The two pilot experiments in the Real-Time Lesson ... · Web viewThe final game was a word search grid where, from within an apparent jumble of letters, each of the target words

Analysing the Art of Teaching through Real-Time Lesson Observation via the Medium of the Interactive Whiteboard.

Maureen HaldaneManchester Metropolitan University

[email protected]

Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, University of Glamorgan, 14-17 September 2005

Abstract:The paper focuses on how Interactive Whiteboard technology combined with broadband telecommunications, can offer a new method of observing lessons for the purpose of analysing teaching and learning effectiveness. It reports the outcomes of an investigative pilot project that utilises a high quality two-way telepresence plus datashare, for remote real-time lesson observation. In this instance the researcher was investigating the use of Interactive Whiteboard technology to enhance the learning of ITT students. The technology deployed enables groups of students to observe lessons as “flies on the wall”. They also have an opportunity for dialogue with the teacher immediately beforehand and an opportunity for questions immediately after. The sharing of the experience and the chance to learn from it collaboratively, peer to peer, by comparing and contrasting the session with their own school experience, would not be possible without the use of technology, since it is clearly impractical to have quite large groups of external observers present in a normal class teaching situation. Whilst other alternatives to a physical presence such as the use of pre-recorded video, video-conferencing or two-way data share plus limited audio-visual communication have their value, the author suggests that a high quality “virtual presence” has many advantages. The paper argues that the process of lesson observation, which is, for practical reasons, invariably either a solitary experience, or one shared with perhaps a single tutor or mentor, is vulnerable to an element of subjectivity that may colour the process of reflection and analysis.

The two pilot experiments in real-time lesson observation to which this paper refers are the prelude to an extended trial planned for the academic year 2005-06. The project known as "UniLinks" makes use of digital interactive whiteboard technology to deliver simultaneously shared data, and an interactive telepresence as a two-way process between the university and a classroom in a remote location.

The project has two primary objectives. Firstly, it is intended to help trainee teachers to gain more exposure to the practical utilisation of the digital interactive whiteboard (IWB), a significant and relatively new artefact likely to become increasingly pervasive during the early years of their teaching careers. This is in essence a subset of a broader overarching aim to explore how the IWB as, in effect, a new distance learning tool, can create a new, and authentic, situated learning experience (Brown, Collins & Duguid, 1989; Lave and Wenger, 1991) available to trainee teachers via electronic classrooms on the university campus. If some of the practical issues related to remote real-time lesson observation can be overcome, then trainee teachers can potentially gain a broader range of experiences of the realities of life in the classroom than is practicable through school experience alone.

In recent years, training providers have grown accustomed to a greater emphasis on the acquisition of practical skills and the gaining of expertise in the art of teaching through extended periods of school experience or, in some cases such as the GTP programme,

Maureen Haldane Page 1 25/05/2023

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through school-based training relying heavily on the exemplary practice of colleagues in the school and the support of an experienced expert teacher as a mentor.

Invaluable though these experiences are, schools in the UK, despite the trend toward standardisation, the harmonisation implicit in the introduction of a National Curriculum and pupil testing against national standards, remain stubbornly diverse by virtue of the geographic and demographic diversity of the local populations that they serve. Trainee teachers can only be directly exposed to a limited sample from among the very broad menu of possible school experiences and may find themselves in a quite unfamiliar environment during their early years in the profession.

However, while there may be a rationale for using audio-visual media to develop case examples that demonstrate practical teaching skills to complement school experience, the particular approach chosen for the UniLinks project poses the questions:

Why use real-time remote observation as opposed to recorded video? If creating a remote virtual classroom why choose to use linked interactive

whiteboards plus video-conferencing? If undertaking real-time lesson observation, why give priority to observing IWB

pedagogy?

The use of video material by Initial Teacher Training (ITT) providers both to assist with the formulation of sound links between theory in practice (Copeland and Decker, 1996) and to offer a situated learning experience exposing students to a broader range of classroom situations, (Williams et al, 2001) is well-established. More recently, Teachers Television has become a valuable additional medium for providing and analysing exemplars of the art of teaching.

Such media have the advantage of demonstrating real situations in a context where an in-depth analysis, often in a group situation with the support of an expert tutor, can be integral to the learning process. However they arguably lack something of the immediacy of real-time lesson observation.

The hypothesis that there is some advantage to be gained from live remote learning experiences was put to the test by Cooke and de Bettencourt (2001), who sought to compare and contrast the experience of two-way videoconferencing to deliver a course with a directly similar experience that was video-based. The course, which was prepared co-operatively by three Universities, concerned the teaching of learners with special needs. The researchers worked with six groups of trainee teachers, four of which observed and then immediately discussed in a group situation by means of the live video-conference. The other two groups watched, and then discussed, the same sessions, recorded on video and viewed one week after the event. The participants evaluated the live session more highly, stressing the value of the interactivity in the live sessions as an important contribution to learning effectiveness. The UniLinks real-time lesson observation model includes both an interactive pre-lesson briefing and an interactive post-lesson review where students can engage with the teacher responsible for delivering the observed lesson.


Working in the UK, Carville and Mitchell (2000) have also evaluated the effectiveness of videoconferencing as a distance teaching and learning medium, working within the area of early childhood studies. They used the technology to link tutors in Belfast with a remote classroom in Armagh. They reported that both tutors and students needed to adapt to a more limited and formal teaching style because of the limitations of the technology. Tutors and students also recognised a need for a tutor presence at the remote site to facilitate discussion and deal with problems. Data sharing via an interactive whiteboard at both the mother site and the remote location, along with two-way video appears to be a potential solution to such issues and the potential for the UniLinks system to transmit University-delivered sessions to remote locations, rather than vice versa, will be more fully evaluated during the forthcoming extended trial period.

Morgan et al (2003) have described the successful use of a combination of two-way video and data share for the remote delivery of in-service training to classroom assistants working with special needs pupils and to the teachers supporting them. The courses were delivered to four sites in different US States. They used the two-way video conference in conjunction with live Internet sessions, converting visual aids such as PowerPoint slides into web pages in order to create a similar experience for remote learners to that which could be delivered on campus. All participants successfully completed the courses which were then evaluated using a standard Utah State University tool with a 1(min) to 6(max) scale recording scores against 21 parameters ranging from 4.9 to 5.6.

A substantial project undertaken by Purdue University under the auspices the U.S. Department of Education's PT3 programme (Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers to use Technology) included pilot experiments in the use of data share plus two-way video for remote lesson observation. (Phillion et al, 2003)

The project addressed the lack of diversity in the experience of pre-service teachers undergoing their University programme, and their school experience, in a predominantly rural part of Indiana that was less ethnically, socially and linguistically diverse than many US centres of population. The students augmented their direct school experience with virtual experiences through links to an inner city primary school in Chicago (Lehman et al, 2003). Throughout one semester, the link was active for 1-2 hours per week. Sessions began with the remotely observed lesson and then continued with students taking turns to use the link in the opposite direction to deliver “mini-lessons” or short curriculum enrichment activities.

Additionally, remote lesson observation was undertaken by a group of agriculture education students. A third group of educational technology students undertaking a course in instructional design had the opportunity to deliver outputs of their practical projects to a remote school. Despite problems with the technology such as picture freezes and sound track delays that restricted effective operation and caused frustrating breaks in contact with the remote location, Phillion et al (2003) reported an overall positive student response. They concluded that, while they were no substitute for direct school experience, nevertheless, valuable additional breadth could be provided by augmenting teacher training provision through the use of virtual experiences.


When planning the UniLinks pilot, the possibility of linking two digital interactive whiteboards, one at the university and the other in a school, while simultaneously using two-way videoconferencing appeared in principle to retain the advantages of the alternative forms of telepresence cited above whilst, eliminating many of the disadvantages.

Virtual school experiences, though delivered within a classroom, can nevertheless be seen as consistent with Lave and Wenger’s (1991) proposition that learning is more effectively acquired through activity set in a particular context and culture as opposed to more abstract classroom-based learning activities. Students engaging in such experiences should be able to acquire, develop and use cognitive tools in an authentic domain activity (Brown, Collins and Duguid, 1989), thus sharing a learning experience consistent with the latters’ espousal of a cognitive apprenticeship.

A possible limitation of the UniLinks model is that the lessons observed in real-time are all delivered using the IWB as a teaching medium. In principle, it would be possible to use the university IWB as a screen onto which the contents of a conventional whiteboard at a remote location were projected, however the observers would then be likely to have much less clear perception of the lesson content. Thus, the UniLinks model potentially offers the opportunity to experience teaching and learning in a more diverse range of IWB classrooms rather than a more diverse range of classrooms per se. For this reason, designing an IWB-based virtual classroom makes more sense if the real-time observation of IWB-specific pedagogy is perceived as a worthwhile objective, and, in this instance broadening students’ exposure to |IWB pedagogy was a priority. In a more general context, opportunities to visit other types of virtual workplace would appear likely to benefit from the high presentational quality associated with the IWB.

At MMU, interest in using IWB technology to extend the range of situated learning experiences open to ITT students arose from experiences of providing induction training in the use of the IWB for students, many of whom had limited opportunity to use, or to observe usage of an IWB whilst on school placement; there was thus a certain symmetry, in that the technology gave rise both to the problem and to the solution.

In 2000, the Institute of Education at MMU established a Centre of Excellence in the use of digital interactive whiteboard technologies in collaboration with an industry partner. The increasing use of IWB-equipped electronic classrooms, both within the IoE and more widely across the University created a need for staff development. Also, the growing prevalence of such technologies within schools provided the motivation for the IoE to explore its potential more deeply and to equip our ITT students with some grounding in its use to support teaching and learning.

This initiative highlighted how some students, within the context of an otherwise excellent school placement, may, in schools yet to deploy the technology on a significant scale, have little or no opportunity to gain practical experience in the use of the IWB. However, with increasing uptake of the technology by schools they would be highly


likely to have to utilise it during their early years of teaching. Arguably, this could be thought to be of little consequence. After all, we are dealing with an ICT literate generation who, having been given some exposure to the IWB at University, might be reasonably expected to adapt their pedagogy accordingly as and when they might encounter it in their own classroom.

However, feedback from IoE colleagues during one-to-one semi-structured interviews related to their own induction training, together with opportunities to observe good practice in schools that had pioneered the use of the technology, suggested that a new pedagogy may be emerging (Haldane, 2003; Somekh and Haldane, 2005). If this is the case, then ITT students who have little or no opportunity to observe, and seek to emulate, teachers who are developing high levels of expertise, may be disadvantaged.

The digital interactive whiteboard, at a superficial level is beguilingly like the technologies that it supersedes. It is of similar dimensions to the old whiteboard, usually occupies the latter’s former position at the front of the class and is used for whole group learning where the teacher leads from the front. However, it is also arguably the only new prominent classroom artefact in the history of learning that represents a step change in the way lessons with relatively large groups are conducted. For the first time in significant numbers, teacher-led learning groups are abandoning the temporary transcription of marks onto a surface as the primary means of supporting and consolidating learning delivered via a process that also relies heavily on oral dialogue.

Of course, the digital whiteboard could also be perceived simply as an alternative means of delivering learning through the use of a computer which is then presented to a large group by means of a projector and screen. However, the IWB is far more than a projector. It enables the operation of the computer, whose content it displays, to be conducted remotely and it has additional peripherals that extend its functionality. The fact that its apparent familiarity may enable both practising and trainee teachers to feel relatively comfortable about adopting the technology, does not necessarily mean that they would be utilising it to its full potential.

The first pilot experiment was, in essence, also a user needs analysis. Given that some trainee teachers may have little or no chance to observe or utilise the IWB during their school experience, while others may be in schools where otherwise experienced teachers are relative novices, it was necessary to judge whether the potential benefit of exposure to an experienced and expert user of IWB technology by means of real-time lesson observation would justify the effort of setting up the links.

The lesson was conducted with a group of year 9 pupils whose general levels of ability and aptitude for languages suggested to the teacher that they would be unlikely to select French as a future study option.

The objective of the lesson was to teach pupils vocabulary related to the buildings and layout of a typical town centre. The pupils were divided into two teams competing against each other. The lesson comprised of five games each of which covered all the


target words in the vocabulary therefore reinforcing the learning. Points were awarded for correct answers.

During the first game graphical symbols representing each of the target words were very briefly exposed and pupils were required to identify the French word that corresponded to the symbol. This game lasted approximately five minutes. Initially pupils volunteered answers by raising their hand, but towards the end of the game pupils who had not hitherto contributed particularly actively were selected by the teacher as respondents. A high-level of concentration was necessary in order to see and recognise each graphical symbol. The competitive element prompted attempts by the pupils to give a quick-fire response. The remainder of this game followed a similar pattern and involved the same vocabulary but with words flying rapidly across the screen requiring pupils to read and pronounce words correctly after only a split-second exposure.

Each of the remaining four games involved pupils coming to the front and using the features of the whiteboard themselves. The second game slowed the pace very briefly because it involved pupils, taking turns to use the whiteboard pen, to complete a crossword grid. The third game involved one representative of each team using drag-and-drop to match written words to the appropriate symbol. Game four involved matching the English and French version of target words by touching consecutively, with the electronic pen, the two relevant boxes. The final game was a word search grid where, from within an apparent jumble of letters, each of the target words could be found either horizontally, vertically or diagonally. Coming forward in turn, representatives of each team had the opportunity to find one of the target words and use the whiteboard pen to outline it.

As the lesson progressed the group of 80 remote observers were able to witness the tone of voice and all the various non-verbal signals and movements which indicated excitement, attention and pressure. This highlighted the extent to which the teacher was able to use the technology to retain attention and move the lesson on at quite a high pace.

The high levels of attention, engagement and even excitement demonstrated by a group of pupils who, in other circumstances, may have been expected to be relatively diffident and low in motivation, were evident from this first observation and were attributed to the use of gaming and the high levels of interaction.

The analysis, undertaken first through live questioning of the teacher, and then subsequently in focused group discussions, highlighted how skilfully the lesson was crafted. The intensity arising from fast pace and high levels of concentration would have been difficult to sustain throughout a whole lesson. The crossword puzzle activity, about one-third of the way through the session, provided some breathing space without any loss of engagement.

The lesson also demonstrated how the interactive whiteboard exhibits “stability”. Kozma (1994), when comparing alternative learning media suggests that the book is a stable medium because the pace of reading can be varied in order to devote more attention to points of particular interest, difficulty or relevance. Salient points can be revisited to


reinforce learning or to make connections with relevant information that appears elsewhere in the text. The IWB is also a stable medium in that it offers many opportunities to give greater attention to significant points by dwelling upon them or by revisiting them so that they become “cognitive keys”. In this particular instance the cognitive keys in question (the three-way link between the oral pronunciation, the symbolic written representation and the meaning of the words in the target vocabulary articulated verbally or through graphic symbols and illustrations) were reinforced by means of a number of repetitions.

However, in this particular session this reinforcement was achieved more by means of “disguised repetitions”. On each occasion, repetition of the link between the word and its meaning was revealed via different pedagogic tools. Comparable activities could not have been delivered without the technology, except perhaps by using conceptually similar, but more pedestrian, paper-based resources. However, some of the cognitive keys elicited and highlighted at times through the interaction of pupils with the technology, would have been difficult or impossible to reproduce in paper-based activity. Those activities that could have been reproduced in other media would seem likely to take considerably longer to complete without the IWB.

In other instances, during the observed lesson cognitive keys were elicited, just as they might be in a conventional classroom; through oral interaction with a pupil or pupils. During the IWB lesson such points were often captured and highlighted immediately by teacher or, more usually a pupil, marking the board with an electronic pen.

Based on students perceptions of the value of the real-time observation process it was decided that it was worth pursuing the goal of creating an IWB remote classroom “kit” that was sufficiently portable to be moved around to encompass a mix of remote locations, and which could be operated without the need for university technical support on site at the remote location during sessions. A prototype version of this equipment, using video over IP as opposed to the multi-channel ISDN utilised for the first pilot was trialed in a second pilot session using the same school. This functioned well when being tested prior to the event but performance on the day was disappointing when compared to the excellent quality achieved with the first pilot and some modifications are in progress.

In this second trial, in order not to disrupt the trainee teachers’ or the pupils’ usual timetable, the link to the classroom began after the start of the school lesson. This meant that the context of the lesson and information about the group were dealt with at the university end before linking up with the class. The scheme of work and the lesson plan had been e-mailed in advance and copies were made available for the students. The lesson was the last of a series focusing on an introduction to Chaucer and the language of his poems; no easy task for pupils whose average reading age is 9.4yrs and average spelling age is 9.0yrs. This last lesson was about spelling and occasionally referred back to some of the poetry that had been covered previously.

The lesson was team taught by two English teachers and there was a learning support assistant working with two statemented pupils; a situation that in itself proved to be of


great interest to the trainee teachers, many of whom, though they had already been into two different schools, had not experienced lessons where there was more than one teacher in the classroom. The three teachers interacted seamlessly between each other, pupils, interactive whiteboard and the paper resources (held by the pupils) that matched what was on the board; an orchestration of fun, fast moving learning activities throughout which the pupils’ attention never faltered.

The teachers used the IWB to refer to “cognitive keys”, including from some of the previous Chaucer lessons. When using an IWB, pages such as those created in this session, where pupils annotate their own ideas over the scripts of the poetry can, where appropriate, be retained. Such “reminders” seem to serve several purposes; they delight pupils who recognise their own work, thus reinforcing pupil engagement and “ownership” of the learning, they provide visual hooks on which to hang new learning in the lesson being taught and they also help to move the lesson on at a pace that would not have been possible had the pupils been expected to recall in abstract.

The main purpose of the observed lesson was to consider spelling strategies drawing on analogies to known words, roots, morphology and familiar spelling patterns. The short extracts below from two of the three poems used to illustrate some of the more problematic aspects of spelling and pronunciation of the English language, reveal the difficult task with which the teachers and, of course, the pupils were challenged.

“Beware of heard, a dreadful word,That looks like beard, but sounds like bird,And dead: it’s said like bed not bead – For goodness sake don’t call it deed!”

and:

“Eye halve a spelling checkerIt came with my pea sea.It plainly marques for my revueMiss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word And weight four it to sayWeather eye am wrong oar writeIt shows me strait a weigh.”

Being able to pick out and physically move specific words away from the poems in order to allow whole class discussion and pupil interaction with the words on the board, created a very visual learning experience and presented concrete, manipulable “cognitive keys.”

Throughout the lesson, pupils eagerly accepted invitations to make contributions to lesson by writing on the board, sometimes their own ideas and sometimes those of fellow learners. Their lack of diffidence, often a characteristic of pupils experiencing difficulties with reading and spelling, was most notable and seemed to result from the use of the


simple “undo” and “redo” tool which teachers and pupils used frequently and as a matter of course. As one trainee teacher said after the event, “It seemed that if it was all right for the teachers to do this, it was all right for the pupils.”; a permissive approach to learning afforded by teachers’ expert use of simple functionality of the board.

Unfortunately, at one point of the lesson, contact was lost and subsequently, visual contact was hazy. Nevertheless, trainee teachers had had the opportunity to observe a well orchestrated performance from teachers clearly very comfortable with the interactive whiteboard used jointly as a learning resource during a lesson that would potentially have presented difficulties for even the most experienced teachers.

Immediately following both of the pilot real-time observations sessions, the trainee teachers conducted a live question-and-answer session with the class teachers concerned. The trainees then broke into small, focused discussion groups to consider the value of the real-time lesson observation process. Following the first pilot experiment, the group discussion was semi-structured with a short checklist of prompts available, as necessary, to help elicit feedback covering salient points. The trainees’ feedback from this session was used to prepare a draft questionnaire which was piloted following the second session and a refined version of this research instrument will be used during future sessions. This questionnaire also covers issues beyond UniLinks. These relate to students’ IWB induction training and their exposure to the technology during school experience.

Key findings thus far, based on trainee teachers' feedback from the first two pilot sessions are as follows:

Viewing sessions in real-time as opposed to recordings is preferred because:o Live sessions, with the element of risk that things can go wrong have a

feeling of immediacy and reality that contribute to the ‘situated learning’ aspect of the experience.

o Live interaction with the expert teacher setting out the objectives of the session and then reviewing in a live question-and-answer session was valued.

o An analysis of the session that incorporates the teacher's own review of how things went is better than looking at a video and then speculating about aspects of the teacher's reactions and responses.

Real-time lesson observation is a valuable augmentation of school experience because:

o Observing a fast-moving lesson in the group situation offers more opportunity to pick up salient points that a single observer could easily overlook.

o Reviewing and analysing the session in a group situation, with fellow students and a tutor plus the delivering teacher, provides for a more wide-ranging and detailed analytical discussion than that which may sometimes take place when observing lessons one-to-one in schools.


o Viewing sessions in school environments other than those experienced at first hand (and possibly lessons in subjects other than one’s specialism) provides an interesting and useful diversity of experience.

Viewing IWB delivered lessons in real-time was valued because;o Trainee teachers are impressed by the technology and wish to acquire

expertise in its use.o Trainee teachers expect the technology to become more widely used

during their early years of teaching.o Trainee teachers perceive the acquisition of expertise in IWB use as

potentially helpful when applying for jobs in schools where IWB installation has taken place or is imminent. Some saw this as a particular advantage in situations where some or all existing staff are not yet fully expert in the use of this technology.

o Trainee teachers in schools that are partially equipped with IWBs may find that these are primarily used in subjects other than their own and/or are located in rooms that they are not regularly timetabled to use.

o Some trainee teachers may have no access to an IWB during their school experience.

o Trainee teachers may be working with mentors who may be excellent teachers but may, at the time their school experience takes place, have had little or no experience of the use of the IWB.

Based on their positive experience of the boards, students consistently expressed the view that it would be likely to have a positive effect on pupils’ attention and motivation. Real-time observation of teachers using IWBs when working with challenging groups may thus potentially be atypical if attention, motivation and behaviour is positively influenced by the technology. This somewhat speculative proposition has not yet been subjected to any scrutiny, since the future use of UniLinks for real-time observation in challenging situations awaits the proving of the more cost-effective portable equipment to be used during the immediately forthcoming further development phase.

Notwithstanding the students’ preference for real-time observation, they also favoured the archiving of the sessions so that a more diverse “bank” of this type of case material would be available to them. The opportunity to take a fresh look via archived sessions at the ways in which teachers deployed their interpersonal skills to keep pupils on task and maintain discipline, and the way in which non-verbal signals are received and transmitted by teachers to aid communication was seen as potentially valuable.

In addition to its use for real-time lesson observation by groups of students it would seem logical in our forthcoming further research to evaluate UniLinks for remote observation by a University tutor of lessons delivered by trainee teachers during their school experience. Nichol and Watson (2000) have described the use of two way videoconferencing for the execution of remote one-to-one tutorials, recording and analysing the video signal from each end according to a protocol for the analysis of non-verbal communication. They concluded that the combination of the two dimensional


image and the framing of the participants’ images by the screen actually enhanced non-verbal communication compared to direct face-to-face tutorials. The conditions for observing a whole class are somewhat different from the observation of the smaller image of a tutor.

Nevertheless, students participating in the UniLinks real-time lesson observation commented positively on the opportunity afforded by the video component of the link to observe non-verbal communication.

A particularly striking feature of both lessons that consistently figured in the post-session group discussions was the variety of tools and techniques deployed. Many were unique to the technology but many others were replications or simple extrapolations of techniques deployed in conventional classrooms. A more in-depth look at what constitutes excellence in IWB pedagogy is the subject of another strand of the author's research (Somekh and Haldane, 2005). However, real-time lesson observation analysed at the time and then revisited via the video archive, can provide an opportunity for a fresh look at the wide repertoire of tools and techniques, plus the high-level interpersonal communication skills that expert teachers can deploy. This, together with an acknowledgement of the skills deployed in the composition of the lesson, the orchestration of the different tools and techniques used to deliver it and the sometimes inspired improvisation stimulated by learners’ responses (or lack of them) was what prompted the use of the phrase “art” of teaching in the title of this paper.

Elliott (1991), in reference to the particular value of action research to the context of education, suggests that good teaching is, to a significant extent, a craft. However, it is not the purpose of this paper to challenge any description of teaching as a craft, nor to address, in any great detail, Kipling’s question, “It’s clever, but is it art?” Suffice to say Elliott suggested that it is the “tacit knowledge” acquired through experiential learning and observation which underpins the high level of interpersonal interaction skills that characterise a gifted teacher.

Exponents of Knowledge Management as a business discipline such as Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) contrast explicit knowledge (that which can be captured, written down, learned and understood in a context other than that of the workplace) with tacit knowledge gained through practice and the regular observation of, and guidance by, an expert. They do not value one more highly than the other, recognising that, in knowledge-intensive professions, the depth of understanding necessary to cope with new situations and circumstances is dependent on the interplay between theory and practice and a sound grounding in both. Others, (e.g. Wiig, 1997), conscious that the boundary between explicit and tacit knowledge may be unclear, introduced a third category: “implicit knowledge”. Implicit knowledge is seen as that element of tacit knowledge which could potentially be made sufficiently explicit to be more readily transmitted to others.


However, if such tacit knowledge is, by definition, transmitted through experiential learning plus observation of and guidance by an expert, then there may be grounds for questioning the extent to which current methods of teacher training provide adequate preparation. Notwithstanding the extent to which training may be school-based, teachers will ultimately be obliged to "fly solo" without the hundreds of hours of supervised practice that, say, a trainee pilot would undertake. There is no equivalent of the flight simulator to assist trainee teachers and once on the flight deck they are on their own without a captain in the next seat, and with no autopilot available.

Elliott (ibid.), when referring to his early work in the field of action research, describes the process of shared reflection among the group of colleagues in the same school, as seeking to achieve a greater correspondence between aspiration and reality in respect of the effectiveness of their teaching and their pupils’ learning. This would appear consistent with trainee teachers’ feedback on the benefit of analysing together their shared experiences of remote lesson observation.

The anthropological studies of Geertz (1983) offer a cautionary note about the possibility of misinterpretation when observers interpret phenomena from the perspective of their own culture and experience. However, in the two experiments outlined above, the students’ group observation of a live lesson at a remote location, together with the dialogue involving the author and the teacher who delivered the lesson, meant that the participants’ different backgrounds and experiences were perceived as enriching to the discussion and helpful in achieving a clearer interpretation of the event.

Students who participated in the UniLinks pilots felt that the experience had helped them to learn more about how to teach via the IWB. This would imply that, at least some of the apparently tacit knowledge of the art (or craft) of teaching might, in fact, be implicit knowledge i.e. potentially capable of more explicit expression when captured via a suitable learning experience. The author would never wish to challenge the value of the direct first-hand acquisition of tacit knowledge through school experience. However, this paper has highlighted Kozma’s (1994) allusions to the power of computers to simulate real-world phenomena and to construct representations of abstract concepts that enable their relationship to real-world phenomena to be understood. If technology continues to create new situated learning experiences, including observation of and dialogue with experts, by means of a telepresence, then we should be able to at least pose the question as to whether there is such a thing as tacit knowledge. It may be that in future what was previously thought of as tacit knowledge will be seen as having been implicit knowledge that was simply waiting for the right medium to capture and transmit it.

The experiences of UniLinks at MMU to date has been sufficiently positive for us to wish to invest the time necessary to build something that can become a permanent feature of our ITT provision, although we would concur with the conclusion of (Phillion et al, 2003) that real-time remote lesson observation is a potentially very valuable augmentation of, rather than a substitute for, first hand experience.


In addition to working together with partner schools in the pursuit of excellence in innovatory learning and teaching there would appear to be an opportunity to use the technology to provide permanent links between electronic classrooms on different university campuses to allow groups at more than one location to be taught simultaneously. It would also seem potentially feasible and desirable to provide access for partner schools via the UniLinks telepresence to:

External experts. Model lessons involving higher levels of preparation than is normally

practicable. Shared learning resources. Laboratory demonstrations etc using resources not normally available in

schools. “Tasters” of higher education, (of special value to those who come from

environments where aspiration for progression to HE is not the norm). Insights into the world of work through dialogue with practitioners and

direct links to workplaces.

If further trials prove to be successful then the digital interactive whiteboard could prove to be not just an artefact that considerably enhances whole class teaching, but, perhaps also a useful alternative medium for synchronous, tutor-facilitated distance learning; and one of real practical value that can enhance the learning experiences offered on campus or in school.

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Documents

The two pilot experiments in the Real-Time Lesson ... · Web viewThe final game was a word search grid where, from within an apparent jumble of letters, each of the target words