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Download the Innovative Teaching and Learning (ITL) Research Report with White Paper from Michael Fullan here.
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With the other judges at the Microsoft Partners in Learning Global Forum in Washington DC we were given an special briefing from Dr Maria Langworthy on the latest developments of the Innovative Teaching and Learning (ITL) Research. I’ve been following the developments in this area with great interest since the Education World Leaders Forum in London at the start of the 2011.
Any action researcher or school leader should consider signing up to the ITL newsletter to keep up-to-date with developments in this area. Schools should also consider using the free Partners in Learning Research Tool to help you kick-start your discussions about teaching and learning within your school. Let me emphasize that you don’t have to agree with the research, the research methodology or the terminology that is used in ITL but there is nothing wrong with using as many sources as possible to challenge your thinking.
Maria’s first slide certainly made me think…
“In a new world of work unemployment is high, yet skilled and talented people are in short supply”. - The Economist (September 2011).
For me this comes back to the point that I made on Monday related to Anthony Salcito’s keynote presentation. As well as creating jobs and employment opportunities within the UK we also need to make sure that young people are leaving school able to go out and find (and do) the jobs that exist globally. In many cases this doesn’t mean that they have to leave the UK - or even their local community. In a recent radio interview in Australia (which is worth 20 mins of your time) Professor Stephen Heppell illustrates this point by explaining that in the UK 7 million people currently work abroad… but they live in the UK on a full time basis. We need to make sure that young people have the digital skills, agility and resilience to work in a variety of 21st century work scenarios.
The Innovative Teaching and Learning (ITL) Research Project is a large scale and very expensive piece of research. Seven countries are part of the initial research (England, Mexico, Senegal, Australia, Russia, Finland and Indonesia). The research partners for England is The Schools Network (formally the SSTA).
As you might expect one of the findings of the ITL research is that if students are given an opportunity to learning 21st Century Skills then they can. There is also a direct correlation between innovative teaching practice and the development of 21st century skills. However, what is very interesting from the research is that really good examples of this seem to be quite rare.
The data is even more interesting when you consider that many of the Microsoft Innovative Schools participated in this research. This means that even our most innovative schools don't seem to be demonstating innovative practice. So the question is why is this the case?
Again this is partly covered in the research paper and the findings included:
- Innovative teaching happens more in environments where teachers collaborate.
- Collaboration relies on a supportive culture, alignment of incentives, and times built into teachers’ schedules during which collaboration can take place.
- Innovative teaching happens more in environments where teachers have access to strong programs of professional development
- Innovative teaching that leverages ICT happens more where students have access in their classrooms.
- Where access was lacking, this issue served as a strong deterrent to ICT integration into teaching and learning.
- Innovative teaching happens more in schools with a school-wide culture that supports innovation.
- Reports from all countries recognize school leadership as a key factor for implementing school-level innovation.
- Opt-in models—the ability for teachers to choose to begin to explore innovative practices when they are ready—were common among schools with supportive cultures.
The findings on barriers to ICT integration are also interesting and I would be quite keen to see a more detailed break down of country-by-country results in this area.
The main barriers are shown in the graphic below:
As you might expect access to devices is one of the key barriers to technology integration. With lack of preparation time and lack of professional development being the other significant barriers.
Although I don’t disagree, I am sceptical of the access to devices result.
For me it is often about ‘attitudes’ rather than ‘access’. Far to often in my experience teachers use ‘equipment’ as an excuse for not changing their practice and then when the equipment arrives (normally at great expense) the results are not transformational. At the same time I walk though schools in Scotland most weeks and look into computer labs where young people are sat in the middle of the room (no-where near computers) writing or taking notes from the board. In the UK we need to challenge how we distribute our school resources more to make sure that we get good value for money.
Many schools in the UK are also flooded with devices - its just that children are not allowed to get them out of their pockets or they are not allowed to join them to school wireless networks. We are working to challenge this in Scotland as part of our emerging work around our Emerging National ICT Strategy.
The data collected on what makes effective CPD is also interesting and backs up everything that Con Morris and the rest of our National CPD Team have been saying for a long time now. That the most effective form of CPD is watching or working with another teacher (this can obviously be digital or face-to-face) and the least effective form of CPD is listening to a lecture (a traditional didactic conference).
There were two other clear themes emerging from the research for me. The first is what we expect young people to do with ICT. Globally many ICT activities in schools seem to be around low order skills rather than high order skills.
My own work on using digital technology to improve higher order skills demonstrates that this doesn’t need to be the case but we do need to do things differently.
The second thing that really stood out for me from the research is that in the same way that in Scotland the difference between ‘classroom’ to ‘classroom’ is far greater than the overall difference between ‘school’ to ‘school’. The ITL research shows us that globally we seem to have a lot of Innovative teachers but very few innovative schools. However to drive system wide change we need innovation to occur on a school wide level.
In summary - the ITL 2011 Research Report with accompanying White paper from Michael Fullan is worth a read. But the really exciting part of the research is what will come next as the next phase to examine from a strong research base how can school systems raise the achievement bar and narrow the attainment gap by making significant improvements to learning and teaching. This phase of the project will be called LEAP21 and start in early 2012 - I would love to be part of the leadership development part of this BTW!
Images: ITL Research
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