Debbie Forster, e-skills UK

Why VITAL is so vital to avoid a “crisis of relevance” in Education

At a recent conference the new Vice Chancellor of the Open University alerted delegates to what he described as a growing “crisis of relevance” in our schools and colleges. He was alluding to the gap that exists between how young people are immersed in the use of digital technologies in their personal and social spaces and what happens in the majority of classrooms and lecture halls across the country.

The DCSF have recently invested over £5m in a bold and innovative approach to address this gap and develop teachers’ digital technology skills in an attempt to get better value from the significant investment in ICT in schools and colleges and to create a “sea change” in the professional development opportunities available to the whole education workforce.

The last few years have seen a massive investment in ICT in schools and recently Ed Balls speaking at the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust annual conference, 21st Century Schools-The Globalised Challenge suggested it is time to reflect on whether we are making the most of the opportunities:

“The huge investment of the last 12 years in information and communications technology in schools is an important area for review. In many schools the benefits realised from ICT are limited. Becta’s Harnessing Technology survey shows that only a quarter of all schools are using ICT effectively across all their business functions” said The Secretary of State.

John Davitt, a teacher, writer and innovator put it even more sharply in perspective recently;

“History will say, ‘you had those tools and you did WHAT with them?’”

There is an interesting and growing issue here, in which evidence from a range of recent publications and research reports, raises a number of serious questions for ICT capital investment in programmes like BSF and PCP and accompanying change management and workforce development strategies in schools and sixth form colleges.

So on the one hand BECTA/NFER research tells us that the “majority of teachers are enthusiastic and positive about using ICT”, but in a recent British Education Suppliers Association study, an analysis of the online responses from 770 primary and 572 secondary schools across the UK suggests that teacher confidence and competence has dipped by almost 10 per cent in primary and secondary schools. Another alarming finding, and perhaps immediate justification for the DCSF £5.6m investment in the Vital ICT/CPD project is that the percentage of teachers receiving ICT training in 2009 is down by 10% in primary and a worrying 20% in secondary schools. More than 80% per cent of teachers say, “limited access to ICT is affecting their use of ICT in the classroom”.

Unconscious incompetence to Conscious competence?

Ray Fleming, Microsoft, argues that we need to be careful before jumping to conclusions from the BESA study.

In a recent post on the Microsoft Schools blog Ray said;

“I think that what’s happening is that the data is reflecting the journey through the learning curve. We all start any learning journey in the “Unconsciously Incompetent” box – ie we don’t know what we can’t do. And normally progress through to being “Consciously Incompetent” (ie we find out what we cant do), before continuing through to “Consciously Competent” (a feeling of relief from knowing that we can do it!). And, in the perfect world, we end up “Unconsciously Competent” (ie we aren’t even aware that we’re competent at something, like riding a bike”).
And I think the reason that we don’t see a continual increase in teachers’ confidence with ICT is down to two factors: The first reason is that because things keep changing, it means that we all end up moving into the between the “Incompetent” and “Competent” boxes. In fact, it always seems as if the IT industry is waiting for me to get competent with something before it changes! Only yesterday I discovered that my favourite page on Amazon had changed the way it worked, and I had to re-learn how to do things. And secondly, I think that the majority of teachers are surrounded by people who appear to be more fluent with technology than they are – hordes of little people who’ll happily load a video onto YouTube before breakfast, and IM all day long. In that environment, where you’re surrounded by people who seem to know more than you, wouldn’t you feel less confident? And I don’t think this existed in 1998 – the majority of people didn’t have a home computer, and so everybody was on a level playing field. Which means we’re unlikely to see an increase in Confidence, even though there’s a continual increase in Competence.”

More light needed?

A further, and more recent BECTA report can perhaps cast a bit more light on this critical issue?
In “Harnessing technology-Celebrating Outstanding Teachers”, researchers from the University of Reading suggest a way forward.

“The key premise of the research was to investigate what the current workforce, both teachers and teaching assistants, actually do with technology. For example, the research did not begin with identifying the numbers of computers in schools in relation to pupils or how much money had been spent per capita on technology etc. Its fundamental aim was to identify emerging best practice amongst teachers who were seen firstly as, good teachers, and secondly, as effective users of technology in their teaching.”

They went on to quote the McKinsey report to suggest where the solution may lie. “The influential Mckinsey Report (2007) reviewed the top performing education systems in the world and concluded that: ‘The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers’, ‘the only way to improve outcomes is to improve instruction’ and, ‘high performance requires every child to succeed.” The full report makes a compelling case for investment in teachers’ development based on “what works” but it is the transcripts in the appendix, which perhaps shed most light on the way forward?

But it is the final BECTA report Continuing Professional Development in ICT for Schoolteachers, by the Institute of Education, University of London, which shines the brightest and widest light on this whole area.

This report presents the findings from a qualitative study of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) for school teachers in Key Stages 1-4 in England.

The research aimed to identify ‘effective’ CPD, by collecting accounts from teachers, senior leaders and CPD providers, in which they described the key features of ICT CPD which made a difference to teachers’ use of technologies in their practice, based on their experiences.

The research questions were:

• What models are there for ICT CPD?
• What are the key factors in ensuring that ICT CPD affects pedagogy and practice?

So what is VITAL in all of this?

• Vital is a new approach to ICT education. The use of ICT in the classroom can enrich every subject at every level, inspiring and motivating students through new types of experiences and resources.
• Vital is an innovative new professional development programme which aims to help schools and colleges in England make the most of technology in the classroom.
• Vital offers continuing professional development to support the needs of two types of practitioners – the specialists teaching technology subjects (Computing, IT and ICT) as disciplines in their own right, and those seeking to exploit ICT across the curriculum.
• Open to all staff in schools and sixth form colleges across England, the programme recognises that everyone approaches technology with different experience, expertise, confidence and development needs. Led by The Open University, in partnership with e-skills UK, the programme is funded by the Department for Children, Schools and Families.

Peter Twining Vital project Director

Peter Twining, Project Director at the Open University, is convinced that the Vital approach will bring about the “step change” required to ensure that the “positivity and enthusiasm” of teachers is converted into excellent practice and improved learner outcomes.

“Vital is concerned with raising the competence of teachers in our schools and sixth form colleges and we are not just concerned with courses. Our experience and research tells us that teachers develop themselves in a variety of formal and informal ways. We first need to establish what is going on, what works and where the gaps are. We can then support appropriate interventions if necessary.”

However, the pace of technological change is rapid and this year’s innovative use of technology is in next year’s refresh budget so how do teachers keep up with the constant need for updating?

Debbie Forster, a recent headteacher and now lead at Vital project partner e-skills UK thinks it is critical to work closely with the technology industry:

“Through e-skills UK’s network of employers and industry, Vital has access to a unique combination of knowledge and skills which should help teachers’ development in the use of digital technologies. By developing the skills and confidence of teachers, we hope to improve the experience students have of technology in education – in turn attracting more young people into taking technology-related courses at school and beyond.”

So will this bold and innovative approach to the development of teachers’ confidence and competence in the use of digital technologies to enhance teaching and learning work when it is questionable whether teachers’ last experience of a “national interevention”, the NOFF training programme, was as effective as it could have been?

“This is where Vital is a fundamentally different approach to the issue” said Peter Twining.

“We are listening to teachers when they tell us what makes effective cpd, reviewing all the available research and resources and using the combined expertise of the Open University and e-skills. Our focus is on making effective pedagogical use of technologies that schools have access to, rather than always going for the most cutting edge tools; hence our use of Moodle for our Community Website. Of course the content of our CPD includes the latest digital technologies and web 2.0 tools to support teachers.”added Peter.

You can visit Vital at stand K59 at BETT or register on their website below.

Links:

Vital
http://www.vital.ac.uk/

Microsoft Schools Blog
http://blogs.msdn.com/ukschools/archive/2009/12/04/are-teachers-really-losing-confidence-with-ict.aspx
BESA Survey Report
http://www.agent4change.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=413:teachers-ict-confidence-down-10-per-cent-besa-survey-&catid=66:research&Itemid=182

BECTA reports
http://partners.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=rh&catcode=_re_rp_02

http://emergingtechnologies.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=etr&rid=15093

SSAT Conference 21st Century Schools-The Globalised Challenge Report

http://flux.futurelab.org.uk/2009/12/03/21st-century-schools-the-gobal-challenge/
John Davitt-The Innovators
http://www.agent4change.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=455:the-innovators-6-john-davitt&catid=90:the-innovators&Itemid=460

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