was her choice. She had more flexible access to the Internet at home than at her school. Therefore, often, she found online resources at home and she sent them to the school computers to be used in her classroom.
This research method is significantly different from the approach who taking teachers outside of the classroom [Ref].