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Charlotta Hilli (PhD)

Åbo Akademi University (Finland)

chilli@abo.fi

@chilliconnect

Teacher collaboration in Virtual Learning Environments

(2015–17)

3 schools, 5 teachers

  • 20 to 40 students (aged 7–16) and 3 to 10 fully employed teachers.
  • European Social Fund (2015–17)
  • Participatory action research
  • 1 project leader, steering group, 1 researcher

The context

  • Small groups of students and few classmates.
  • Few fully employed teachers.
  • Virtual Learning Environments may support school collaboration, teacher collaboration and student collaboration.

Changing teaching practices in three schools involve many different professional sites

Changing practices

Teachers are part of different sites through the professional roles they play; they are leaders in the classroom and colleagues in the faculty room; their work is defined by national curriculum documents and the leadership of the school principal.

Kemmis (2010) What Is Professional Practice? Recognizing and Respecting Diversity in Understandings of Practice.

School collaboration

- issues with the digital infrastructure

- issues with the equipment

- lack of digital competence

- cumbersome Virtual Learning Environment (Fronter)

+ digital presentations

+ collaborative assignments (blog)

+ formative assessment (online document editors)

School collaboration

Teacher collaboration

+ less professional isolation

+ learn from each other

-/+ share information and material in advance

-/+ time to plan lessons and share classes

Teacher collaboration

Student collaboration

+ a bigger classroom & new classmates

- shyness to use camera/chat

+ the teacher present need to encourage and support student participation

- in real time collaboration requires good infrastructure

Student collaboration

We struggle on, we won’t give up, not yet at least. (Hannah)

Changing practice architectures on different levels (Mahon et al., 2017)

What is needed?

  • Classroom level: digital competence, communication in advance, relationships between students&teachers at a distance

  • School level: joint schedules, joint teacher positions, allocated time for distance education, support from the faculty for distance education

  • Regional level: good digital infrastructure, relevant digital platform, joint visions for distance education, school transport

I travel by ferry every day and I arrive only 10 minutes before the lesson starts. It can be stressful, and if I think of the time I have at home, I could be here at 8 o’clock. When I come, I feel like I don’t have enough time to sit down and talk about the coming day. There is always something you need to discuss. We take it as it comes, and not everyone is present either, usually it’s me and Laura who are present. (Rebecca)

Literature

Literature

Hilli, C., Eklund, C. & Törnroos, K. (2017). Mot en flexibel grundskola i skärgårdsmiljö – lärares erfarenheter av undervisning i virtuella lärmiljöer. Forskningsrapport. Ålands Landskapsregering.

Hilli, C. (2018). Distance teaching in small rural primary schools: a participatory action research project. Educational Action Research.

Hilli, C. (2019). Extending classrooms through teacher collaboration in Virtual Learning Environments. Educational Action Research.

Theoretical framework:

Mahon, Fransisco & Kemmis (2017). Exploring Education and Professional Practice Through the Lens of Practice Architectures.

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