Frank Banks

Extract from new understandings of teachers' pedagogic knowledge 1

How significant is content or subject knowledge for creative and effective teaching? What links can be made between a teachers knowledge and the associated pedagogic strategies and practices to en...

Early Professional Development for Teachers

Early Professional Development has recently been recognised throughout the UK as a key area for improving the quality of teaching and learning in schools. Set out here is a range of articles to help them achieve that goal. Included are prctical strategies for investigating classroom ideas about teaching and learning as well as key debates concerning professional development, all selected with the aim of moving clasroom practice forward.

Stimulating professional development through CMC - A case study of networked learning and initial teacher education

This chapter explores the use of networked learning, and especially asynchronous text-based computer conferencing, in stimulating teacher professional development. The study is located within the broader context of sociocultural theory and in particular the work of Lave and Wenger (1991), which locates learning in forms of co-participation. The results of the study indicate that the form of networked learning within educational contexts is crucially influenced by three key factors. (a) The way in which computer conferencing is organized within the context of a formal course influences the form of professional discourse within the conferences. (b) The contrasting character of subject domains can be related to differences in the form and the style of discourse within the conferences. (c) The length of engagement of participants in computer conferencing influences their transition from novices to more experienced participants in networked learning processes. Within successful conferences, teachers’ professional development can be stimulated in new ways, in particular through promoting reflection and enhancing learner autonomy. It is suggested that the role of the moderator is crucial in stimulating effective conferences through the structuring of the learning resources inherent in the conferences. In sum, this study develops a grounded understanding of teacher professional development as a socially situated process enabled through networked learning.

Teaching STEM in the Secondary School: helping teachers meet the challenge

This book looks at the purpose and pedagogy of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) teaching and explores the ways in which STEM subjects can interact in the curriculum to enhance student understanding, achievement and motivation. By reaching outside their own classroom, teachers can collaborate across subjects to enrich learning and help students relate school science, technology and maths to the wider world.

School-based teachers’ professional development through technology-enhanced learning in Bangladesh

To promote significant pedagogical change, the most successful teacher education programmes for the global south happen in the school context. This paper is based on a pre-pilot intervention study of an international education development programme in Bangladesh. Technology-enhanced learning, in this case the use of the Apple® iPod® (iPod touch®), was used to support teachers’ teaching and learning in their school contexts. This paper presents evidence to demonstrate how such school-based technology-enhanced support systems impact on classroom practice and help teachers’ professional development. Using the case of a pre-pilot intervention in the Underprivileged Children’s Educational Programs schools, it explores the teachers’ professional development by analysing interviews with the teachers who were participating in the pre-pilot intervention programme, and draws the conclusion from the collected data that school-based teachers’ professional development through technology-enhanced learning is contributing significantly to in-service training in a resource-constrained context.

Technology education and developing countries

Bangladesh and Malawi are used in this chapter as cases to illustrate issues related to technology and technical education in developing countries. Over the past two decades, many countries have reformed their school curricula to establish technology as a key learning area for reasons that include the technological nature of society, national economic drivers, enhancing the opportunities of the disadvantaged, and possibilities for developing higher cognitive skills, including creative thinking and problem solving. Implementing significant school change is, however, complex and costly. While the rhetoric of Technology Education for All in the global north has been to distinguish it from vocational education, in Bangladesh, Malawi and other emergent economies, the relevance of education to everyday life is paramount. In these countries, a vocational emphasis might mean that a greater proportion of the population attend school if its usefulness and relevance is more obvious to students and their families.

Transferring Knowledge Versus Knowledge Through Technology Education

These lines come from a Victorian comic opera that lampooned university study generally and women’s higher education in particular. A hundred and thirty years later it still points up current distinctions between different types of knowledge and hints at what type of knowledge is more valued. The “Classical” education of the time had little if any technical or scientific tuition, but the author was only mildly satirical realising that “Useful knowledge” was something that the Victorians valued highly.

Technological Literacy in a Developing World Context

Bangladesh, a semi-tropical country which lies in the north-eastern part of South Asia bordered by India and Myanmar (Burma), is one of the largest deltas in the world. Its land is consequently very low-lying and crossed by three great rivers. The Ganges, the Brahmaputra, and the Meghna all flow south into the Bay of Bengal and their many tributaries make travel within Bangladesh difficult. Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated countries of the world with a population of 138.6 million, crowded into an area of only 147,570 square kilometres, giving a population density of 926 persons per square kilometre.

Teaching design and technology

The book Learning to Teach Design and Technology in the Secondary School, 2nd ed., aims to help student-teachers develop their subject knowledge and professional knowledge and skills. It looks at the theory underpinning important issues and links this to practice in the classroom. Fully updated to take account of changes in the curriculum, there are new chapters on: teaching graphics, 14-19 vocational qualifications and cross-curricular links to literacy, numeracy, citizenship and sustainability.

Innovation education through science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) subjects

This chapter draws on 30 years of projects and initiatives across England and the other three states of the United Kingdom intended to increase the relevance of the curriculum to life outside the school, to promote creativity and enterprise and to foster innovation through ‘minds-on’ as well as ‘hands-on’ teaching strategies. Through an analysis of both successful approaches and a discussion of ‘lessons to be learned’, there is a consideration of the Technical and Vocational Educational Initiative (TVEI) in the 1980s, the introduction in the 1990s of the manufacture of innovative products through the new subject ‘Design and Technology’ for all students aged 5–16 years and, recently, the collaboration with other STEM subjects. There is much to celebrate in promoting and facilitating innovative Product Design for students of all ages across UK, but there have been many obstacles to overcome at national and local levels too. This chapter explores both.