IDENTIFYING TEACHER DEVELOPMENT STAGES
  45 minutes
  

As an ICT leader in your school you have the option of adopting a range of leadership styles. One of these may be to lead from the front in terms of innovative use of ICT, to be a learner among learners. Some school managers may be much more conservative because of a lack of confidence in working with ICT. No matter what your leadership style and your personal approach to ICT, it is recommended that you be aware of the various phases that teachers (and managers) typically pass through as they are exposed to and adopt ICT in the school. If you are aware of your teachers' changing attitudes and evolving uses of ICT, you can support them strongly by showing your understanding and your interest in their professional growth. You could also be in a position to recommend specific learning pathways that will facilitate their growth with ICT.

 

Activity 2b

 

  1. Identify the general level of staff ICT development in your school/region using the table of Levels of practice ( Template 3 ). Think of your staff generally. How do they fit into this framework? Place an X in the cell in each row that most represents their level of teaching practice.
  2. Use the Stages of adoption table ( Template 4 ) to identify specific teachers that have achieved the described levels of competence. Read each level and try to identify by name the teachers that are at that specific level. Write their names in the right-hand column of the table.
  3. Consult the Strategies for competence table ( Table 2.2 ) and the list of teacher development programmes.

 

Table 2.2: Effective Strategies for the Stages of Learning/Adoption

Developmental Stage

Effective Strategies

Stage 1. Teacher as Learner.

In this information-gathering stage, teachers learn the knowledge and skills necessary for performing instructional tasks using technology.

Time for training; demonstrations of promising practices; ongoing support by peers; basic ICT skills training in the contexts of teacher needs; in-service sessions that stress the use of ICT in teaching contexts.

 

Stage 2. Teacher as Adopter.

In this stage, teachers progress through stages of personal and task management concern as they experiment with the technology, begin to try it out in their classrooms, and share their experiences with their peers.

Online resources, helpdesks, and other forms of readily accessible support; mechanisms to deal with technical problems as they arise; open lab workshops at school sites to solve specific technical problems; in-service sessions that stress the alignment of ICT to curriculum.

Stage 3. Teacher as Co-Learner.

Workshops and online resources with strategies for enhancing instruction and integrating ICT into the curriculum; collegial sharing of curriculum integration; exemplary products and assessment ideas; use of learners as informal technical assistants.

Stage 4. Teacher as Re-affirmer or Rejecter.

In this stage, teachers develop a greater awareness of intermediate learning outcomes and begin to create new ways to observe and assess impact on learner products and performances, and to disseminate exemplary learner work to a larger audience.

Administrative support; an incentive system that is valued by adopting teachers; awareness of intermediate learning outcomes such as increased time on task, lower absenteeism, greater engagement, and increased meta-cognitive (thinking) skills; evidence of impact on learning and performances; dissemination of exemplary learner work.

Stage 5. Teacher as Leader.

In this stage, experienced teachers expand their roles to become action researchers who carefully observe their practice, collect data, share the improvements in practice with peers, and teach new members. Their skills become portable.

Incentives for co-teaching onsite workshops; involvement on ICT committee; release time and other semi-permanent role changes to allow peer coaching and outside consulting; support from an outside network of teacher-leaders; structured time for leading in-house discussions and workshops; transfer of skills if teacher goes to another school.

Sherry, L, et al. (2000) New Insights on Technology Adoption in Schools [Online] http://www.thejournal.com/articles/14594

 

 

Stop and Think

Compile a list of specific recommendations for teacher development that you can make to specific members of your staff.