Search results

The study aims to assess the effectiveness of engaging tutors in designing and using ICT integrated lesson activities in strengthening their pedagogical use of ICT competences.

Survey data from an intervention group of 70 tutors from two teachers colleges (TCs) were used to compare their level of ICT competences and domains of professional practice before and after the intervention. Document analysis, lesson observations and feedback from the learning management system (LMS) were used to describe tutors’ experiences from the intervention.

There was a statistically significant increase in tutors’ level of pedagogical use of ICT competences and domains of professional practice associated with hands-on practice in designing and implementing the intervention.

The intervention focus on hands-on practice, actual teaching and learning needs, and the use of active learning strategies like flipped classroom and the LMS, were useful means for tutors to make sense of pedagogical use of ICT competences.

The results offer useful insights to teacher education institutions and policymakers on how to prepare professional learning and supportive policies to enhance teaching and learning with ICT for addressing the learning needs of the subject matter.

Creating 16 ICT integrated lesson activities helped tutors to learn pedagogical use of ICT competences by doing. Use of such intervention could be a useful strategy in teacher education institutions to reposition ICT competence development from reproducing technological competences toward developing knowledge creators who could innovate their pedagogical practice with support from mentors, digital learning resources and networks.

School leadership is found important for school development and student learning. Consequently, the interest in professional leadership education for principals has increased. In Sweden, professional leadership education for novice principals was made mandatory in 2010. Moreover, enhanced focus on leadership for teaching and learning in terms of ‘pedagogical leadership’ is highly topical. This study aims to deepen our knowledge of novice principals’ experiences of pedagogical leadership practices and relate these to their paths toward principalship. The study follows a qualitative and situated design and adopts a practice-based approach. Observations were conducted in the educational and workplace practices of novice principals in Sweden and interviews were conducted with principals and teachers. Using a conceptual framework of Wenger (1998), the analyses show that principals experience challenges concerning pedagogical leadership if their competence and experience are not aligned with practice and context. This mismatch seems to impair their pedagogical leadership practice. In addition, a lack of leadership experience obstructs their learning in the professional leadership education for principals.

A critical attribute of open educational practices (OEP) is the pursuit of open scholarship which comprises the release of educational resources under an open licence scheme that permits no-cost access, use, reuse, adaptation, retention and redistribution to others. The degree of openness in relation to this attribute will depend on the context and culture of the place and the people in it. When left to chance, the adoption and practice of open scholarship by educators is at best sketchy. For optimum impact, a design-based approach is essential. A central focus of such an approach will need to target educators’ belief systems and practices about their scholarship. Any such work will involve researchers collaborating with practitioners in real-life settings to improve educational practices through iterative analysis, design, development and implementation. The purpose of this paper is to report on how the development and use of such a design-based approach, implemented by the Open University of Sri Lanka, impacted the adoption and uptake of open scholarship among teachers in the Sri Lankan school system in terms of changes in their use of instructional resources, pedagogical thinking and pedagogical practices.

The study adopted a design-based research (DBR) approach (Reeves, 2006), which involved researchers collaboratively working with practitioners in real-life settings to improve their educational practices along three aspects – instructional resource use, pedagogical perspectives and pedagogical practices. Based on the four stages of the DBR approach – analysis, solution, testing and refinement, and reflection, a professional development intervention programme was designed and implemented to support teachers on the integration of open educational resources (OER) and adoption of OEP in their teaching-learning process. Data collected throughout the process using multiple strategies such as questionnaire surveys, concept mapping, lesson plans, focus group interviews, self-reflections and “stories”, were analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative methods.

By the end of the intervention, significant changes were observed in teachers’ use of instructional resources, their pedagogical thinking and pedagogical practices. While resource usage has shifted from no or low usage of OER to reuse, revise, remix and creation of OER, the pedagogical thinking and practices of teachers moved from a content-centric and individualized patterns to more constructivist, context centric and collaborative ways. The diffusion of OEP was prominent along two dimensions – enhancements in the individual practices in innovative OER use as well as collaborative practices of sharing of resources, knowledge and good practices.

The systematic and flexible methodology adopted based on the DBR approach via a framework designed as a contextualized, process oriented and a self-reflective enquiry has been very useful to support changes in OEP among practitioners over time.

This iterative process allowed the researchers to function as “designers”, while investigating real-life issues in collaboration with the practitioners through reflective enquiry to further refine innovative practices towards OEP. This provides valuable insights for improved design solutions for future interventions in similar contexts.

The aim of this study is to explore the extent to which a transnational pedagogical training affected university teachers' approaches to teaching, as well as their efficacy beliefs and cultural perceptions, and to examine how such training could stimulate teachers' pedagogical-development processes beyond the specific context.

An explanatory sequential mixed-methods design was adopted for the study. Quantitative data were collected through an online self-reported questionnaire from two-independent samples, both before (n = 119) and after (n = 110) the training. Qualitative data were collected after the training through episodic narrative interviews with five teachers.

The quantitative and qualitative findings indicate contradictory aspects of the teaching approach and perceived culture. While the questionnaire responses highlighted the dominance of teacher-centred teaching approaches and an individualistic culture, a thematic analysis of the interview data showed that teachers experienced pedagogical development as (1) increasing student engagement, (2) improving their own teaching practices, (3) a community activity and (4) an institutionalised process.

The design of the current research may have limited the authors’ potential to deeply investigate the effect of the transnational pedagogical training, as only snapshots of the teachers' perceptions were elicited. Future studies might consider a within-subject longitudinal design to thoroughly follow teachers' trajectories in learning and development over time.

The research findings suggest that transnational pedagogical training initiatives are to be promoted amidst these uncertain times. Even though the focus of the study was not to explore the teachers' perceptions of teaching development during the pandemic, the current results imply that the mentioned training helped teachers in tailoring their pedagogical practices to suit the unexpected online teaching settings.

The study adds to the relatively new literature on the perceived effect of transnational pedagogical training initiatives. This study’s findings contribute to the body of knowledge related to pedagogical development in fragile and conflict-affected contexts.

International figures on university expenditure on the development of next generation learning spaces (NGLS) are not readily available but anecdote suggests that simply retrofitting an existing classroom as an NGLS conservatively costs $AUD200,000, while developing new buildings often cost in the region of 100 million dollars and over the last five years, many universities in Australia, Europe and North America have developed new buildings. Despite this considerable investment, it appears that the full potential of these spaces is not being realised.

While researchers argue that a more student centred learning approach to teaching has inspired the design of next generation learning spaces (Tom, Voss, & Scheetz, 2008) and that changed spaces change practice (Joint Information Systems Committee, 2009) when ‘confronted’ with a next generation learning spaces for the first time, anecdotes suggest that many academics resort to teaching as they have always taught and as they were taught. This chapter highlights factors that influence teaching practices, showing that they are to be found in the external, organisational and personal domains.

We argue that in order to fully realise significant improvements in student outcomes through the sector’s investment in next generation learning spaces, universities need to provide holistic and systematic support across three domains – the external, the organisational and the personal domains, by changing policies, systems, procedures and localised practices to better facilitate changes in teaching practices that maximise the potential of next generation learning spaces.

The purpose of this paper is to compare methods of working with pedagogical capital in teacher and mentor education. The authors make an account of the development of the concept of pedagogical capital and relate it to the theoretical context of practice theory. Empirical data will substantiate the theoretical discussion of teachers ' pedagogical capital.

Comparative analyses of the authors ' research and empirical data were undertaken.

Three dimensions of pedagogical capital have been identified: an experience content dimension, an analysis dimension and an acting dimension.

The authors find potential in using and further developing the concept of pedagogical capital in its various dimensions and in relation to other similar concepts.

The authors ' methods could be used for school development purposes as well as in teacher education.

The aim of the paper is to underline the value of the contributions people can make to society as a whole and as teachers in school, in particular. The recognition of the ability to analyse and contribute is the essence of this work.

The value of the paper is the introduction and development of pedagogical capital in an international context. The value is also the common analyses of educational work in Sweden and Norway.

The European Forum for Enhanced Collaboration in Teaching (EFFECT, 2015–2019) (EFFECT, 2019), a project co-financed by the European Commission, through its Erasmus+ programme, has been exploring effective methods for university teachers’ development at the European level, including pedagogical staff development “modules” to support inclusivity and citizenship in teaching and learning practice. Throughout the project and in this chapter, the authors have taken “inclusivity” to convey an attitude and appreciation for principles which inform “inclusion” as a practice – in the context of reflective and reflexive practice the words become largely interchangeable.

The way academic staff teach is of critical importance in any reform designed to enhance inclusion and citizenship in higher education. Conveying these values-related topics in an academic context hardly lends itself to a traditional pedagogical training model. Promoting inclusion means stimulating discussion, challenging stereotypes and unconscious biases, as well as improving educational and social frameworks. The Change Laboratory methodology (Engeström, 2001) was chosen for the pedagogical staff development workshops under EFFECT, with a view to engaging teaching staff in a deeper reflection about the topics and about their teaching practice. Change Laboratory is an intervention-research methodology that aims at reconceptualizing activity: it intends to provoke authentic reactions, responses and disagreements among the participants and provides opportunity for them to work together to reimagine their activities and to identify “concrete” solutions that address persisting issues in their practice. The theory takes a broad conceptualization of “activity” and “practice,” which is not specific to the education sector or the “classroom.” The Change Laboratory is a methodology designed to support the “expansive learning cycle” described by Engeström and as such can be understood as a theory of change which the EFFECT project team applied to a pan-European higher education learning and teaching context.

In 2017, the project team designed and implemented four physical, face-to-face pedagogical staff development workshops on inclusivity and citizenship skills based on this methodology, attended by over 100 participants from across Europe. In 2018, the workshop model was adapted to a virtual learning environment and three online sessions on inclusivity and citizenship skills for higher education teaching staff were offered.

The pedagogical staff development workshops enabled participants to use open reflective questions to provoke discussion about the challenges faced in their own learning and teaching contexts, think about their pedagogical practices and identify their unconscious biases. Most of the participants rated the workshops as very good and innovative, and considered the methodology an effective vehicle for promoting meaningful open discussion.

In this chapter, the authors reflect on the design, implementation and lessons learnt from the pedagogical staff development workshops on inclusivity and citizenship skills. The authors propose a set of recommendations for individual teaching staff and institutional leadership to consider when addressing continuous professional development for inclusivity and citizenship.

Teaching excellence remains a contested term in English higher education (HE). This paper begins by reflecting on its complex and sometimes blurred meaning, charting the divergence between academic interests in the complexity and contextual questions relating to practice development and organisational and sectoral shifts which have been driven by managerialism, accountability and “top-down” ideas of change. The authors argue that this divergence, epitomised in the development of the teaching excellence framework, has led to a confused, if ubiquitous, use of excellence to identify organisational and sector-led ideas of what it means to deliver quality teaching. However, these frameworks have become progressively detached from the complexity of practice investigated by those interested in pedagogy. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This is a conceptual paper which brings together literature from teaching excellence, organisational science, time and HE to develop an alternative approach to pedagogic development.

Based on a critique of the current, confused conceptualisation of teaching excellence, the authors offer a different narrative which demonstrates how a reconsideration of the factors is important in developing critical and challenging teaching opportunities. Based on a “bottom-up” system focusing on dialogue, sustainability and “unhasty” time, the authors argue for a re-establishing of a holistic approach in HE providers based on emergent pedagogies as opposed to teaching excellence.

This paper demonstrates why teaching excellence has become conceptually fractured in an English context, and why a new approach to pedagogic development needs to be considered to establish a more positive and critical approach at both the institutional and sectoral levels. This paper outlines a possible approach to developing such renewal.

This chapter will focus on the use of reflective dialogues (RDs) to explore pedagogical practice in higher education. RDs allow researchers and participants to reflect on observed phenomena together, engaging in collaborative reflection that may allow both the researcher and the researched to gain from the interaction, throwing into focus different aspects of practice and a different perspective on the situation, and blurring the boundaries of research and researched into a more reciprocal relationship. Drawing on research which investigated the relationship between critical pedagogical theory and practice with 10 self-identifying critical pedagogues across eight English universities, I will explore the benefits and tensions of using a reflective dialogue approach, and the impact this methodology can have on researchers and participants. This chapter will make a case for RDs as both a practice for educators and as a methodology and explore how to do it, supported by relevant methodological literature, as well as the benefits and challenges of using RDs in social research, concluding with a discussion on how RDs might be used in other contexts to aid professional learning and reflection.

The main task of every school is to contribute to student learning and achievement. In the twenty-first century, national and international evaluations and comparisons have focussed on measurable student and school results. Not only teachers but also principals are held accountable for school results, which increase expectations of principals to work to enhance student learning and improve outcomes. In Sweden, a principal's work with a given school's core mission is labeled as pedagogical leadership, a concept that includes diverse activities related to national goals and school results. Aspects of pedagogical leadership include principals’ classroom observations and communication about teaching and learning issues. The purpose of this paper is to describe a model of pedagogical leadership as a base for principals’ experience with the aim to develop their understanding of pedagogical leadership.

The paper builds on data from three groups of principals who participated in a course to learn more about pedagogical leadership.

The participating principals performed their pedagogical leadership in different manners and with varying quality. During the course, there was a shift in what activities and duties the principals prioritized. The findings highlight the importance of democratic leadership and the improvement of teacher capacity and student outcomes.

The paper gives practical examples on how principals can improve their understanding of pedagogical leadership.

There are few articles on how pedagogical leadership is understood and practiced. The paper provides a model for pedagogical leadership and empirical data that shows that the concept deserves to be viewed as a qualitative concept that need interpretation.