Best Practices in Education

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Introduction
This paper explores development of a 'best practices' framework by 1) defining “new practices in IT-assisted education”, 2) reviewing best practices assessment and 3) “exploring how school leadership can adopt new practices in technology for the transformation process”. The 10 best schools in the world are now and will probably continue to be very diverse in their educational goals and approaches. What are your educational goals . . . to produce the students with the most information about a subject or range of subjects on demand? To produce the students that can resolve any problem that you assign? Or do you have some other educational goal? The point is that we are all very diverse in our goals. These diverse objectives will require different pedagogies, and they in turn will lead to different ‘best practices’. Ultimately however, an evaluation of a good school’s ‘best practices’ will support its educational goals. To what extent are we willing to go in the transformation process in order to attain the global best? Certainly, we are talking about adding IT to our programs. Are we willing to change our whole pedagogy to transform our school? Maybe it will be necessary to redesign the entire institution to reach our goals!

What is New Practices in IT-assisted Education?
First, it’s important to attempt definition of the terms. While an exhaustive survey of the literature would have been best, time permitted only a sampling of mostly Internet data.

Education
Here is the broadest definition of education that was to be found 1. It was quoted on a US Department of education site. The original text seems to be out of print. This definition is quite broad and seems to cover all of the eventualities. • ‘Developing human potential’ puts the broadest possible perspective on education. • Education has long since gone beyond its ‘formal’ boundaries of school and now can take place, even informally. • ‘Developmental process’ connotes an active, living and changing beast • Learning is at the core. The problem comes with the second word. What’s a process? Teaching and learning live within a context. Is it ‘traditional’ and closed, teacher-directed with associated teacher control of IT? On the other side of the pendulum, is it ‘constructivist’ and open, studentdirected with free student use of IT? Or is it ‘mediated’ and with limited openness, shared teacher/student directions within the constraints of today’s university requirements?

1

Any process, formal or informal, that helps develop the potentialities of human beings, including their knowledge, capabilities, behavior patterns, and values. . 2. The developmental process provided by a school or other institution that is organized chiefly for instruction and learning. 3. The total development acquired by an individual through instruction and learning. 4. In business or official connections, the institutional instruction that the individual has had. 5. The area of study concerned with teaching and learning, including professional teacher education. (from A Concise Dictionary of Education, p.72)

IT Assisted
There are three standards bearers (more about the relationship between standards and practices later) for information technology-assisted learning. They include the Association for Educational Communication & Technology (AECT), the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and the International Technology Education Association (ITEA). Here are their takes on what constitutes IT-Assisted learning. • The Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) is a professional association of thousands of educators and others whose activities are directed towards improving instruction through technology. Technology is interpreted as process, not merely in terms of hardware (such as computers or television or projectors), but in terms of learners and their relationship to the people, events, places, and things through which they learn. (from http://www.aect.org/About/History.html) In the NETS for Students Standard, ISTE defines curriculum integration as follows: Curriculum integration with the use of technology involves the infusion of technology as a tool to enhance the learning in a content area or multidisciplinary setting. Technology enables students to learn in ways not previously possible. Effective integration of technology is achieved when students are able to select technology tools to help them obtain information in a timely manner, analyze and synthesize the information, and present it professionally. The technology should become an integral part of how the classroom functions — as accessible as all other classroom tools. (from http://cnets.iste.org/students/s_currinteg.html) ITEA is a professional association for teachers who teach a curriculum called "technology education" which is problem-based learning utilizing math, science and technology principles. Technological Studies Involve: o Designing, developing, and utilizing technological systems o Open-ended, problem-based design activities o Cognitive, manipulative, and affective learning strategies o Applying technological knowledge and processes to real world experiences using up-to-date resources o Working individually as well as in a team to solve problems (from http://www.iteawww.org/A1.html)





While ITEA is approaching it from a slightly different direction than most of us would take, they had and continue to have a valid message. Both AECT and ISTE hit the center of the target. In particular, ISTE, in conjunction with a host of partners (see NETS Project Consortium at http://cnets.iste.org/consortium.html) has developed the National Educational Technology Standards that over 90% of US states have adopted, adapted, or referenced. In review, Information technology assisted education • Starts with any technology, including chalkboards, audio-visual equipment, computers, communications equipment [NOTE: Computers and communications are rapidly incorporating and surpassing the functionality of previous ‘technologies’, thereby obviating the need for them.] • Includes the total package of hardware, software and processes

• •

Emphasizes the proper understanding of IT as a tool (or means) to another end, that of education. While acknowledging the complexity and accompanying necessity for TRAINING in how to use IT as a tool.

Of course there are as many ways to use ‘technology’ in teaching as we have ideas. The question is, ‘Does the introduction of technology increment the educational process or does it change the pedagogy?’ Most of the standards above focus on IT as an assistant to presentation and assimilation of materials. There are additional hypotheses that say the introduction of IT into the curriculum changes not only how we teach but what we teach.

New Practices
‘Practices’, has had various adjectives attached to it, including ‘best’, ‘new’, ‘effective’, or ‘wise’. These phrases are difficult to define, because ‘everybody’ seems to know what they mean and ‘nobody’ seems to be defining precisely what they mean. Long searches failed to turn up any rigorous academic definitions. In the end, the best available descriptions came from two different schools/districts: • Mt. Juliet High School, Mt. Juliet, Tennessee defined ‘best practice’ as “Innovative project-based learning activities which utilize any form of technology, are easily replicated by other educators, produce the desired educational outcomes, and are effective toward meeting standards of the curriculum.” (from http://www.wcschools.com/mjhs/tlcf/bestpractices/selection_process.htm) • Pekin Public Schools 108, a K-8 district located in Pekin, Illinois, defined "best practices" as meaning "state of the art," as in, "the best anyone is doing anywhere right now." The term doesn’t mean that the ideas are perfect for every situation or classroom, nor does it mean that all other ideas are bad. In District 108, the subject area Best Practices lists include only those instructional strategies proven by research and experience to be most effective in helping students learn knowledge and skills they will need as adults. Although there are commonalities, each subject has its own peculiar facts, skills and processes. For this reason, District 108 provides separate Best Practices lists for each subject (reading, writing, mathematics, etc.). (from http://www.pekin.net/pekin108/curr/instructional_best_practices/faq/) These rather informal (and sometimes circular) definitions of ‘best practices’ define them as • The ‘best anyone is doing anywhere right now’ • Include ‘strategies proven by research and experience’ • Innovate with technology use in project based learning • Are easily replicated • And produce the desired learning outcomes

A Better Way of Defining ‘Best Practices’
So the first level of definition doesn’t really enlighten that much. When it comes to ‘best practices’, we’ll need to consider other factors. To start with, we need to examine our assumptions. The same ‘practice’ may have ‘best’ associated with it for one set of educational goals and be ‘worst’ for another set of educational goals. What are our goals or desired learning outcomes? What pedagogies best

help to achieve these? What ‘best practices’ are associated with these pedagogies? How do we define a ‘best practice’? What are its components? Then we come to the heart of the matter, collecting and documenting ‘best practices’. If we develop or adopt a standard format with which we can categorize specific types of practices in a similar manner and store them in a searchable medium (possibly a database or XML format), we will be able to search and compare various practices. Finally, we need to define how to assess best practices. Although I said finally, perhaps it would be wise to approach this definition first. At the least, all three steps need to be considered together or reiteratively rather than as discrete autonomous steps and always within the context of desired learning outcomes.

Assessing Best Practices
While assessment of best practices has progressed beyond the stage of being ‘magic’, it is still more of an art than a science. A key question is to what extent are we willing to go in this assessment. Are we willing to put our whole school on the anvil of ‘best practices’? Do we think that it is enough to make some curricular changes? Or are we just interested in perpetrating our current pedagogies with the potentially disastrous addition of technology? Here are some tools, guidelines and strategies for assessing best practices.

School and District Level Tools
• The Milken Exchange on Educational Technology has produced a policymaker’s guide to whole school assessment of technology education, “American Schools: Seven Dimensions for Gauging Progress”. The framework is comprised of 7 interdependent dimensions: Learners, Learning Environments, Professional Competency, System Capacity, Community Connections, Technology Capacity and Accountability. (from http://www.mff.org/pubs/ME158.pdf) Their contributions are o That technology can not be considered in a bubble. Everything that we want to assess is interrelated. o Competency, Capacity and Environments are equally important assessment criteria with Accountability holding them together. The USA-based National Center for Educational Statistics produced a guideline called “Technology in Schools. Suggestions, Tools and Guidelines for Assessing Technology in Elementary and Secondary Education”. It describes how to measure technology use by examining planning and policies; finance; equipment and infrastructure; technology applications; maintenance and support; professional development; and technology integration. (from http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2003/tech_schools/) This workbook provides a comprehensive set of key questions, indicators and data elements, from which schools and districts can select appropriate criteria from which to evaluate their technology programs. They include o Over three dozen key questions to ask about technology deployment o Hundreds of indicators and data elements o Complete range of involved issues including Policy, Finance, Hardware, Professional Development, Curricular Integration, etc. [NOTE: It would be inadvisable to follow the site’s directions and select a few ‘best practices’ from this smorgasbord of choices and claim to be a ‘best practices’ school.



You’ll have to do the hard work of determining your educational goals and supporting pedagogies first.]

Curriculum, Program and Lesson Assessment
• Although not directed specifically to the technology component of their program Meredith College, the largest women’s college in the southeastern United States, has published program assessment guidelines that begins with student assessments, includes both internal and external data and is used as a basis for making changes in the program. (from http://www.meredith.edu/education/instreport.pdf) They focus on o Both internal and external sources o Integration of student (in this case teacher candidates) assessments into program assessment The Teaching, Learning and Technology (TLT) Group has produced an innovative program, the Flashlight Program (from http://www.tltgroup.org/programs/flashlight.html) and offers consulting on specific program assessment projects. Some of their key components include o Focus on a single question o Focus on activities, not just the technology and the learning outcomes but how the technology was used to obtain the outcome An interesting study assessing best practices in e-learning programs from Portugal’s SPI produced a well thought and rigorous example of best practices assessment.(from “INNOELEARNING – Fostering Innovative Self-Learning for Work in the EU Through Dissemination of Innovative Structures and Applications Identified in the USA and Europe, Project IST – 2001 – 32633, SPI – Sociedade Portuguesa de Inovação, March 2003. (from http://www.spi.pt/innoelearning/results/best_practices_in_elearning_study.pdf) This sample of best practices assessment used a comprehensive industry study to develop criteria for the assessment.





When assessing technology and best practices, we need to be careful about what we are measuring and how. The implication of “Issues and Needs in Evaluating the Educational Impact of the National Information Infrastructure”, Robert Kozma and Edys Quellmalz, Center for Technology in Learning, SRI International (from http://www.ed.gov/Technology/Futures/kozma.html) is that we would be better off by combining our efforts, developing common project assessment frameworks and doing ‘clustered evaluation’ for projects with similar goals. However this evaluation should be carefully constructed to only include programs/projects with ‘like’ goals and assumptions.

Standards vs. Practices
What are standards and how do they relate to practices? Standards have played important roles in both Information Technology and Education. In its simplest form, a standard is a ‘measure’ or ‘ruler’ against which we can compare like quantities and qualities. ‘Indicators’ are values or characteristics that are defined by the standard. We measure compliance with a standard by looking at how these quantities and/or qualities compare with the standard’s indicators. Assuming a well-defined standard and indicators, a greater degree of conformity with the indicators means a greater degree of compliance with the standard.

Practices define how we govern the school, teach classes and/or lessons, connect computer labs, etc. Practices are comparable to indicators; so there is a direct tie between practices and standards. In a ‘standards-compliant’ organization the following apply: • Standards drive the development and implementation of practices • Practices demonstrate, through their positive comparison with indicators, compliance with the standards. Therefore, in order to talk about ‘best practices’ we need to define ‘best standards’. In Educational Technology at least three different varieties of standards are applicable. • School-wide or accreditation-related standards define organizational structure, governance, etc. • Curricular standards distinguish pedagogy, content and desired learning outcomes. • There are many technology standards; however most of them are not directly applicable. (Presumably they were applied prior to the purchase and implementation, or you’ll have a problem even operating the computers.) We’re more interested in a type of technology standards that are applicable to software. The Middle States Association, an accreditation agency for schools in the USA and throughout the world says about accreditation standards that, “Most importantly, they serve as a school improvement mechanism. Since they are based on research and reflect best practices as determined by Middle States schools, they serve as a qualitative guide of what should be in place in an accredited school.” MSA standards include the following areas: • Philosophy, Mission, Beliefs, and Objectives • Governance and Leadership • Organizational Design and Staff • Educational Programs • Learning Media Services and Technology • Student Services • Student Life and Activities • Facilities • Health and Safety • Finances • Assessment of Student Learning • Planning

(from http://www.saintmore.org/middlestates.html) Curricular standards address content and performance. According to the US Department of education, they fall into two categories: Academic content standards describe what every student should know and be able to do in the core academic content areas (e.g., mathematics, science, geography). Content standards should apply equally to students of all races and ethnicities, from all linguistic and cultural backgrounds, both with and without special learning needs. Performance standards answer the question, "How good is good enough?" They define how students demonstrate their proficiency in the skills and knowledge framed by states' content standards. (from http://www.ed.gov/pubs/IASA/newsletters/standards/pt1.html) Technology standards ensure inter-system compatibility. A recent report by the MASIE Center provides an excellent distillation of the value of standards. "Standards help to ensure the five "abilities" mentioned below and to protect and even nurture e-Learning investments": • Interoperability - can the system work with any other system? • Re-usability - can courseware (Learning Objects or “chunks”) be re-used? • Manageability - can a system track the appropriate information about the learner and the content? • Accessibility - can a learner access the appropriate content at the appropriate time? • Durability - will the technology evolve with the standards to avoid obsolescence?

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