My revision after SSS

6.1.1 PD should be ongoing

Professional development is about learning and learning should be ongoing for every teacher. Therefore, any professional development program should enhance the ongoing learning process of teachers. This means that teachers should not only learn in the time of the PD program (e.g. workshops, seminars), but more importantly to continue the learning in their daily professional life. The importance of this ongoing process has been cited in many PD literatures (Abdal-Haqq, 1995; Borko, 2004), yet, this aspect is often not a main consideration of traditional methods of PD programs (Borko, 2004).

Many online PD programs have emerged to address the problems of traditional PD programs (e.g. lack of experts, resources at school, time) that inhibiting from the continuing process of teacher’s learning. A great deal of persuasive writing or speech is highlighting the power of the Internet offering many possibilities for learning and enabling ongoing learning. They argue that the Internet allows a more flexible learning environment any where at any time.

Relevant on this, Dede recently edited a book entitled Online Professional Development for Teacher: Emerging Models and Methods, examining ten selected models of online teacher professional development in the USA relevant to maths, science, engineering, or technology education. He has observed that
Currently, many initiatives in online teacher professional development are serving large numbers of educators. However, while such programs are propagating rapidly and consuming substantial resources both fiscally and logistically, little is known about best practices for the design and implementation of these alternative models for professional development. Evidence of effectiveness is generally lacking, anecdotal, or based on participants surveys completed immediately after learning experiences, rather than later when a better sense of long-range impact is attainable” (Dede, 2006, p. 2)

The ten models were selected based on the quality and maturity of the program and the inclusion of different types of content, pedagogies, and audiences. Debra (2007), in his review of this book stated that “The greatest strength of this book lies in the wide variety of models chosen”. She argues four aspects determining the usefulness of the online teacher professional development for developer and users are “the design consideration chosen, the implementations of these design considerations, lessons learned throughout implementation, and the evaluation and research results” (p. 148). These aspects were covered partly in many of these models, and in my study on PD using the Internet with its design different from the 10 models. Conducting an ethnographic study on only two participants for a long period of time has enabled me to investigate more thoroughly the uses of the Internet for PD. In this regard, this study might add some new insight into how teachers really use the Internet as a tool for their ongoing learning, including factors supporting and inhibiting them from effective uses of the Internet for teachers PD.

My study with Ann was to investigate how Ann uses the Internet for PD and to teach mathematics. One of the aspects was to explore how Ann uses the Internet for her ongoing PD. My study with Jack was to provide a PD program using an ethnographic approach to assist him to use the Internet for ongoing learning.

In the first case, I found that the Internet enabled Ann to do ongoing professional development by optimising the potential of the Internet as a source of information and as a medium of communication. The Internet enabled Ann to find useful information through her own access to the Internet at her home or school, or from student’s access to the Internet. Ann communicated with other teachers about her teaching and benefited from the mailing list as it informed useful websites for her learning and teaching. Ann stated that she did not have to wait for a workshop to get information and to share ideas with other teachers/educators. And if Ann attended a workshop, she could explore further the material in the workshop through the Internet and communicate with other teachers/facilitators if necessary.

In the second case, initially I considered two things: (1) the uses of the Internet for ongoing learning and (2) the PD that I would offer should be ongoing.

In the first idea, I was hoping that my programs would assist Jack to achieve the level where he could see the potential of the Internet for ongoing learning and be able to continue by himself in the future, as Ann did. My efforts, such as organising the educational websites into blogs and emailing the websites to Jack, were actually aiming to facilitate Jack to be able to access them easily whenever or wherever he is, therefore ongoing learning. The result of this step is unpredictable. Even though there was an email from Jack after he worked for several months as a teacher overseas reporting about the usefulness of my blogs, I have not enough data to indicate the long term impacts of my research on Jack and this is one of the limitations of this study.

In the second idea in my initial research design, I planned to leave Jack for a while after seeing him confident enough in using the Internet for his learning and teaching. I also planned that during my absence in his classroom, I would support Jack from outside the classroom, by using emails and blogs. The result of this was not as I expected. The challenge was that it was difficult to get replies to any emails relating to our communication about his learning and teaching in the classroom, including responding to the learning resources that I provided. The issue of the limitations of e-mail communications has been discussed in several other studies (e.g. …….). The fact is that interaction through email is different from having face to face interaction. In the case of Jack, direct interaction in the classroom often produced immediate feedback on my efforts in promoting the uses of the internet.

Why were Ann and Jack so different in the uses of the Internet? What is the most important lesson from Jack case study in terms of expecting teachers to use the email for ongoing learning? How is about the preferences of the media of learning? How about their different context within the busy schedule? E-mail seems another challenge for teachers. Having email could mean having additional jobs to read, reply to, or act upon. What is the lesson that we can have about blogging for teachers? Are we expecting teachers to have a blog? What kind of blog allows teachers to enhance their PD? I think, we can gain a better insight to these questions by analysing the two cases using the zones theory in Section 6.2.