Technology for teacher learning and performance

Introduction

Teachers are bombarded with information about technological innovation for their students, yet they receive far less guidance on the use of technologies that can support their own work. Within the limited literature on tools to support teachers, there is a prevalence of research on course management rather than tools to facilitate core teaching performance. Also, within this limited literature on tools to support teaching performance, the theoretical and empirical basis is extremely limited. This issue focuses squarely on the relationship between pedagogical practice and technological innovation.

The core tasks of teachers

Teachers vary tremendously. Accordingly, teachers differ in their perceptions of themselves as professionals (Van Veen, Sleegers, Bergen, & Klaassen, 2001) and of the tasks for which they feel responsible. However, the core tasks performed by all competent teachers remain constant. These are design, enactment and reflection (McKenney, 2017).

Design

Teachers design both before and during lessons. The work beforehand goes beyond simple planning. As a design science (Laurillard, 2012), teaching requires pedagogical choices, organisational structuring and the curation, customisation or creation of learning resources. Successful teachers curate, customise or create engaging tasks that give students meaningful work to do (Darling-Hammond, 2016). They map pathways, over the course of a lesson, unit or semester, through which learning will progress towards the construction of big ideas (Windschitl, Thompson, Braaten, & Stroupe, 2012) or the development of disciplinary practices (Enfield, 2014). Yet design also takes place during lessons, in the form of in-the-moment improvisation. Teachers typically design in action due to either unforeseen opportunities, such as when a ‘teachable moment’ presents itself, or the observation that the current approach could be improved. Design-in-action includes pedagogical decision making such as an impromptu group discussion, the adjustment of learning tasks or revision of student choice options. It also includes the development of interaction norms, and classroom management strategies, which are regularly fine-tuned on the fly.

Enactment

At the heart of the profession, navigating the complexity of learner differences, social dynamics and instructional targets, the enactment of teaching cannot be prescribed. Rather, performing it well involves knowing in action – a constant effort to observe, recognise, judge, decide and act (Schoenfeld, 2000; Schön, 1983; Shulman, 1987). During enactment, competent teachers: constantly assess students to identify strengths and learning approaches as well as needs, and to examine the effects of different instructional efforts; scaffold a process of successive conversations, steps and learning experiences; help develop student confidence, motivation and effort and assure that students feel connected and capable in school (Darling-Hammond, 2016). For example, teachers working to help students understand and participate in scientific discourse guide conversations that elicit student ideas to adapt instruction, help students make sense of material activity and press students for evidence-based explanations (Windschitl et al., 2012).

Reflection

Like design, reflection also takes place both in and out of lessons. Starting with his seminal work in 1987, the industrial consultant, urban planner, policy analyst and higher education teacher Donald Schön championed the crucial significance of reflection-in-action – a form of inquiry-while-doing. For teachers, this includes on-the-spot experimentation and adjustment, such as requesting feedback from learners or debriefing to gauge understanding. Darling-Hammond refers to strategies teachers use to promote student learning while also investigating student thinking as two-way pedagogies (Darling-Hammond, 1996). Their results inform immediate actions, future design and teacher pedagogical content knowledge. Outside of the learning environment, reflection-on-action with external support also helps teachers improve their instruction. This process takes place informally, for example while grading papers or conversing with colleagues, but stands to be more meaningful when more formalised, for example through self-studies (Zeichner, 2007) or professional learning communities (Little & Horn, 2007).

Technology to support teacher learning and performance

Technology has powerful potential to support teacher learning while performing the three core tasks of teaching, described above. Tools that support design could, for example, guide the processes of creating new activities or resources, or help teachers assemble and curate existing resources in ways that foster alignment between aims, learning activities and assessment (McKenney & Mor, 2015). During lesson enactment, technologies could support teacher learning and performance by offering real-time feedback, such as bug-in-ear coaching (Elford, Carter, & Aronin, 2013; Rock et al., 2014), or by giving insight into whole -class and individual student progress through annotated dashboards of (aggregated) student progress (Visscher, 2017). Tools that support reflection include apps through which teachers can collect student feedback on lessons, or video reviewing protocols for reflecting on classroom events (van der Meij, Coenders, & McKenney, 2017). Various tools for teacher learning and performance are in development, though a structured examination of such resources is severely lacking. All articles in the special issue therefore respond to the following question, What does research tell us about how teacher learning and performance can be supported by technology?

About this special issue

Recent research has shown that curriculum resources specifically designed to help students (many of which are technology based) yield significantly better results at scale when they concomitantly attend to the teacher learning (ParejaRoblin, Schunn, & McKenney, 2018). As the field of educational technology moves forward, researchers and developers must understand the importance of, and learn to attend to, the needs of both teachers and students (Hopster-den Otter, Wools, Eggen, & Veldkamp, 2017). Failure to do so is likely to only increase the creation of educational technologies that do not reach practice. This is because too many technologies require more time, expertise or technological infrastructure than the teachers and schools concerned can handle. In other words, we need to prevent excess work beyond the zone of proximal implementation (McKenney, 2013), and help researchers and developers focus on technologies that can be used in the here and now, with realistic and sustainable amounts of guidance, where needed. Teacher performance tools of this nature are valuable on their own, and essential for enabling effective use of pedagogical tools for students. To address the need for work with this kind of focus, this special issue offers a structured, research-based examination of technologies that support teacher learning and performance. In accordance with the themes described above, each article positions itself in light of the core tasks of teachers.

Two of the contributions speak to supporting teachers during the core task of design. Tekkumru-Kisa and Schunn describe iPlan, a web-based tool which provides online access to educative curriculum materials in an interactive learning platform. It supports teacher design by enabling teachers to share their adaptations and reflections, and compares their versions with those developed by experts. Prestridge, Tondeur, and Ottenbreit-Leftwich focus on the use of digital applications for developing and curating curriculum materials and designing learning sequences. The findings show how teachers relied on their online social networks for design. These studies reveal the kinds of insights teachers seek during design, while also demonstrating that design knowledge is often distributed as well as enriched through social connections.

Two of the contributions concern support for teachers during the core task of enactment. Loper et al. examine how teacher beliefs about scientific argumentation are influenced by multimedia educative curriculum materials, and the subsequent impacts on pupil learning. They found that teachers became more confident in their abilities to teach argumentation as they enacted more lessons, likely due to the clear exemplification of practice offered by the videos. Matsumura et al. describe a technology-rich teacher professional development programme designed to build teacher knowledge about dialogic reading instruction. This technology-rich programme supported teachers in attending specifically to the relationship between their instruction and student thinking. Both of these studies demonstrate how technology can support teachers in focusing on the strophic interaction between their performance and student learning.

Two of the contributions address support for teachers during the core task of reflection. Bijlsma et al. describe a smartphone-assisted app through which students can give immediate feedback following a lesson. The effects of the student feedback on teacher reflection and behaviour are discussed. Philipsen et al. describe the design and enactment of an online teacher professional development scenario aiming to foster reflection in action and reflection on action. Both of these studies show that technology can catalyse or provide valuable inputs for reflection, but that additional efforts are required for reflective practices to be sustained.

This special issue offers a structured, research-based examination of technologies that support teacher learning and performance. This editorial has focused on describing the core tasks of teaching (design, enactment and reflection) as well as some of the commensurate roles technology has the potential to play. Each article in the special issue positions itself in light of this guiding framework. Taken together, this collection offers both theoretical insights as well as practical guidelines for supporting teacher performance through the use of technology.

Acknowledgments

The guest editors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the TPE editorial team for their support in bringing this special issue to fruition. We are especially grateful to Hannah Bijlsma, who served as guest editorial assistant throughout the entire process.