Professional Engagement Activity: Peer-based Professional Development Abstract This paper will report on the design and work-in-progress of a research project dealing with professional development for the integration of technology into the curriculum. The project is attempting to provide a set of sustainable, low-cost and scalable professional 'engagement' activities that should result in lasting change. The model used is based on forming peer groups of teachers seeking to innovate and linking these activities to descriptions of successful innovation exemplars published locally on an intranet. Challenging Professional 'Development' Professional development of teachers, especially where it is aimed at the infusion of high technology into the curriculum, seems to be a particularly vexed endeavour. Certainly, considerable progress has been made over recent years. Professional teacher associations have grown in scope and activity to provide development opportunities in applied technological areas for their members. Employing authorities now demand that technology projects and plans recognise the critical and necessary role that teacher professional development components play in the success of innovation. But questions remain, especially over the ability of professional development to affect the 'mainstream' : real teachers in classrooms struggling to respond to technological and systemic imperatives. In many classrooms and in the enacted curriculum, digital technology still plays a minor role - and in many places, no role at all. Also curious are attempts to reduce professional development to a deliverable commodity - of which the professional development CD-ROM is the nadir. In institutions preparing teachers, the picture is also bleak. Indeed, the higher education sector, despite the rhetoric of student focused 'virtual universities', is characterised by isolated and uncoordinated attempts to infuse digital technologies into the curriculum. Much more energy is spent refining the technologies of 'delivery' at the expense of fundamental thinking about teaching practice. To uncover some of the reasons for this state of affairs it is worth examining some of the practical and theoretical difficulties that professional development faces, particularly in the area of technological change. At a practical level, obvious challenges exist, especially to the traditional development activities conducted by 'experts', away from the classroom, in the form of 'workshops'. They might include: * high cost, especially for replacement of teachers as they go away to be professionally 'developed'; * lack of tangible outcomes or formal measures of the success of such activity. Outcomes, where they really exist in the form of enhanced teaching practices or curricula design, extend well beyond the timeframe of professional development budgets; * encroachment into the crowded professional life of teachers who are already overextended because the are responding to a host of systemic and broader social imperatives; and * a clash between an individual's desire to use professional development for advancement (and transfer!) and the local institution's desire to retain and grow a critical mass of expertise with its teaching staff. Along with these practical criticisms of traditional forms of professional development activities, objections based on deeper theoretical levels can be mounted. The notion of 'development' in this context is often associated with two contestable associations: * that there is a known and established set of exemplary practices associated with teaching with technology that one must strive towards; and * that such activities can be driven through intervention by experts from outside the discipline domain of those targeted for 'development' (e.g. technologists, instructional designers). Thus professional development is often seen as something that is 'done to' or imposed upon teachers who lack particular skills, possessions or attitudes. Such an approach implicitly devalues the rich set of understandings about teaching that teachers already possess, albeit within the domain of pre-digital, mainly print-based technologies. Of course, the existence of a stable set of 'best practices' is a myth, particularly within teaching using the new and rapidly evolving digital technologies. Actor-network theory (Bijker & Law, 1992) tells us that new technologies and associated human social practices are highly contingent and contestable in early stages. In contrast, practitioners have powerful opportunities to shape such technologies and practices - particularly when they are virtual rather than tangible. Another difficulty with traditional forms of professional development is the problem of the 'situatedness' of the learning that takes place. There seem to be substantial barriers between what is gained in the context of a workshop and the sustained application of this knowledge within the classroom and embedded into the formal curriculum. Perhaps the transfer of knowledge skills and dispositions is inhibited because of contextual reasons - or because it is seen as irrelevant to the real world of the classroom. Finally, the application of traditional in-service models might fail because the innovation it may engender cannot be sustained. Withdrawal of support, scaling from a few workshop participants to the body of the school staff and a lack of sensitivity by external providers to local demands may mitigate against a diffusion of good practice emerging from in-service activity. Principles Underlying Professional 'Engagement' What can replace or complement traditional forms of in-service activity, particularly that which is directed at infusion of digital technologies into teaching practices and the curriculum? Before answering such a question it is best to state positive design principles that arise in response to the critique of traditional activity in this area. They might include: * a recognition of the significance of informal learning in the workplace, particularly the classroom and staff-room of the practicing teacher. This may seem incongruous given that schools and universities are core institutions where formal education is practiced, but they are workplaces as well. Of course, workplaces and the people that inhabit them have their own cultures, ways of induction, ways of passing on 'how things are done', value systems and beliefs, etc. In different contexts, the relative strengths of formal structures (including overt organisational hierarchies, written policies and workprograms) and informal structures (including mentoring, staff-room practices, ad hoc assistance) in achieving learning about 'the job' of teaching may vary, but in many schools informal learning plays a major role. * an understanding that teacher's professional lives are very full, particularly in the need to skilfully interact with their students at many levels. Time spent learning new technologies (for operational as well as curriculum integration purposes) must produce genuine returns, or the technologies will be ignored, marginalised or 'domesticated' (Cuban, 1986) for other purposes. * the appreciation that good teaching practice can often hide within the four walls of the classroom. This represents a challenge to any professional development program that deals with emerging technologies and effective patterns of use. Experts from outside the profession, particularly technological evangelists are often ready to proclaim what constitutes 'best practice', but this is often fanciful myth. 'Good' practice is to be found where real teachers struggle with the possibilities and challenges facing the question(s) of technological integration. Case Study 1 : Online Teaching in a University For a variety of reasons, there is a substantial imperative for universities to offer their courses online. QUT has a policy of moving to increased online teaching and provides generous grants to projects, which support this policy at a Faculty level. As part of one such project, the Faculty of Education at QUT undertook to generate and test a professional development model which would result in an increased number of academics using the Internet as a productive and alternative way of providing student access to course resources and communication channels. The Model : School Coordinators, Engagement Groups and Internal Publishing The model of professional development for online teaching put in place in the Faculty of Education consists of using academics located in different building areas to facilitate moves to online teaching by academics. At the beginning of the year one academic from each of the five Schools in the Faculty was invited to coordinate an informal process of induction into online teaching on a needs or "just-in-time" basis for academics in their area. They were given enough funding to buy some release time from teaching or to spend as they wished within the School. They were interviewed several times, and observed in induction group situations and during collaborative group meetings. From a grounded theory analysis of documents collected, the following roles for coordinators emerged: 1. Helper of beginners 2. Problem Solver 3. Experimenter 4. Reporter 5. Modeler 6. Critical thinker 7. Advocate Th coordinators were instrumental in forming 'professional engagement groups'. These consisted of fluid and informal groups of academics, usually from the same teaching areas who met on an ad hoc or continuing basis. The group members took on different roles (technical experts, curriculum integrators, novices, etc) in order to solve problems, try out new ideas or to replicate (or 'borrow') good ideas from their peers. Critical to the operation of the groups was the emergence of a place on the Faculty's intranet where good practice was captured, annotated and organised. The construction of this site was not done by the academic staff, but rather by the research assistants who had conducted the interviews. Case Study 2 : Professional Engagement Activity: Integrating Web Activities into the Curriculum. Many small high schools tend to be struggling, not only with the high costs of acquisition, maintenance and technical support of high technology, but also with curriculum integration issues. Where there is good teaching practice, it tends not to diffuse through the school teaching staff, but often remains, captured, within subject areas with a technological focus. The aim of this research effort is to investigate 'web integration' activities. There activities are designed to provide stimulus for teachers at a small suburban high school in Brisbane to think about how web resources and activities might find a place in their curriculum. Some features of the program include: * it is driven by revealed, good practices from within the school (and hence 'owned' by the staff - allowing greater commitment and long-term sustainability); * rather than being something that interrupts the normal workload of staff, it fits into their pattern of designing and implementing innovation (over time); * while external people might have some part to play in getting the development activity going, it was agreed that it would be better for coordination of this program to be owned by a senior member of the school staff. In addition, the whole exercise is badged as part of other ongoing staff development activity rather than as being seen as something special; * the exercise requires ownership of heads of department and administration and a general commitment by staff to give it a go - before starting. The following phases were identified for the activity: Phase 1 : Identifying Exemplary Practice Staff who are already using web resources/projects/activities in their teaching are identified and invited to participate. Some release time (0.5 day for preparation of the sketch) and some curriculum purchase money are made available to participants. 'Exemplary' does not have to be particularly innovative, just something that can be shown to work well in a particular context (ie. curriculum setting, age-group, discipline setting). It is advantageous if a span of exemplary practices (across staff members and discipline areas) can be garnered. Phase 2 : Preparing a Curriculum Integration Sketch In this phase each staff member is interviewed and assists in the preparation of a simple description (of what the activity was/is and where it fits in the curriculum along with an account of how the integration was done. Artifacts such as photos, web sites, student work, workprogram adjustments are included. Phase 3 : Publication Integration Sketches are mounted on the school web site (or if available on the intranet). Some contextualising for a site would also need to be produced. Phase 4 : Workshop Series For the whole staff, one 10 minute tag-on presentation to a normal staff meeting is given by the staff member associated with the sketch. For discipline staff meetings, the sketches can be used to stimulate discussion and other staff to contribute. Phase 5 : Ongoing Depending on resources, the plan is to repeat the exercise with different staff members. Original staff members can redo their sketches or try something different. Conclusion Both research sites are early in their development activities. At this stage some interim observations may be made, including: * rather than reluctance or resistance, there is a willingness for staff who have innovated (in terms of curriculum integration rather than technical application) to both share their ideas and to provide leadership of peer engagement groups. This is despite their busy professional lives, and may be because the focus of cooperative behaviour is less abstract than other forms of professional development leadership; * the published exemplary practice serves as a vehicle for others to replicate teaching ideas in other contexts. Perhaps peers are more likely to adopt an innovative practice because support is close at hand or because there is lower translation effort across 'contextual distance'; and * the published exemplary practice serves as a reflective device for individuals, professional engagement groups and for the school as a whole. If skilfully constructed, the examples can serve as the basis for incremental improvement of teaching practice over long time scales. References Bijker, W. & Law, J. (Eds.) (1992). Shaping technology/building society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Cuban, L. (1986). Teachers and machines: The classroom use of technology since 1920. New York: Teachers College.