Moving towards Equity in Large Scale ICT -mediated Teacher Professional Development (TPD)

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

As teachers and schools emerge from the disruption of the pandemic and adjust to new ways of working, bringing quality teaching to scale is critically important in all public education systems. Teacher professional development (TPD) is a strong component in this sustainable transformation of teaching and learning to meet the targets of Sustainable Development Goal 4.
The pandemic brought a surge of interest in, and activity related to, the use of digital technologies to support TPD at multiple levels of education systems and in many different ways (UNESCO, 2021). Teachers’ professional use of communication tools through their own mobile phones accelerated and governments across the world together with their partners, are investing heavily in the development of comprehensive online platforms to provide, monitor and record TPD. These developments have opened doors to conversations on large scale ICT -mediated TPD: ICTs offer tremendous potential to transform pedagogies within TPD as well as expand access to professional development opportunities. They can enable the provision of TPD across large geographic areas without a diminution of quality, facilitate easy modification of learning materials for different professional needs and local priorities, and support rapid improvement in program design and implementation. Through the use of digital technologies professional learning experiences can become deeply personalized and teacher-owned.
But what works with ICTs in one context may not work in another (Passey, 2014) and this is critical to working at scale with ICTs in TPD if we are to ensure that the TPD is equitable. How the digital technology is used and the possibilities for action that this creates will lead to different effects in different contexts (Wegerif, 2007). Virtual spaces always interact with the physical space, thus activities in the virtual space depend crucially on the resources available, social and cultural norm and conditions in the physical space (Glassman & Burbidge, 2014): infrastructure issues of power and connectivity; social practices; as well teachers’ own digital competencies and prior orientations towards ICTs and beliefs about their own capability with ICTs.
TPD@Scale is a collaborative endeavour researching how ICTs can be utilised to strengthen teacher professional development systems in three GPE member countries: Ghana, Honduras, and Uzbekistan. The project brings together national and local stakeholders with the aim of improving teachers’ classroom practices through undertaking implementation research on the scaling of high-quality, equitable, and efficient professional learning experiences or programmes, for large numbers of teachers with diverse professional learning needs.

There are three core principles for TPD@Scale:

• Equity: fair access to learning for teachers that helps them respond to the learning needs of all their students so that student participation, learning and achievement will increase.
• Quality: movement in teachers’ practice that will enable greater student learning.
• Efficiency: the use of resources to ensure that desired outcomes are achieved in an equitable way.
These three principles exist in a dynamic tension unique to each context and its current priorities. Use of the TPD@Scale approach involves a paradigm shift in how TPD is usually conceptualised, implemented, and made available to teachers. It is a way of thinking about TPD design utilizing new techniques (ICT mediated learning approaches) which is centred on meeting teachers’ professional learning needs. Local adaptation or modification is critical to take account of diversity; this modification can take multiple forms - choice of ICTs, timing of the TPD, different forms of support, engagement with peers in different modalities and so on, and can be centrally or locally initiated.
In each country (Ghana, Honduras and Uzbekistan) consortium members have worked closely with national stakeholders including teacher representatives in this three phase implementation research focused on scaling (Coburn, 2003). The first phase involved a detailed study of the TPD ecoystem including a review of existing in-service teacher education, future priorities for TPD and the conceptual tools and material resources available to teachers.
This was followed by design of ICT-mediated TPD models for each country context, drawing on the findings of the initial study and proven TPD@Scale models from other contexts. Finally these models have been field tested across multiple sites in each country using an improvement science approach – this allows local adaptations within the model to respond to diverse professional needs and environmental and cultural contexts within complex education systems. Data generation in the field testing involved a mixture of quantitative and qualitative approaches to combine data from large numbers of teacher participants with in-depth understandings of the experiences of teachers with diverse characteristics and skills, including teachers working in marginalized or remote communities, those with low access to connectivity and those with few prior digital experiences. Qualitative approaches (focus groups, interviews, ethnographic type observations) were also used to explore the experiences and modifications made by other actors involved in the TPD – facilitators, master trainers, mentors, district officials and school leaders.
Equity related high level findings from the research to date include the value of involving experts located at different structural positions within the system to open up possibilities for more local ownership of adaptations based on in-depth professional and personal knowledge; the importance of sharing initial field test data with key stakeholders to challenge common assumptions, for example that urban areas always have better connectivity or that older teachers are less digitally competent; the forms of social learning that are appreciated by different groups of teachers and the need for language diversity in TPD.
We will start the session with a brief introduction to how equity is being conceptualized in the TPD@Scale research. Following this introduction consortium members from each of the project countries will share learning from both the process of adaptation and their field test research, foregrounding the tensions between equity, quality and efficiency in adapting and improving ICT -mediated TPD at scale.

Sub Unit

• Teacher Education and the Teaching Profession SIG

Chair

• Freda Wolfenden, The Open University, UK

Individual Presentations

• Conceptualising equity in TPD@Scale - Freda Wolfenden, The Open University, UK

• Equity in TPD systems in Uzbekistan: emerging findings and subsequent adaptations - Ernesto Roque-Gutierrez

• Hybrid models for large scale equitable TPD: what are we learning from Ghana? - Jonathan Fletcher, University of Ghana Legon, Accra

• Challenges and possibilities to deliver quality and equitable ICT-mediated TPD programs in Honduras: Learnings from a GPE-KIX Initiative - Dante Castillo-Canales, SUMMA - Universidad Diego Portales - Universidad Alberto Hurtado