Engaging Teachers in Building Curriculum Webs:
A Promising Strategy for Re-Energizing Professionals
By Craig A. Cunningham
Research Associate for Technology and Teacher Education
Center for School Improvement
University of Chicago
Agenda
This presentation (with a bibliography) is available
online at http://craigcunningham.com/talks/site2002.
Context
The Chicago Public Schools/University of Chicago Internet Project (CUIP)
- Funded by the Chicago Public Schools
- Includes 29 schools on the south side of Chicago (in neighborhoods close
to the University of Chicago)
- Provides support to schools in
- system management
- technical support
- teacher professional development
- curriculum integration
- Able to accomplish things that CPS (with 600 schools) is not able to do
- Secured internet connectivity in CUIP classrooms more than two years before
the rest of CPS
- http://cuip.uchicago.edu
- As CUIP's Director of Curriculum from 1999 through 2001, I was responsible
for teacher professional development and curriculum integration
- Challenge: how to help the teachers to USE the connectivity CUIP secured
for them?
Metaphors
Traditional view of teachers' role relative to the curriculum:
Teacher as "conduit"
- Pervasive notion that the teachers' primary role is to "deliver"
a curriculum to students
- Leads to idea that the best curriculum is the one that is "implemented"
faithfully (teacher-proof curriculum)
- Promulgated by view that subject-matter or discipline experts are the only
ones who can produce effective curriculum
- Based on a view of the appropriate subject-matter of schools as defined
by "expert knowledge," or the "essential ideas of a discipline"
that might be corrupted if altered by the teachers' limited knowledge and
experience
- Based on teachers' historical disempowerment and lack of advanced education
in subject matter
- The most powerful embodiment of this metaphor is textbooks
- The metaphor leads to seeing the Web as:
- A medium for delivery of curriculum from experts into classrooms
- A "library" to be used as a resource to complete curriculum
assignments
- A feared WWW, or "Wild Wild Web" that must be carefully filtered
and kept OUT of schools and classrooms, lest we get:
which might lead to:
Leaky pipes
- (For more on the "conduit" metaphor see Reddy 1979 and Clandinin
and Connelly 1992)
A contrast to the "conduit" metaphor is the image of teachers as
"curriculum makers"
- Need to account for
- the situatedness of teaching and learning
- the dialectical relationship of curriculum and instruction
- the role of "community" and "participation" in growth
and human development
- the "messy" structure of knowledge in the real world
- the ways that subject matter is "constructed" by the learner
(and by the teacher)
Alternative metaphor:
Teachers a web makers
- Building a web site for learning is itself a process of learning in which
meaning is created.
- Meaning consists of associative relations among concepts or experiences.
As people learn, these relations, or meanings, intertwine in complex webs
that are built in the medium of ongoing experience.
- Designing a web site is like creating a mental web of meaning in
a set of experiences.
- This idea finds its embodiment in the idea of a curriculum web
- A "curriculum web" is a set of interlinked web pages designed
to support a plan for a sustained process of teaching and learning
(curriculum as defined by David Pratt).
- For more on "curriculum webs" see Curriculum Webs: A Practical
Guide to Weaving the Web into Teaching and Learning, by Craig A. Cunningham
and Marty Billingsley, to be published in May by Allyn and Bacon. (http://curriculumwebs.com)
- In order to design the site, the teacher who creates a meaningful curriculum
web becomes at the same time a more knowledgeable and effective teacher, with
a more sophisticated mental map of the subject. (See Jonassen 2000.)
- This notion is supported by the International Society for Technology in
Education's National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS-T).
Among the important things that teachers must learn is to:
- "engage in planning of lesson sequences that effectively integrate
technology resources and are consistent with current best practices,"
and
- "plan and implement technology learning activities that promote
student engagement in analysis, synthesis, interpretation, and creation
of original products."
One more metaphor:
The ladder of professional development
The best way to support the teacher in her new role as web maker is to offer
a "ladder" of professional development opportunities ranging from
- technological proficiencies
- web browsing
- searching
- evaluation of web materials
- web page and web site making
to
- technology integration
- creation of lessons using the Web
- leading to more sophisticated projects such as WebQuests
- to the development a complete curriculum web
- together with support for the integration itself
Processes and Products
To meet the challenge, CUIP developed a range of processes and products
The Web Institute for Teachers (WIT)
- Eighty-hour summer seminar hosted by the Graham School of General Studies
- Founded in 1997 as "World Wide Web for Teachers: Tools and Techniques"
- Expanded in 1999 to include multiple "homerooms", each taught
by team of two experienced teacher-mentors
- Original goal: for each participant to build a complete "curriculum
web" to support a unit of instruction
- Modified in 2000 to include a strand called "Basic" which focused
on web searching, evaluating, and simple web-page editing
- "Advanced" still aims to develop curriculum webs
- More than 300 teachers trained so far
- For 2002, strands renamed "Using the Web in the Classroom" and
"Creating a Curriculum Web"
- http://webinstituteforteachers.org
- Sample products:
Chicago WebDocent
- Founded in 2000 as collaboration between CUIP, CPS, and a number of Chicago-area
cultural institutions (Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago Historical
Society, Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago, Field Museum
of Natural History, Newberry Library, Adler Planetarium)
- Involves teachers in development of curriculum modules utilizing the images
and other resources of the cultural institutions
- Teachers write "narratives" or "tours" in the person
of young historically-situated "tour guides" or WebDocents
- Tours professionally "webbified" including interactive Flash elements
- http://chicagowebdocent.org
- (To see modules, you'll need a username and password; use "guest"
and "arsenic")
Classroom Technology Teaching Assistant Program (CTTAP)
- Funded by Illinois Higher Education Cooperation Act 2000 and 2001
- U of C students paired with teachers for 10 to 20 weeks to help them develop
projects integrating the Web into teaching and Learning
- Weekly meetings of students to share ideas and resources
- Availability of curriculum and technical support
- Funds for small needs (printers, cables, microphones, etc.)
- No longer funded (merged into University's larger Neighborhood Schools Program
funded by work study)
New project: Teacher professional development networks
A teacher network is defined as a group of teachers from different schools
who cooperate for a longer period of time on the implementation process of a
certain innovation in education." (Moonen and Vogt 2000) Five key components
identified by Moonen and Vogt (2000):
1. a strong sense of commitment to the innovation
2. a sense of shared purpose
3. a mixture of information sharing and psychological support
4. an effective facilitator
5. voluntary participation and equal treatment
Additional recommendations summarized by Moonen and Vogt (2000):
- 10 to 15 teachers, two from each school, four to seven schools
- teachers should be teaching same subject
- start with "hot item" or relatively narrow topic that is important
to participants
each participant should BRING something to each session and not just receive
information
- teachers need to learn they can learn from each other
- open environment in which participants are willing to take risks
- accept differences among participants in terms of experience, knowledge,
and learning methods and make those productive
- develop in-service training activities based on questions that arise
- participants should have input into topics, working methods, locations,
time, and frequency of meetings