Dianne Chambers

Teacher professional learning in an online community: the experiences of the National Quality Schooling Framework Pilot Project

Educational authorities in many developed countries are funding the development of online environments that aim to facilitate teacher professional learning through collegial, reflective sharing of practice. But is this a case of ‘if we build it they will come’? Are teachers ready to share ideas and experiences in online communities of practice to enhance their professional learning? This article examines the experiences of teachers and school leaders who participated in a pilot online environment created to support teacher professional learning and it identifies factors that facilitated use of the online environment and factors that acted as a deterrent to use. The article identifies three key sets of conditions that deter teachers’ use of online communities as a model for professional learning. These include a lack of perceived commonality of purpose; an underdeveloped culture of shared, critical reflection about practice; and lack of familiarity and experience amongst teachers in using computer‐mediated communications tools as part of their regular practice.

Cultural and organisational issues facing online learning communities of teachers

Collegial sharing and reflection about practice has been widely suggested as an effective form of teacher professional learning. Information and communications technology (ICT) has the potential to foster this professional learning through online community environments. Whilst the potential of self-sustaining online teacher communities to support professional learning through reflective sharing of practice is recognised, the journey to realising this potential is not straightforward. This paper identifies two key aspects of school culture that are acting as barriers on the journey—schools do not adequately value collegial reflective sharing of practice, and classroom teachers do not use online communications tools as an integral part of their professional practices. The paper suggests a framework for maximising participation in online teacher communities.

Computer science in K-12 school curricula of the 2lst century: Why, what and when?

In this paper we have examined the position and roles of Computer Science in curricula in the light of recent calls for curriculum change and we have proposed principles and issues to consider in curriculum design as well as identifying priority areas for further research. The paper is based on discussions within and beyond the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP) Education Community since 2012 as well as an analysis of curriculum developments in five different countries. Emerging themes have been discussed with reference to important perspectives from curriculum theory including “powerful knowledge” as a key element of entitlement and management of the growth of expertise. Based on this analysis we have identified areas of consensus as well as constraints, risks and issues that are still subject to controversy. There is an emerging consensus of the importance of Computer Science and the nature of its “powerful knowledge”. Furthermore current understanding of the opportunities and benefits for starting to learn Computer Science early in primary schools has identified this early start as an entitlement and equity issue. There is a strong consensus that teacher professional development in Computer Science Education is critical for supporting curriculum change and is currently a major challenge in many countries. Other key issues include understanding how the growth of expertise affects potential structure and sequencing in the curriculum and the balance of content. Further considerations include how new technological opportunities interact with pedagogical approaches and can provide new potential for the growth of expertise.

Establishing an online community of inquiry at the Distance Education Centre Victoria

This pilot intervention focused on three courses that were redesigned to utilize the online environment to establish an online community of inquiry (CoI). The setting for this research study was the Distance Education Centre, Victoria (DECV), an Australian co-educational school with approximately 3000 students who, for a variety of reasons, are studying one or more subjects via distance education. Despite the availability of information and communications technology, many students at the DECV remain socially isolated from their peers. The DECV recognizes that online student collaboration has the potential to bridge this divide. Results of this study suggest that the adaptation of these courses had led to improvements in students’ perception of their educational experience. These findings may be of use to other P–12 education providers who are attempting to promote online collaboration and student connectedness.

More than a survey: an interdisciplinary post-occupancy tracking of BER schools

In February 2009, the Australian Government announced the

Sustainability as a Catalyst for Change in Universities: New Roles to Meet New Challenges

16.2b Building the Education Revolution (BER) as part of an economic stimulus package. In the context of a global financial crisis, the Government called for ‘shovel ready’ projects requiring state education departments to develop template designs to speed the delivery process. Three years later, new facilities have been completed in over 1100 government schools in Victoria (DEECD, 2012). This article outlines research by an interdisciplinary team to track the early occupation of a template design used in Victoria. The design template was unusual: it enabled schools to continue using traditional classroom teaching or to slide open walls to form larger neighbourhoods suitable for team teaching. Our research linked different methodological frameworks to undertake post-occupancy evaluation (POE) of the new spaces. POE strategies are often driven by construction and project management perspectives rather than focus on organizational issues and user behaviour.

Challenging the premises of international policy reviews: an introduction to the review symposium

Universities are generally structured and staffed to meet the two traditional functions of research and teaching, which are supported by the university’s operational staff. In many universities this is expressed through two categories of staff—academic staff and professional staff (sometimes referred to as ‘general staff’). It is proposed that the complexities of responding to contemporary sustainability issues means that within universities these traditional staffing categories are becoming increasingly blurred, which is challenging traditional management models of universities, and a new category of staff is emerging. Staff need to cross, and sometimes to straddle, the traditional boundary between academic and nonacademic roles to address the complex inter- and multidisciplinary challenges of almost every sustainability issue that a university responds to. This chapter presents case studies where this new territory, termed the ‘third space’ by Whitchurch (High Educ Q 62:377–396, 2008), has emerged in the context of sustainability. It is proposed that sustainability is a catalyst for this change of roles for many university staff who are involved with sustainability and that this challenges university management to not only acknowledge this shift, but also to determine the best path forward to support their staff in succeeding in meeting the sustainability challenges ahead.

Maximising Sustainability Outcomes by Amalgamating Dimensions of Sustainability

In 2009, a think tank called the International Alliance of Leading Education Institutes (IALEI) announced the results of a study entitled Climate Change and Sustainable Development: The Response from Education. Intended for a policy audience, the study offered a glimpse into the status of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and an early look at the emergence of Climate Change Education (CCE), in 10 different nations. As with most international reports, the IALEI report provoked many questions, some of which are more broadly relevant to scholarship and practice. This paper introduces a review symposium that addresses three such questions: (1) How coherent is the concept of ESD across national contexts and what conceptual tensions continue to surround ESD and CCE? (2) Can nation-level analyses tell us anything useful about countries where education is not centrally governed? and (3) In light of the evolving relationship between educational research and policy, how should researchers engage with ongoing policy debates?

A Discipline-Based Model for Embedding Sustainability in University Curricula

There is no single way for a university to become an organisation where sustainability is a basis of all activities. Rather, there must be many threads that together weave a culture of sustainability: threads that come from many parts of the organisation, have diverse approaches, and engage many people over an extended period. Although these need to have a range of sources, skills, and people, clear goals need to be shared and communicated so that all efforts are aligned and so that each initiative reinforces all others. This paper explores how one large, research-intensive university is working toward a more sustainable future through combining dimensions of sustainability, including teaching, campus operations and research in sustainability initiatives so that each dimension supports the other dimensions for mutual success.

Using IT to Support Authentic Tasks in Teacher Education

This chapter outlines the current context of universities, one that challenges them to integrate Education for Sustainability (EfS) into the curriculum of all courses and subject areas and proposes a model to help guide universities in achieving this goal. For a university to embark on any major change to its curriculum it is proposed that two issues are need to considered to improve the chances of the success of the project. These are an understanding of processes of organizational change, because shifting a curriculum is a very major change for those that design and teach curricula, and the other is an understanding of academic identity, because it is individual academics within their departments who will be the people who need to conceptualise what the new curriculum will look like and design subjects and courses to meet the university’s goals. The model has as its phases: Goal setting; Discovery; Discipline-based planning; Cross-discipline coordination; Design and Implementation; and Coordination and Progress Reporting. These phases build upon each other to promote the success of achieving the university’s goals. The chapter proposes a framework that universities and other tertiary institutions facing this challenge could apply. Thus, it does not look at the specifics of what should or should not be in such a curriculum, but rather it explores and proposes a model for the process an institution could apply to achieve the goal of embedding Education for Sustainability across the whole curriculum.