A Professional Learning Community Approach for Teacher Development and OER creation - A toolkit/Building Professional Learning Communities

While success of ICT implementation will depend on many inter-related factors (provision of ICT infrastructure, basic infrastructure, teacher preparation and curriculum), perhaps the most important of all is teacher preparation. Without the required teacher preparation, providing infrastructure or specifying ICT integration through the syllabus would not be effective. However, the weakest component of ICT implementation in school education, has been the inadequate and sometimes irrelevant preparation of teachers to understand the use of ICT for their own professional development and for use in teaching.

One problem with past teacher training has been a predominant focus on teaching the use of few popular proprietary software applications. Instead, the program needs to focus on understanding the nature of the ICT (digital literacy1), use of subject teaching related software tools, accessing web resources, encouraging teachers to create digital resources using a wide variety of (free and open source) authoring tools etc.

Secondly, as world becomes more complex, teacher education needs to prepare the teacher and the learner to be capable of adapting to new environments and tackle new challenge. Being able to develop one’s capabilities is much more important than content knowledge, and the focus of ICT integration for TPD should focus on capability development and not merely on sharing or supplying digital content. A universal program of teacher education on these aspects would empower teachers to become comfortable and competent in using ICT for their own development, creation of digital resources and in subject teaching.

It is necessary to envisage this training as a part of the regular in-service teacher education program and not as a stand-alone effort. All state governments prepare their teacher education plans for the next academic year, with budgetary support from the state government along with that of the central government through the SSA and RMSA programs.

Based on the TPCK framework, digital literacy would be subsumed as part of the content (subject) and pedagogy related teacher education planned for the teachers.

The NCFTE says "All programmes must find acceptance of their aims with the teachers’ group concerned, regarding whether they need such a programme and why they are to attend it. The principle of choice of programmes to attend, based on teacher’s own assessment of what he/she needs or is advised based on some valid assessment of professional requirement, would provide a sound basis for in-service programmes, especially those that are of a long duration and which seek to impact practice. One size cannot fit all".

This can only happen if there are spaces available for teachers to voice their needs and aspirations, where they can also discuss with teacher educators, the scope of professional development programs. Such spaces are possible to be created as a part of the virtual networks of teachers. These spaces can also be used by teachers to frankly share their feedback and comments on the programs they have been a part of.

Autonomous spaces

It is important these virtual networks are autonomous. While they may be established as a part of the in-service teacher education programs, it is necessary that they not be considered as dissemination forums by the department officials. The discussions must be initiated primarily by teachers, on issues they consider important for themselves - these could be academic or administrative or even mundane.

Moderation of the forums

While the forums need to be autonomous and not subject to directions of the department, there is also a need for moderation of discussions. Administrators should take on the responsibility of sharing guidelines for discussions (which would be evolved during the teacher education workshops) and facilitating adherence to. Posts which violate these guidelines require to be responded to and the authors alerted to these violations. While the enforcement need not be strict or severe it needs to be sure.

Check- list of guidelines for the virtual forums is available here