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EDUCATIONAL PROJECT -RELEVANT FORM OF CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF TEACHERS
O. I. Shilova
Drawing on the example of apprehending the process and results of the accomplished educational project, we will try to prove that an educational project is a modern form of informal in-house training and continuing professional development of teachers.
The two-year Russian-Finnish project “ICT-Environment of Learning, Creating and Using Together” was completed in late November 2012. The objective of the project was to develop and improve teaching methods using electronic (digital) materials both in class and remotely based on modern teaching models and technologies and to ensure their application in school. This project became a sort of a unique experiment both for teachers and school principals, and the international team of experts. The process of training teachers through activity was implemented within its framework. In the training process the participants of the project, five schools in Finland and five schools in Saint Petersburg, jointly created electronic study materials (hereinafter the ESM) for learners. The participants had different experiences both of using information and communication technologies (ICT) and comprehension of the general pedagogical tasks set by the Federal State Educational Standard of General Education (hereinafter the FSES of GE). The project was also a form of training for a team of Finnish and Russian experts, each of them having his own experience, conceptual framework, and methodological approach to teaching. The team jointly managed the educational process in the project. The primary task of the project was to show how the use of ICT in the educational process ensures the greatest effect and helps to solve new tasks of teaching related to the implementation of the FSES of GE.
The participants in the project identified the following meanings of the key words from the name of the project: firstly, learning environment is the condition in which the processes of teaching, studying, interaction and learning take place. These processes involve different subjects: learners, teachers, parents, administration, and project partners that enter into different educational relations and implement different roles; secondly, the key word “together”. Its meaning also has expanded considerably. “Together” is work both in the project team with Finnish partners and jointly with their students, their parents, colleagues that are not participating in the project, and other project teams. Thus, the project participants concluded that acceptance of the idea of the environment in general and information- educational environment in particular requires: (a) a change of the roles of the teacher, learners, and school administration in the educational process; (b) acceptance of the activity-based model of organization of the educational process, that is when the learner does not just listen, remember, and answer, but also suggests and sets goals, makes a plan for their achievement, chooses methods and techniques, and receives and presents the results of his work.
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The participants agreed to understand electronic study materials as a concept, its core being an electronic educational resource (hereinafter EER) accompanied by methodological materials that include (a) planned educational results of using the EER; (b) a pedagogical model of using the EER in the training process (where and how it is proposed to be used); (c) possible instruments of assessing the degree of achievement of educational results by learners while using the EER. In the conditions of implementation of and working with the FSES of GE electronic study materials, all participants in the educational process make a substantial contribution to the development of the information-educational environment of a school, that is the creation of modern conditions facilitating achievement of the results of education stated in the standard. Quite important is the achievement of understanding by all project participants that ESM are really materials with new opportunities, allowing the achievement of the modern quality of education. ESM are not just electronic resources offering or illustrating some study information, but rather activity-based materials that enable learners to analyze, evaluate, construct, reflect, discuss, work in a group; that is, they form universal study actions, and develop cross-subject skills that are important both in learning and life.
The work of the project was supported by an international team of experts, this support including the development and coordination of the key positions of the project, assistance to the participants of the project in understanding and implementing these positions, development of tools for the participants to apprehend and evaluate the progress of the project, and organization of reviews and meaningful interaction of the partner schools. A key moment in the project was the development of the principles providing the basis for the development of electronic study materials.
The project resulted in the elaboration of three major principles of EEM development: (1) pedagogically expedient use of information and communication technologies: understanding and identification of the planned result of using the EEM that cannot be achieved or is harder to achieve without using the ICT as well as the fact that work with ICT provides the learner with competencies, development of subject, and cross-subject and personal skills; (2) pedagogic flexibility of EEM: designing EEM not as a ready and informationally finished product, but as a resource that allows for the active and individual work of learners, and educational interaction; (3) visualization of the process and results of the learning activity for learners and teachers: selection of methods and means of forming evaluation in the educational process using EEM and development of criteria of assessment of the results achieved by learners while working with EEM (possibly, jointly with learners, in the language understandable for them, for self-assessment). Another key element is the achievement of understanding by the project participants of which criteria are to be oriented towards in the development of EEM. The criteria in the project ideology served the orientation basis for its participants to analyze the changes that may occur in the process of the project in the school, in its educational environment, in a particular class, in teaching of a subject, or in interaction of the subjects of the educational process.
For assessment (and mostly for self-assessment), Finnish experts offered qualitative criteria to the participants of the project, which corresponds to the
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modern European trends of assessment of the quality of education. The indicators for self-assessment were the guiding questions which the participants answered while finishing the planning of the project. The answers to these questions were supposed to help different participants to apprehend their results, “to see” further strategy of development of their EEM, and to identify the plan of deployment of the project, i.e. the answers to the questions were supposed to help to guide further work in the project. Hence their name: “guiding questions”. Many participants in the project referred to the activity of searching for answers to the set questions “brainturning”, and a new one in terms of using methods of diagnosis and assessment.
The third key element is selection and apprehension of the pedagogical model of using EEM by the participants of the project. It was very important to develop the project participants’ understanding that availability of even the most up-to-date electronic resources will not provide the expected results unless learners have an assignment and/or pedagogical situations in working with resources, the fulfillment or implementation of which can incite learners to independently search, think, analyze, structure, create, design and evaluate. It is only then that resources act as a means of helping the student to become a learner who is an independent person responsible for his educational results. The task of developing assignments and pedagogical situations that do not lead to simple reproduction of knowledge is currently the most significant and essential task for an educational institution or a teacher considering themselves to be innovative, in creating a new school. This organization of the educational process relies on the activity-based approach - the basic approach underlying the FSES of GE.
Common problems faced by the project participants in the process of its implementation included the following: (1) selection of the route of development of EEM. This problem is related to the project participants’ desire to develop something global and big that hardly fitted within the frame of the time resource specified for the project or even went beyond its scope; (2) statement of the topic of EEM. The sweeping coverage of the selected area resulted in an unclear, rather broad statement on the topic of EEM, its idea being understood differently by different participants of the project, which, in its turn, challenged the possibility of using finished EEM in different educational institutions; (3) identification and statement of the planned results of work with EEM This problem is related to the project participants’ ambition to include a very wide list of personal and crosssubject results of studying the basic educational program by the learners into the sphere of EEM use. In practice, a number of the results proved unattainable within the frame of the work with EEM; (4) disclosure and description of the pedagogical model relying on the activity-based approach. The activity-based approach is a very frequently used notion in pedagogical practice now. Specifically, used rather than apprehended in its essence and personally appropriated. Description of assignments and pedagogical situations in terms of an activity-based rather than a reproductive approach proved complicated but interesting. Solving the above mentioned problems helped the project participants understand that ICT are not so much technologies to be learnt, as an instrument of perceiving and organizing the learners’ study activities. But this requires thorough reflection and reconsideration of the pedagogical basics that the information and communication technologies encourage us to change.
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To cement the changes initiated by the school project, we will give some answers given by the project participants to some questions.
Question: “How did the school activities change with participation in the project?” Answer: “The project promoted specification and deeper understanding of the tasks of development of the school in the introduction of ICT.; “The EEM created in the project aroused interest in the learners and increased their motivation for learning”; “Other teachers got interested in the experience of their colleagues from the working group of the project and are also planning to use ICT themselves”, etc.
Question: “How has your attitude to using ICT in teaching changed?”. Answer: “Use of ICT makes the teacher’s work diverse and more creative”; “Work with ICT was interesting for my students”; “I have seen the advantages of using ICT in teaching compared to traditional materials”, etc.
Question: “What do you consider your major achievement in the project?” Answer: “Joint work with children and colleagues, children’s results”; “Creation of recommendations for using ICT”; “Experience of the project manager at the school level - organization of the teachers team and learners for project development and implementation, assessment of efficiency”; “Considerable increase in ICT competence compared to the previous level”, etc. :
As a result, in the general opinion of the participants in the project, it became a significant practical contribution to the essence-related change of the pedagogical model of organization of the school educational process and obtaining a new quality of education. You can see the results of the project on the web-site of the Northwest Agency of International Programs
http://nwaip.ru/deyatelnost/proekty/ict.html.
We hope that the arguments in favor of the educational project as a relevant form of the continuing professional development of teachers will encourage the participants in the international conference to interact in this area.
Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translations Bureau
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