4.5 years ago, our 3 years’ worth of design, teaching, and research was crystallised into the Blended Learning for In-service Teachers’ Professional Development: Handbook for New Instructors published by NTU-SCCL Press. while the book is still listed on SCCL’s website, the《混成式在职教师培训——新手指导员手册》 appears to be out-of-print. so sharing here a proof copy (not the final imprint) so that readers who are interested can still access the our experiences and knowledge within (:
记iMTL 进阶课 in-progress
yesterday was the second f2f lesson of our iMTL 进阶课 (wondering why the english course title uses ‘intermediate’?). the first f2f was exactly 1 month ago. in this course, the (old) title (which 露丝 and I din bother to change) included keywords ‘SDL’ and ‘CoL’. so, i had used the first hour of yesterday’s session to conduct a co-generative dialogue on 自主学习 (self-directed learning). and the following is the reification of our discourse:
towards the end of the conversation, i was pleasantly surprised that most, if not all, of the key ideas of SDL were surfaced without me needing to introduce them. sounds like a phenomenographic dialogue (if such thing exists; if not can cite Tan, 2019). realised this when i ran through the deck of slides adapted from a 12470 Clinic conducted some three years ago. was interested to see what the individually meaningful ideas that the teachers (馨云、一凤、伟如、美娴、崇蕾、侯琳、玉侠、春容) had created, i allowed them to complete a 2-qn survey via google form:
and here’s what they wrote:
| q1. 我原来以为 … … | q2. 我现在认识到 … … |
| 让学生自己完成作业就能算是自主学习。 | 自主学习包含了教师充足的设计与准备，让学生能够明白自己需要学什么、提供选择并给予学生自我评估的机会。 |
| 促进小学生完全自主学习是可能的，现在明白这个能力需要时间的发展。 | 在小学阶段培养学生自主学习的能力是十分重要的。 |
| Self directed learning 很容易达成 | 学生需要确定学习目标和监督学习进展等 |
| SDL就是E learning | SDL 可以和很多东西有关。比如：老师的角色是什么、学生的学习效率如何 |
| 学生只要是能独立完成学习任务就是自主学习（如ezhishi） | 自主学习也有分几个等级，可以让学生主动找出自己需要学习什么，并自主地去提问，找答案。 |
| 自主学习是让学生单独、独立地学习 | 在小学阶段，老师还是得先设计出学习活动让学生参与。适当地使用ICT能提高教学效应。 |
| 自主学习是学生有不同学习方式的选择。 | 我们现在正处于学生是被动状态，要想让学生养成自主学习的习惯需要长时间的培养。 |
| 自主学习就是要让学生学习时有自主权，依据学生所需要或缺乏的那一块，提供更多的学习活动，辅助他们，让他们能够成功学习。 | 的确如此。接触了一个新的概念solo taxonomy |
| 自主学习只是做活动 | 对主动学习有更深一层的理解，例如：学习动机、让学生能有想要学习的动机以及引学练用评和自主学习有密切的关系。 |
looks like 满满的学习 to you? and it’s not through transmission (of knowledge).
looking forward to the next session on 14 Sep for more knowledge creation (:
digital photography online course and blended teachers’ PD
was reminded by fb feed of Professor Marc Levoy’s Digital Photography google site, could this be a next step for creating a variant to the online component in our blended learning courses?
first, an instructor (teacher educator) would make his/her contents freely online. teachers would be free (in terms of will) to browse and learn from the contents/videos freely (in terms of time and cost).
second, an instructor would conduct a blended Clinic course(s). teachers who perused the contents, and would like to deepen the learning through face-to-face engagement can sign up for the Clinic. during the f2f-online-f2f-online-f2f… cycle, the google site can become part of the resources upon which the conversations are anchored upon. likewise, in the blended Studio course(s), the google site can serve the same purpose as conversations are steered to incorporate the practice component.
just a 联想 (:
ACLL 2017 paper
the conference proceeding is officially published 2 days ago on the IAFOR repository.
our paper titled: Blended Learning for In-service Teachers’ Professional Development: Lessons from the Experience of a Singaporean Chinese Language Teacher Educator which we wrote about:
(abstract) Traditional face-to-face workshop is a common avenue for the professional development (PD) of in-service teachers. Chinese Language (CL) teachers in Singapore also attend such workshops frequently. Research has however shown that such workshops often failed to establish sustained learning and produce little impact on teachers’ practice, as well as students’ achievement. To address this efficacy issue, a blended learning workshop for CL teachers was designed and conducted. Specifically, this study examined the experience of designing and implementing blended learning as seen through the eyes of a Singaporean teacher educator. This teacher educator had gone from being a participant to becoming an instructor of blended learning workshop. The role switching of the individual in different settings allowed acquisition of deeper insights into blended learning workshop as a PD approach. The considerations of the instructor, and the challenges she faced during design and implementation were described. The significance of this research lies in the lessons from the findings that could be useful for consideration when blended learning teachers’ professional development workshops for better outcomes are to be designed.
the full proceeding PDF can be found here.
the local mirror goes here.
quick post-12470 recap
yesterday was the 3rd and last f2f session for this year’s only run of Clinic 12470. of course, we know one reason behind that is the “17 hours” course time. shorten it to attract pple we gonna try, but 经常吃药的人都知道——苦口良药；if u need to take 2 panadol but took only 1 becos a pill is so hard to swallow, are u going to get well? panadol perhaps, other drugs perhaps not.
anyway, yesterday the following 有缘人 came, 燕玲、常征、兴汉 being course participants; 保勝 who came, chose to audit, but after tea-break came in to join the conversation. and we have 雁妮 and 温韫 auditing the session too. i wonder what are the observers’ thought on the session yesterday. 美琪 was called up to be oral examiner last minute so couldn’t join us; but we have voice-recorded the dialogues for her review (:
comparing the way i go about facilitating the last f2f sessions (this is the 5th time), yesterday’s session was so far the most 淡定。i think i have reached a new level of awareness – 课题在有限的时间是聊不完的。与其求多而点到为止（虽然还是很多点到为止），倒不如更深究一两点（虽然还是有限的深入）。 and so, we basically only focused on the topic of Jigsaw method just before tea at 1550hr. one whole hour deliberating the method and its considerations. how inefficient!!! yes perhaps so, if one were to treat learning in production mode; this type of production line seriously tan-bo-jia (赚没吃)。but there again, education/learning is not a profit/loss business to me. in learning, there’s only gain albeit at slow pace. 只有好和更好 (:
just wanted to take a personal note that it take time to “let go” of the efficiency mode towards teaching — fill up the vessels in participants with as much contents in as little time as possible. the current state of “letting go” took me 2 yrs to reach. 今天讲不完或没聊到，来日方长嘛。迟早会有机会碰到遇到聊起的。
a key enabler of this mindset is perhaps the effect of the course design — the clinic-studio pair. thanks Victor once again for co-creating this design. i have so far treated clinic’s primary purpose as a culture-building-setting-altering time. i take a slow 1.5 mths to get participants to reflect on learning – how they are learning; and how they are getting students to learn. and a safe environment to discuss, think, voice and exchange opinions. a culture of “no right or wrong”. the topic and objectives on paper are always covered during this time, but it’s a secondary concern from my facilitator’s perspective.
the last thing that i want to note down is the Course Feedback form that is in a way not designed with knowledge creation in mind, but more from the perspective of vessel-filling.
for e.g., “I can apply the ideas/knowledge/skills learnt from the course.”
– “CAN APPLY” oversimplifies teaching as a complex entity. this is as if describing downloading an app on an iPad, install, tap and it will execute. are teachers iPads or robots that can be flashed firmware, and begin production straight away? not to mention our course is not designed to “hand out” knowledge (if it can be handed out), nor to prepare knowledge to fill the vessels that come (if knowledge can be poured to fill). it’s about co-creation of knowledge. and we are talking abt 21st century competencies, advancing 21st century teaching and learning. it’s time to revisit the assumption of mass-production mode of learning in this qn.
another e.g., “The presentation was clear.”
– a knowledge creation-backed question should be “the FACILITATION was effective.” Presentation suggests a vessel-filling, sit-copy-receive-and-learn metaphor. it’s again the mass-production assumption of learning behind this qn.
enough said for now. until next time (: