Backs to the Wall: Supporting Teacher Professional Development With Technology

This article was downloaded by: [Colorado College]On: 02 December 2014, At: 16:03Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Educational Research andEvaluation: An InternationalJournal on Theory and PracticePublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/nere20

Backs to the Wall: SupportingTeacher Professional DevelopmentWith TechnologyDeborah Gross , Christine Truesdale & Sylwia BielecPublished online: 09 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: Deborah Gross , Christine Truesdale & Sylwia Bielec (2001) Backs tothe Wall: Supporting Teacher Professional Development With Technology, EducationalResearch and Evaluation: An International Journal on Theory and Practice, 7:2-3, 161-183

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1076/edre.7.2.161.3867

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information(the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor& Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warrantieswhatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purposeof the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are theopinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed byTaylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon andshould be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor andFrancis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands,costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever causedarising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of theuse of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly

http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/nere20

http://dx.doi.org/10.1076/edre.7.2.161.3867

forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

6:03

02

Dec

embe

r 20

14

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Educational Research and Evaluation 1380-3611/01/0702±3±161$16.002001, Vol. 7, No. 2±3, pp. 161±183 # Swets & Zeitlinger

Backs to the Wall: Supporting Teacher ProfessionalDevelopment With Technology

Deborah Gross, Christine Truesdale, and Sylwia BielecMinisteÁre de l'EÂ ducation du QueÂbec, Services aÁ la communauteÂ anglophone, Direction despolitiques et des projets, and Educational Technology, Concordia University, Montreal,Quebec, Canada

ABSTRACT

This paper describes the development and initial piloting of a technology based model forprofessional development, qesn.connection (www.qesn.meq.gouv.qc.ca/connection), designedto provide short-term and sustained support to school teams in the area of curriculum reform inQueÂbec, Canada. The model responds to a design request from the MinisteÁre de l'EÂ ducation duQueÂbec to offer school teams tools and strategies, via distance, for team building and schoolbased decision making. The launch topic to accomplish this is the integration of technology inthe classroom, to be followed by the implementation of a reformed curriculum. Two pilotschools offer support and feedback on the model and areas for further research and evaluation.

`̀ Internet moves rapidly and is a disruptive technology that threatensinstitutions of all kinds, companies and trade unions, so it has added to thesense that people's backs are up against the wall'' (Gerhard Schulmeyer,executive with the German multi-national Siemens).

SETTING THE SCENE

In April of 1998, a collaborative design team comprised of representativesfrom the Ministere de l'EÂ ducation du QueÂbec (MEQ) and members ofConcordia University's Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance

Address correspondence to: Deborah Gross, Gouvernement du QueÂbec, MinisteÁre del'EÂ ducation, Services aÁ la communauteÂ anglophone, Direction des politiques et des projets,600, Fullum Street, 9th ¯oor, Montreal, Quebec, H2K 4L1 Canada. E-mail: [email protected].

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

6:03

02

Dec

embe

r 20

14

(CSLP) worked together to develop qesn.connection, a professional develop-ment model designed to support teachers in the implementation of agovernment spearheaded curriculum reform. The aim of the project was tocreate a model for delivery to school teams in English schools in distant andisolated communities in QueÂbec, of ongoing professional development, basedon school level autonomy and decision making.

More speci®cally, the qesn.connection was designed primarily to be usedby a team or grouping of these teachers within a school. The intention was forinterested groups of teachers to come together, sometimes as a whole groupand sometimes in pairs or in smaller groupings of their own preference, forpre-arranged sessions to brainstorm and plan learning activities for use withtheir own students. Teachers would then go and enact these activities andbring their experiences back to the group and potentially share theseexperiences and the learning activities designed with other professionalsacross the province.

Teachers participating in qesn.connection engaged in a ¯exible processcharacterised by:

� authentic learning tasks: teachers engage in planning and implementing athematic unit or other learning activity.

� the concrete and the contextualized: teachers implement their plan in their

classroom and with their students.� re¯ective practice: teachers can assess and re¯ect on the experience with

others.� divergent learning: each participant learns what he or she needs to learn

and what he or she can learn, given prior experience and knowledge as wellas comfort level.

Qesn.connection acknowledges and attempts to deal with the recurringchallenges faced by teachers common to both the relevant literature (e.g., Chin& Hortin, 1993; Hadley & Sheingold, 1993; Kolodor & Guzdial, 1996) andsurfacing explicitly in our research into the professional development ofteachers: limited time of teachers for training, re¯ection, and planning; limitedpedagogical, technological and ®nancial resources; limited administrativecreativity and support for the daily needs of teachers as they attempt to bettertheir practice. As well, given that `̀ the latest amendments to the Education Actgive teachers a key role in the educational process and require that theyidentify their own professional development needs'' (MinisteÁre de l'EÂ ducationdu QueÁbec [MEQ], 1999, p. 3), the qesn.connection is in line with new

162 DEBORAH GROSS ET AL.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

6:03

02

Dec

embe

r 20

14

curricular developments in the province of QueÂbec, mirroring national andglobal trends.

Integrating technology in the classroom was used as a launch topic in the1st year of the qesn.connection project for a variety of reasons. Technologyintegration has been a priority with the MEQ for at least 4 years. Through a5-year plan, money has been available to schools and school boards toincrease the number of computers in schools, facilitate access to the internet,and improve networks. Educators in QueÂbec, as everywhere else, are strug-gling with good integration strategies. Teachers may be comfortable usingcomputers but not necessarily use them with their students. Other teachersare not able to use computers at all, but feel a certain responsibility towardstheir students to introduce them to these high powered tools. Yet others seethat their students use computers at home on a regular basis and wouldlike them to be used in a more meaningful way than game playing and chatrooms.

Most schools in QueÂbec are adequately equipped in terms of technologymainly as the result of the MEQ's 5-year plan to bring QueÂbec schools into thenew millennium. However, each school ultimately has control over exactlyhow grant money is spent in terms of hardware, so a variety of platforms andconnections can be expected, as well as a variety of tech set-up models:computer lab only, classroom installation only, library, pods, combination laband classroom. Any infrastructure set in place to support teachers' qualityintegration of technology into curricula would need to be able to ¯ex with theschool's resources, teacher tech-pro®le and variety in platform, installationand connectivity.

A window into practice

Eileen's grade 4 class arrives in the computer lab, ready to work on theirprojects ± multiculturalism and their own family roots. It is the ®rst timethat Eileen has approached this tried and true project in a new and differentway. Students are eager. The internet research station is ready to go. Thedigital camera station is organised for students to incorporate their owncultural artefacts. The slide show station is busy as students learn aboutslide shows for the ®rst time. The document creation station is the idealplace for composing personal biographies.

Eileen has been teaching in this urban school for 3 years. She has neverdone this before. If `̀ knowledge about teaching is imbedded in the act of

TEACHER PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT 163

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

6:03

02

Dec

embe

r 20

14

teaching itself'' (Soloway, Krajcik, Blumenfeld, & Marx, 1996, p. 273) andthe only way teachers can assess student outcomes is to actually trysomething with their students (Guskey, 1986), then Eileen's and herstudents' experience with technology and multiculturism will determinewhether Eileen will do this again. Why will this experience be differentthan past experiences with technology integration and professionallearning?

Traditionally, the culture of professional development for teachers hasrevolved around one-shot hits of spot training (whether one-day or multi-dayinstitutes) which are not suf®cient to contextualize and consolidate the kindsof change in and challenges to practice that need to occur on a regular basis forteachers. These piecemeal one-shot pedagogical `̀ how-to'' hits on this or thatparticular peripheral or software or aspect of a curriculum do not meet theongoing pedagogical need teachers currently have to understand how this orthat technology ®ts into child development or into their particular learningscenarios and school context. Moreover, traditional professional development,taking place at a conference, seminar or institute, is often far removed fromday-to-day classroom practice. Teachers may have become accustomed to atype of in-service training that uses a presentational style of delivery whereany hands-on component is very directed and relies on the group doing thesame task at the same time to get the same `̀ one good way'' result. Becausemany workshops attempt to teach speci®c skills, tasks and activities may notbe drawn from or embedded in the teachers' curriculum and thus are notauthentic. Therefore many report feeling that professional developmentactivities are not very useful to them in their day-to-day teaching. This senseof dissatisfaction could be due to the top-down professional developmentculture that has been the norm in QueÂbec for many years.

In technology integration workshops, teachers always agree that somethingabout technology makes it a moving target. Most schools have a differenttechnological set-up, a variety of levels of both technical and pedagogicalsupport, differing administrative structures and supports that may or may notfacilitate integration. What is learned at a workshop where often `̀ one size ®tsall'' must be modi®ed to ®t a school situation, making it dif®cult for a teacherto apply what they have just learned. A teacher attending a 3-day session on anew math program can remain fairly con®dent that the program will transportto any school situation and therefore, remain the same as teacher comfort leveland expertise grow. Not so with integrating technology.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

6:03

02

Dec

embe

r 20

14

`̀ Professional development needs to re¯ect the fact that teachers, likestudents, construct understanding; they need to collaborate with others, trythings out, re¯ect on the results, modify their attempts and try again.'' (Marx,Blumenfeld, Krajcik, & Soloway, 1997, pp. 355±356) Teachers want andexpect that students will be a part of a learner-centred classroom, but don'talways feel that they as teachers should or can learn in the same way. Thedesired outcomes of technology integration are to provide educationalenvironments in which children actively use not only computers but variouskinds of technology as tools to construct meaning and to facilitate, documentand enrich their learning. Teachers, as adult learners, need to do the same(Beck, 1990, in LeBaron & Bragg, 1994, p. 8).

Indeed, several bodies of literature, notably those dealing with constructi-vist learning environments and teacher change, as well as our own researchexperience have helped de®ne and shape our perspective towards the designand research of professional development initiatives for teachers (Blumenfeldet al., 1991; Duffy & Jonassen, 1992; Jonassen, 1991; Jonassen, Davidson,Collins, Campbell, & Bannan Haag, 1995; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994;Willis, 1995). The literature on teacher change (Guskey, 1986; Richardson,1990; Sarason, 1993) has recently pointed out that,

change will not take root and innovation will not be sustained if one adoptstraditional top-down models of dissemination and enhancement that rely onone-shot workshops, distribution of curriculum materials to be used exactlyas prepared, and lists of prescribed practices to be implemented (Soloway etal., 1996, p. 273).

What has happened in Eileen's professional development journey this timearound to help ensure that her unit on multiculturalism will be successfuland give her a solid platform from which to jump into the next project?

Eileen has not been working in isolation. She has been a part of a school-based team that is working collaboratively not only to support each other inthe project or unit planning, but is also involved in group decision makingaround pedagogical and management issues that will either hinder orencourage technology integration. For example, teachers in her school haveunderstood that technology outcomes are just as important across andthrough the grade levels as other outcomes. The grade 4 teacher expects toknow what students have learned previously in their language arts and whatliteracy levels she can expect. It gives the teacher a starting point. The same


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

6:03

02

Dec

embe

r 20

14

needs to be true of technological literacy. What have students alreadymastered when they arrive in class and more importantly what is mostappropriate for them to have mastered?

DEVELOPING THE MODEL

`̀ Design is always a process of working within a framework of constraints''(Pellegrino & Altman, 1997, p. 91).

The model focuses on the development of (1) a container ± an interactiveweb site; (2) content ± in the 1st year the integration of technology into theclassroom; and (3) a process whereby school teams work together to plan,enact and re¯ect on using technology for teaching and learning.

Our design method is best described as iterative cycles of design, devel-opment and formative evaluation of professional development models, witheach cycle feeding generatively into the next over the course of 2 years. Thus,informed by both theory and experience, the qesn.connection, has emerged asour response to a year of in-depth cycles of action research, supportingteachers in multiple school sites as they attempt to grapple with thepedagogical power of technology for themselves and their students. The threemain cycles of action research experientially informing our design were:(1) the traditional pedagogical day (the 1-day workshop model); (2) amixed-delivery mode, face-to-face and on-line learner support, and; (3) anetworked learning environment supported by multiple media (the qesn.con-nection). How each cycle fed into the next design iteration is detailed asfollows.

(1) The traditional pedagogical day (the 1-day workshop model)The ®rst cycle involved a series of activity-based, 1-day workshops which

supported teacher planning of lessons incorporating technology. Arising out ofa summer institute for new technologies, the affectionately dubbed `̀ One DayWonder'' was held at the request of individual schools within a singleMontreal-area school board, at respective school sites, with the entire staffpresent, and with some attendance by administrators. Teacher-partici-pants therefore had access mainly to the technology tools, technologyinfrastructures and human resources that existed within their speci®c schoolsetting. During the workshop, teachers acquired technological skills in the


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

6:03

02

Dec

embe

r 20

14

context of planning a classroom activity for use with their students. Whileits main strengths were that it took place in teachers' professional environ-ments and utilized local resources, a serious limitation of the One DayWonder was its timeframe, which was inadequate to support the learningand transfer of both technological and pedagogical skills related to technologyintegration.

(2) A mixed-delivery mode, face-to-face and on-line learner supportThe experience of the One Day Wonder evolved into the second cycle±a

mixed-delivery mode of professional development employing both face-to-face and on-line mentoring of teachers by design-team members, a processthat spanned several months. The process involved an on-site, authenticactivity-based approach supporting the planning and enactment of teacher-designed lesson plans and incorporating modeling via videography. Two ruralschools, each from the same board, took part in the second cycle, with 10 outof 12 teachers participating at one site and 8 of 16 at the other. Teacher-participants saw and discussed a video featuring an elementary school teach-er and her grade 4 classroom working on a social studies unit that incorporatedtechnology in a computer-lab setting. The teachers, inspired and informed bythe video and the ensuing discussion, engaged in planning learning activitiesfor use with their own students. The learning activities were partly supportedat a distance via e-mail by project facilitators with some face-to-face inter-action at the school site. Teachers were also paired with another teacher intheir school with whom they planned and discussed. They (the teacherpartners) assisted or observed each other during the enactment of the learningactivity. The teachers were thus able to make informed comments about theirown and their partner's learning activities and about the way in which thelearning unfolded with students. The participants from each school also met asa school team at the close of the project for a re¯ection session at whichcommon problems were addressed (both pedagogical and those related totechnology infrastructures) and brainstormed some potential solutions orcourses of action. The main challenges in this second cycle of design lay in(1) the logistics of scheduling release time and planning whole group meet-ings; (2) fostering communication among project facilitators and participantsdespite grave technical problems with the school's e-mail system; (3) creatinga climate of sharing and discourse without creating participant dependence onproject facilitators; and (4) linking both schools with each other to facilitatefuture collaborative endeavours.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

6:03

02

Dec

embe

r 20

14

(3) a networked learning environment supported by multiple media (qesn.

connection).Our third cycle is the most recent iteration of our research and development

process. Based on our experience and relevant literatures, we selected thefeatures of the professional development initiatives in which we had beeninvolved that seemed instrumental in creating and sustaining a collaborativeenvironment ± all the while developing useful, transferable technological andpedagogical skills in the teacher-participants who engaged in these initiatives.These features include: (1) local, autonomous, ongoing and site-based teacherlearning; (2) the creation of teams of teachers and the ensuing collaborationsamong team members, frequently resulting in school-wide `̀ courses of action''with regard to technology integration; (3) the design of learning activities thatare directly related to classroom practice; (4) the embedding of new skills andpedagogical approaches within the design of the aforementioned learningactivities; and (5) the sharing and exchanging of pedagogical tools, ideas andre¯ections with teachers in other schools across the province in a climate ofre¯ective practice.

The intention of the professional development infrastructure which we werecreating was not only for teachers to share best practices and to exchangeprofessional support but also to re¯ect the cooperative climate and thecollaborative method used to reform QueÂbec's curriculum. The qesn.connec-

tion would be used to disseminate this new curriculum across the province in away that could ensure information quality ± and equality of access ± whileenabling the MinisteÁre to keep its ®ngers on teachers' pulse during the criticalpilot implementation phase of the reform. As such, it became necessaryto consider the growing networking trend in professional development(Lieberman, 1995; Pennell & Firestone, 1998) and to make it an integral partof our professional development infrastructure.

We designed the qesn.connection around four general system attributes asdescribed by Jonassen et al. (1995): Context, Construction, Collaboration andConversation. Indeed, `̀ constructivist environments engage learners in knowl-edge construction through collaborative activities that embed learning in ameaningful context and through re¯ection on what has been learned throughre¯ection with others.'' (Jonassen et al., 1995, p. 13). We took each of the foursystem attributes into account in the following ways:

Context [emphasis ours] includes features of the `̀ real world'' setting inwhich the task to be learned might naturally be accomplished. (Jonassen etal., 1995, p. 13)


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

6:03

02

Dec

embe

r 20

14

In the case of the qesn.connection, participating teachers engage inactivities in their `̀ real world'' setting. They plan classroom learning activitiesin their school ± in their own classrooms or labs ± with accompanyinghardware, software or lack thereof ± that are later enacted with their ownstudents. It is their school principal who helps them schedule their release timewhich is possible only if the school has its own money towards this acquiredthrough the organizational, cultural and political means of the elementaryand secondary education community. In this way, a team of teachers in aparticipating school is truly immersed in all the issues that relate to theconcrete task of planning and carrying out their own professional develop-ment, as well as the concrete task of designing and enacting a learning activityin their own classrooms and labs.

Construction of knowledge is the result of an active process of articulationand re¯ection within a context . . . Learning environments are constructivistonly if they allow individuals or groups of individuals to make their ownmeaning for what they experience rather than requiring them to `̀ learn'' theteacher's interpretation of that experience or content. (Jonassen et al., 1995,p. 14)

In the qesn.connection there is the opportunity to design something, try itout and discuss it with others. It has been our experience that each group ofteachers will come to different understandings of phenomena and will havearrived there using different means. At one school once the teacher team hadcompleted one iteration of the process utilized in the qesn.connection, theydecided as a team to focus further discussions around research skills andwhich ones should be taught at which level in their school, since they felt thisissue to be important given their school's mission and how they saw them-selves as educators. This was in no way a prescribed outcome, but a welcomeone from our point of view as trainer-designers. In this individualized way,each teacher alone and each team of teachers collectively may arrive atdifferent understandings and interpretations of similar phenomena.

Collaboration among learners or performers occurs throughout the learningprocess. (Seaton, 1993). (Jonassen et al., 1995, p. 14)

Collaboration is a strongly encouraged part of the qesn.connection.Teachers work in school teams that meet several times during the process.Teachers are also encouraged to work with another teacher, based on thereality of shared students, the teaching of the same grade level or subject, orcross-age teaching and learning. These partnerships can endure through the


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

6:03

02

Dec

embe

r 20

14

planning and formal re¯ection sessions, which take place without students, butmay also extend to teachers supporting each other in the classroom or lab inwhatever capacity they feel comfortable with: as observers, as co-teachers, ashelpers, thus facilitating co-informed re¯ection and subsequent decisionmaking.

Conversation is entailed by collaboration . . . Conversation is an essentialpart of the meaning-making process because knowledge, for the most of us,is language mediated. (Jonassen et al., 1995, p. 14)

Conversations are what drive the qesn.connection process. It is primarilythrough discussions with others, both face-to-face and on-line, about theirproposed learning activities, that learning takes place in the context of theqesn.connection. The dif®culty is to foster discussion in traditionally isola-tionist environments often systemically hostile to collaboration among educa-tion practitioners.

THE TOOL

The qesn.connection professional development process is characterized byiterative cycles of planning, enactment and re¯ection. Teachers who decide toembark on the qesn.connection experience are expected to plan an activity,enact it in their own classroom and re¯ect on the experience with their schoolteam. They are also expected to share their plans with other teachers across theprovince via the qesn.connection website. Teacher teams and their adminis-trators are responsible for scheduling and paying for release time for meetings,as well as planning and re¯ection sessions. There are, in theory, no outsideanimators in the process±although on-site presence of designer-evaluators wasthe norm for many of the group sessions at all schools during the pilot phase.The qesn.connection process is supported via a facilitator's workshop, a video,a website and an on-line environment.

Qesn.connection developed as a website that was ®rst and foremost acontainer designed to support a process, offering information both to and fromschools, housing shared resources and expertise and providing in-servicedelivery and formative monitoring and evaluation. It was not designed as awebsite where an individual teacher can go to ®nd lesson plans, but rather as awebsite designed for school teams. There, a school team can ®nd tools andresources to plan and run their own pedagogical day about implementing


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

6:03

02

Dec

embe

r 20

14

technology in the classroom. This day is launched with a video, shot locally, ofEileen's class in one particular lab period working on their multiculturalismproject. School teams can watch the video and begin their discussion on whatthey as both individual teachers and as team members can do with technologywithin their own school. They will ®nd all the planning tools that Eileen used,as well as tools and activities that she developed for her students, in col-laboration with the university resource people.

The following is a selection of the types of resources available on thesite.� a breakdown of activities in table format;� a narrative snapshot of events;� Planning a Ped (pedagogical) Day ± guidelines and suggestions for planning

the ®rst pedagogical day of the qesn.connection process ± a Do-It-YourselfPed Day;

� Taking Stock: What's In Our School ± an inventory guide for taking stock ofa school's technological resources;

� Support Materials for the Around the World in 80 Clicks video±including theunit plan for the activity featured in the video and all pedagogical andorganizational tools used by students;

� PlanIt ± a blank unit planner that teachers can print out and use to plan theirown unit or learning activity;

� PIViT Software ± a free, ready to download concept-mapping-type softwarethat helps in the planning process and the subsequent sharing of materials;

� A goal setting document and technology inventory checklist for teachers;� The Technorama ± a brief description of the main types of software and

peripherals and their potential pedagogical uses;� Newsgroup job aids to help users access the project newsgroup.

There are a few places on the website that are designed to stimulate inter-action between the qesn.connection participants. In one section, `̀ It Happenedto Me'' a space is provided for teachers to share anecdotes with one another. Tofacilitate the sharing, a form is available online for teachers to type in theirstories and submit to the qesn.connection team for uploading to the site. Emaillinks are embedded throughout the site for teachers to send questions orcomments about the qesn.connection project. In addition to the channels forinteraction found on the website, the qesn.connection process is supportedthrough an on-line environment. The on-line process of the qesn.connectionproject is a web of electronic communication provided to encourage


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

6:03

02

Dec

embe

r 20

14

conversation, re¯ection and support to project participants. The onlineenvironment features a website, a newsgroup, email, and online mentoring.

An added resource for school teams is the webography. A webography isthe documenting of a professional development event for the web. It containsvideo clips, sound clips, copies of digital slide show presentations by speakersand recording of questions and answers. A webography serves a variety ofpurposes: it helps ensure that important professional development events withvaluable speakers and presentations can be shared by more than the limitedgroup who actually physically attend. It also frees up resource people and/orspeakers from continually presenting the same topic. Once a webography isavailable on-line, speakers can prepare and present around new and differenttopics.

The non-linear aspect of a webography helps a DIY pedagogical day leaderchoose what is appropriate for the ped day that has been planned. Teachers canuse part of a webography to start discussion around a given topic, they canwork in small groups using a webography as a learning tool, or they can takeadvantage of the professional development opportunities offered by a webo-graphy in their home alone after school.

Once a project or activity using technology has been completed there is aplace within qesn.connection for teachers to share their students' work as wellas their planning tools. In this way teachers can take advantage of other teac-hers' expertise and preparation through the sharing of activities and projects.

THE PILOT PROJECT

Two QueÂbec schools came to the pilot project with very different experiencesand needs. However, ®nding time for planning, whether individually or inteams, technical support, re¯ecting on practice are all elements of dif®cultythat the two schools had in common. The case studies underscore both thedifferences and the similarities.

One school is a small rural school. Most of the teachers live in the localcommunity. The teachers know each other well and enjoy working on schoolbased projects and curricular innovations. The school principal is supportiveand the staff feel a great sense of autonomy. In keeping with the forward-thinking school climate, three of the teachers at the rural school have beenworking with computers in their curriculum for a number of years and are verysophisticated in their integration skills. These teachers are well-respected and


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

6:03

02

Dec

embe

r 20

14

take the time necessary to share their expertise with their colleagues. Bothlocally and within the wider school board community.

The teachers at this school have moved away from a lab set-up for theircomputers. The grade 5/6 teacher has a pod of 5 computers, networked to theInternet in his classroom and his classroom strategies for teaching andlearning take advantage of this pod as an integral part of the students' toolkit.Moving down the grade levels, teachers still have the computers in theirclassrooms, but with fewer computers relative to the lower grade levels.

The qesn.connection project at the rural school was a school-wide bicen-tennial project, featuring work at all grade levels and using technology in allclasses for a number of bicentennial activities. This school is staffed by afunctional school team that is prepared to put in the time to make their school-wide projects work. What they needed was an organisational framework inwhich to plan and carry out both their individual and collective projects. Thetools offered by qesn.connection as well as the ongoing support of a universitybased resource person allowed them to do that.

The second school, in a suburban setting, is also an elementary school, butwith a different type of leadership. The school principal chooses projects forher staff, believing that they will be appropriate and worthwhile and feelingthat she can help facilitate the professional development of her staff.

The school has one teacher who is very skilled at integrating computers intohis teaching. This teacher, viewed as the resident expert, is also well respectedby his colleagues and takes the time to help them. This school works with acomputer lab, teachers feeling that it is important for students to work as anentire class.

This school team had a disappointing ®rst attempt with their professionaldevelopment experience with technology integration and were wary abouttrying again. It was important for the qesn.connection team to ensure that theycould walk the ®ne line with teachers between providing them with over-structured lesson plans or how-to recipes and leaving everything so open-ended that teachers felt they were going it alone and unsupported. Theqesn.connection team would not provide, say, a 45-minute lesson in Frenchimmersion that used computers, but rather would help teachers to create thatlesson themselves, based on what the students are learning and how.

The teachers at this suburban school chose to work in pairs and developprojects together that integrated technology into their curriculum. Themajority of the teachers participated, creating a host of technology-supportedprojects across the grade levels and curriculum areas.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

6:03

02

Dec

embe

r 20

14

A Facilitators' Workshop was held in early November. While the selectionof facilitating teachers was left up to each individual school team, it wasrecommended that the school not send those teachers considered mosttechnologically adept, but rather, those teachers whose main strength waspedagogy.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Because the qesn.connection was designed as a process to be experiencedrather than instruction to be delivered and because the design team wasattempting to amalgamate its best practices and materials into a distanceenvironment and thus had to work with a variety of uncertainties that couldonly be clari®ed during contextual use, evaluating the qesn.connection duringits pilot phase is not a summative endeavour, but a formative, improvement-oriented one that will feed back into its design (Patton, 1997, p. 68).

Our approach in this work took on a constructivist view where `̀ the wholephenomenon under study is understood as a complex system that is more thanthe sum of its parts'' (Guba & Lincoln, 1989, p. 40), in other words, thecomplex interdependencies of the phenomena under study are not to beignored or erased, but rather, scrupulously documented to allow for thehighlighting of their existing complexities. Thus, our method of study useda combination of formal and informal inquiries culled from all thoseparticipating in order to foster improvement in the research design andmethodology as well as in the teaching/learning process. Having said this,the evaluation process utilized a participatory action research design, a designoften described as `̀ an informal, qualitative, formative, subjective, interpre-tive, re¯ective and experiential model of inquiry in which all individualsinvolved in the study are knowing, active, and contributing participants in theresearch process'' (Hopkins, 1993, cited in Riding, Fowell, & Levy, 1995, p. 1).

ParticipantsTeacher teams from two elementary schools±one suburban (n� 10) and onerural (n� 8) initially decided to take part in the qesn.connection professionaldevelopment process. Attrition in the suburban school eliminated 2 parti-cipants due to lack of interest in the project (n� 8). It is interesting to note thatthe entire teaching staff at the rural school took part in the pilot project.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

6:03

02

Dec

embe

r 20

14

Sources of dataThe following sources of data were utilized in the evaluation inquiry:(1) Observations recorded by members of the design and implementation teamduring school team meetings and during some classroom enactment; (2) One-on-one interviews with selected participants (representing the pilot schools,pedagogical consultants, CEMIS, and the SCA-DPP), audiotaped; (3) copiesof participants' learning activity plans including student work; (4) audiotapedre¯ection and feedback sessions at the end of the project with the pilot schoolteams; and (5) on-line electronic communication via e-mail to the projectnewsgroup as well as personal e-mail directly to the designers.

As well, some additional sources of data fed into the evaluation inquiry ofthe Facilitator's Workshop: (6) The discussion surrounding the video wasaudio-taped to highlight key issues; (7) participants ®lled out an open-endedquestionnaire at the end of the day.

Data analysisDue to the largely qualitative methods employed during the evaluationinquiry, the data obtained were analysed using both deductive and inductiveapproaches. Field notes recorded by a single member of the co-ordinator/design team were examined for accuracy by the rest of the team and matchedwith the issues the observations highlighted/informed. The open-ended quest-ionnaires were compiled and main issues identi®ed±explicit as well as implicitones. The audiotaped sessions as well as the one-on-one interviews weretranscribed and the issues and processes were extracted. On-site observationswere also divided into issues and matched with the evaluation issues theysought to illuminate. Online participation was triangulated temporally andspatially through participant-observation (the design team also played the roleof online `̀ mentors'' for the qesn.connection) and personal interviews with theonline participants.

The qesn. connection pilot project kicked off with the Facilitator's Work-shop on November 3rd, 1998 and ended at the end of the school year in June,1999.

RESULTS

Teachers engaging in the qesn.connection process were expected to plan alearning activity, enact it with their students, share their experience with others


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

6:03

02

Dec

embe

r 20

14

and submit their learning activity plans for posting on the website. All theteachers who stayed in the project planned and enacted an activity with theirstudents, however, it must be understood that the three schools participating inthe pilot were vastly different in terms of school culture, student clientele andgroup vision and because of this, their on-site process was context speci®c.

The rural school had decided to dovetail the qesn.connection with a school-wide, year-long celebration of a local milestone, as well as a small grant todesign a school website. Curricular activities as well as extra-curricular eventswere planned around the milestone during group meeting sessions while thetechnology integration aspect was left up to individual teachers to discussamongst themselves with the help of a former teacher at the school who wasworking there as a school board consultant. Although the facilitators at thatschool were aware of the suggested activity breakdown, they were supple-menting the suggested meeting times with extra ones in order to discuss themilestone project in more depth. Because the group meeting sessions focusedlargely around the broad strokes of the milestone celebrations, actual in-classlearning activities were rarely discussed. Some teachers felt that this had beena lot to take on in 1 year, especially since the project only got started in earlyDecember. One teacher pointed out during the re¯ection session, and this togeneral agreement, that although the initial meetings were fruitful, the laterones seemed somewhat aimless ± teachers were ready to do and yet here theywere talking. This feeling of impatience may have been partly due to the scaleof some of the milestone activities undertaken that year. Of the eight parti-cipants, all designed and enacted a learning activity involving the integrationof new technologies. In sum, the qesn.connection process met the needs of therural school although the teachers at that school may have bitten off more thanthey could comfortably chew in two school terms.

The suburban school started off with many misgivings about the qesn.con-nection pilot, some stemming from a previous professional developmentexperience which turned sour and some stemming from the novelty of theprocess. There was a single facilitator overseeing the process and he wasextremely organized in terms of overall release time as well as the planning ofthe ®rst kick-off day. Teachers at the suburban school did not feel that thekick-off day gave them the guidance they were looking for to begin theprocess of planning and enacting, but they plunged in anyway, save for twomale participants who left the project. Except for the kick-off day, they did notplan any other group meetings, although two designer-evaluators did attend asupplementary information session with teachers about mid-way through the


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

6:03

02

Dec

embe

r 20

14

project±which had to be rescheduled many times. As well, the school hadexpected to receive a satellite connection to the Internet, a promise whichnever materialized despite their participation in the qesn.connection pilotproject which they had hoped would act as leverage. As a result, their Internetconnection was `̀ slow as molasses'' (e-mail communication, 1999) which puta damper on those projects which utilized the Internet. As a result, mostevaluator observations recorded during school visits contain negative com-ments ± mainly to the effect that teachers didn't seem happy or enthusiasticwith the qesn.connection process. It was later discovered that other tensions,unrelated to the pilot, existed within the school which further affected thespirit of project participants. It was therefore surprising to discover in June,after a prolonged silence as teachers ®nished up enacting their activities, thatall teachers who stayed with the project had in fact gone through the entireprocess as suggested and were thrilled with the results in terms of theirstudents' learning. Some teachers, who chose not to work with anotherteacher, reported that they ended up consulting other solo teachers in a sortof unof®cial collaboration. It was even more surprising that most teacherscame to the re¯ection session with their learning activity plans on paper andincluding student products and, in some cases, their own and student re¯ec-tions.

THE TOOLS AND RESOURCES

The videoThe purpose of the Around the World in 80 Clicks video is to act as a catalystfor discussion and brainstorming when participants are deciding on theirprojects. Observation as well as re¯ection session data revealed that whileemotional reactions to the video were mixed, ranging from fear and dis-comfort to pleasure at having one's practices validated, the video itself as an`̀ eÂleÂment deÂclencheur'' provoked discussion and served as a springboard forthe planning, enacting and re¯ecting process characteristic of the qesn.con-

nection. It was pointed out by some participants that the scenario featured inthe video was way out of their developmental range in terms of technologyintegration ± `̀ frankly, it scared me'' said one participant ± while others ques-tioned why we chose to feature a lab setting instead of a classroom equippedwith computer pods ± at the other end of the developmental spectrum. In short,we succeeded in pleasing some of the people some of the time in terms of


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

6:03

02

Dec

embe

r 20

14

content featured, but the usefulness of the video as a tool was clearlydemonstrated.

The websiteParticipant interviews as well as on-site observation reveal that the resourcesfeatured on the site were used in a `̀ just-in-time'' manner, on an `̀ as-needed''basis ± and largely during the ®rst kick-off day of the qesn.connection process.It was our intention that the teachers would be able to choose the resourcesthat best applied to their situation, depending on their project topic or scope.Not all of the resources were used by all of the teachers. This is re¯ective ofthe qesn.connection process which was designed to be ¯exible to meet theneeds of a variety of participants. From an evaluation point of view, if it wasour intention to see the website materials receive heavy usage throughout theprocess, then one might say that we did not achieve this objective. However,many of the materials housed on the qesn.connection website were designedwithout knowing exactly how and how heavily they would be used. Thus, theevaluation objective of ®nding out whether, how and how often materials areused was achieved. Participants also pointed out during the facilitator'sworkshop, as well as in conversation with evaluators in schools, that theywould have liked to see more projects showcased, representing more levels ofintegration, including the very basic. This was expected in a way, although stillsurprising, since both elementary schools had a strong technology presence inthe form of at least one teacher who is colloquially referred to as a `̀ techno-whiz''. One would expect that the presence of such a teacher would offer manyexamples of technology integration, but it seems that this is not necessarily soand as these innovators' skills grow exponentially, their less adventurous peersare left further and further behind.

The on-line processDuring the 8-month period, a total of 82 messages were posted online.Participation came from the design team and from the teacher-participantsengaged in the qesn.connection project. A majority of the messages postedwere administrative messages concerning the pilot project, team updates,upcoming visits, posting of online articles, as well as questions from par-ticipants. Other messages refer to resources, initiated by requests from theteachers. One of the initial conversations that took place concerned thepurchase of a digital camera.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

6:03

02

Dec

embe

r 20

14

Personal email messages were exchanged between the qesn.connection

team members and the school team participants. Most messages concernedproject updates and arranging on-site visits.

In terms of the opportunities for interaction between school teams via thewebsite, they were taken advantage of only in the context of an organizedactivity such as the facilitator's workshop where participants posted intro-ductory messages from each school. Subsequently, one of the evaluators wasable to observe a teacher trying to send a message to the `̀ It happened to me''section of the website, with no success, due potentially to server problems.

DISCUSSION

Teachers from both schools came to the project with different degrees ofenthusiasm. The team at the ®rst school had successfully worked with tech-nology in the past and had a vision of the value added of integrating techno-logy, but needed an organisational model and time to do it properly andthoughtfully. Teachers and administrators at the suburban school demon-strated a fair degree of healthy scepticism. They also needed time, but thattime included not only the planning and enacting, but discovering the excite-ment and value-added that meaningful technology integration can provide.

The qesn.connection project was successful at both schools, but not for thesame reasons. At the rural school, it worked well because of the underlyingstructure and scaffolding that it provided for teachers within the school team.The tools that were made available on the qesn.connection web site allowedteachers to diagnose their technology skills and focus on how they could bestuse these skills within their own curriculum area. The project also created timefor teachers to work together to determine how the class projects couldcomplement and ®t into the school Bicentennial project.

At the suburban school, the qesn.connection project gave teachers theopportunity to work together to develop projects that used technology andcould be used meaningfully within the classroom. Again the tools offered onthe web site helped teachers plan what they wanted to do, but as well, theenactment of the activities, with a peer, helped give teachers feedback andopportunities to continue to develop that activity. This school pro®ted fromqesn.connection in that by working together to plan for technology, teacherswere actively building an effective team.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

6:03

02

Dec

embe

r 20

14

Qesn.connection team builders found it dif®cult to convince school teamsto participate. Teachers were hesitant about the time commitment and whatwould really be expected of them. It took considerable energies to persuadeteachers that they were not being evaluated, but rather the project itself and itseffectiveness in helping teachers were being evaluated. As well, since eachschool was aware that they would be participating in a pilot run of theqesn.connection involving formative evaluation throughout, this may havein¯uenced their choice of facilitating teachers, that is, perhaps those teachersbest suited for the task of facilitator may have been turned off by theevaluation aspect of the project.

Moreover, we discovered that many teachers do not plan using elaborateplanning guides, such as the one with which they were provided via theqesn.connection, but rather rely on their professional knowledge and intuitionto design learning activities. This means that often the plans they would havesubmitted are post-hoc, done after the fact, when time is tight and report cardsare due. The end-of-project re¯ection session revealed that teachers wouldmuch rather talk about the impact the activities they designed had on theirstudents than to discuss their own planning process.

Teachers had dif®culty determining what the qesn.connection team wasreally going to do with them and for them. In the end, it was more a leap offaith than anything else that persuaded teachers to come on board. At thebeginning of the pilot, the evaluation team had said in a meeting that if theprocess worked at the suburban school, then it would work anywhere. Well,while the suburban school may have had its undercurrents of tension, itsteachers participated with enthusiasm and ended up exceeding our expecta-tions.

CONCLUSION

Currently, how does qesn.connection ®t into the educational landscape ofQueÂbec? The reformed curriculum assumes teaching and learning strategiesthat include the meaningful use of technology. The process whereby a schoolteam works together to plan and enact a cross-disciplinary and cross-gradelevel reformed curriculum is re¯ective of the process of planning for theintegration of technology. A school team that has worked well together tosuccessfully integrate technology across the grade levels will feel comfortableworking together to implement the reformed curriculum. It is all a part of the


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

6:03

02

Dec

embe

r 20

14

same process. The locus of action in professional development and in theapplication of the QueÂbec Education Plan (QEP) is changing to the school site,giving greater professional autonomy to school teams. Teachers are takingcharge of their own professional development, both individually and as acollective. This model of professional learning works very well when one isdealing with learners who are autonomous, self-directed and used to being incontrol of their professional learning. In our experience (including a needsassessment conducted before the start of the design phase) and throughdiscussions with other professionals in the milieu, many teachers are in factoften not used to being in control of their own professional learning and thusunused to making decisions about what they will learn, when and how theywill go about learning. By offering tools and resources for teachers thatintersect with their respective disciplines yet at the same time are cross-disciplinary and cross-grade level, qesn.connection ®ts the needs of teacherprofessional development in QueÂbec.

Qesn.connection continues to offer tools and resources for school teamswishing to work on integration of technology. As per the original MEQmandate, the site has been re-designed to re¯ect the language and process ofthe reformed curriculum. In the same way that the tools for integratingtechnology were seen as cross-curricular and appropriate at all levels, new,cross-curricular areas, such as working with portfolios for teaching andlearning, action-research and the inclusive classroom are being developed.

School reform momentum is building in QueÂbec. Teachers and theiradministrators are excited about the reformed curriculum and school teamsare poised to begin to grapple with implementation. Qesn.connection is inplace to support and perhaps even inspire the change that will be necessary atthe school level, both in how teachers choose to work together and in howschool structures must change to support that collaboration.

While Gerhard Schulmeyer is right about internet technology beingdisruptive to institutions, qesn.connection is an attempt at keeping teachers'backs far from the classroom wall.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This paper could not have been written without the long-standing coll-aboration of Lauren Aslin, Jeanette Caron, Philip C. Abrami and all theschools and school boards who opened their doors to us. We owe them aprofound debt of gratitude.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

6:03

02

Dec

embe

r 20

14

REFERENCES

Blumenfeld, P., Soloway, E., Marx, R., Krajcik, J., Guzdial, M., & Palincsar, A. (1991).Motivating project-based learning: Sustaining the doing, supporting the learning.Educational Psychologist,26(3&4), 369±398.

Chin, S., & Hortin, J. (1993). Teachers' perceptions of instructional technology and staffdevelopment. Educational Technology Systems, 22(2), 83±98.

Duffy, T.M., & Jonassen, D.H. (Eds.). (1992). Constructivism and the technology of instruction:A conversation. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Guba, E.G., & Lincoln, Y.S. (1989). Fourth generation evaluation. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.Guskey, T.R. (1986). Staff development and the process of teacher change. Educational

Researcher, 15(5), 5±12.Hadley, M., & Sheingold, K. (1993). Commonalities and distinctive patterns in teachers'

integration of computers. American Journal of Education, 101, 261±311.Jonassen, D.H. (1991). Objectivism versus constructivism: Do we need a new philosophical

paradigm? Educational Technology Research and Development, 39(3), 5±14.Jonassen, D., Davidson, M., Collins, M., Campbell, J., & Bannan Haag, B. (1995).

Constructivism and computer-mediated communication in distance education. TheAmerican Journal of Distance Education, 9(2), 7±26.

Kolodner, J., & Guzdial, M. (1996). Effects with and of CSCL: Tracking learning in a newparadigm. In T. Koschmann (Ed.), CSCL: Theory and Practice of an Emerging Paradigm(pp. 307±320). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

LeBaron, F., & Bragg, C.A. (1994). Practicing what we preach: Creating distance educationalmodels to prepare teachers for the twenty-®rst century. American-Journal-of-Distance-Education, 8(1), 5±19.

Lieberman, A. (1995). Practices that support teacher development. Phi-Delta-Kappan, 76(8),591±596.

Marx, R.W., Blumenfeld, P.C., Krajcik, J.S., & Soloway, E. (1997). Enacting project-basedscience. The Elementary School Journal, 97(4), 341±358.

MinisteÁre de l'EÂ ducation du QueÂbec. (1999). QueÂbec's: Orientations for the professionaldevelopment of teachers: Taking an active approach to change (Government of QueÂbecPublication). MontreÁal, QueÂbec: Canada.

Patton, M.Q. (1997). Utilization-focused evaluation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Pellegrino, J.W., & Altman, J.E. (1997). Information technology and teacher preparation: Some

critical issues and illustrative solutions. Peabody Journal of Education, 72, 89±121.Pennell, J.R., & Firestone, W.A. (1998). Teacher-to-teacher professional development through

state-sponsored networks. Phi-Delta-Kappan, 79(5), 354±357.Qesn.connection (http://www.qesn.meq.gouv.qc.ca), MinisteÁre de l'EÂ ducation du QueÂbec,

Services aÁ la communauteÂ anglophone. (1998).Richardson, V. (1990). Signi®cant and worthwhile change and teaching practice. Educational

Researcher, 19(7), 10±18.Riding, P., Fowell, S., & Levy, P. (1995). An action research approach to curriculum

development. [On-line.] Available at http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/I-M/is/lec-turer/paper2.html

Sarason, S.B. (1993). The case for change: Rethinking the preparation of educators. SanFrancisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

6:03

02

Dec

embe

r 20

14

Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (1994). Computer support for knowledge-buildingcommunities. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 3(3), 265±283.

Soloway, E., Krajcik, J.S., Blumenfeld, P., & Marx, R. (1996). Technological support forteachers transitioning to project-based science practices. In T. Koschmann (Ed.), CSCL:Theory and practice of an emerging paradigm (pp. 269±305). Mahwah, NJ: LawrenceErlbaum Associates.

Willis, J. (1995). A recursive, re¯ective instructional design model based on constructivist-interpretivist theory. Educational Technology, 35(6), 5±23.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Col

orad

o C

olle

ge]

at 1

6:03

02

Dec

embe

r 20

14

Documents

Backs to the Wall: Supporting Teacher Professional Development With Technology