Comparing K-12 online and blended teaching competencies: a literature review

This article presents a synthesis of reports and research on K-12 blended teaching competencies compared with K-12 online teaching competencies. The skills needed to teach in online and blended environments are distinct from traditional teaching, but teacher education programs often do not equip preservice teachers for the new modes of instruction. Additionally, there is a dearth of research on blended teaching competencies. This review synthesizes 8 blended teaching documents and 10 online teaching documents. Seven global themes identified in both competency domains are (1) pedagogy, (2) management, (3) assessment, (4) technology, (5) instructional design, (6) dispositions, and (7) improvement. The top 20 blended teaching skills include flexibility and personalization, mastery-based learning, data usage and interpretation, learning management system usage, online discussion facilitation, and software management. The authors recommend that researchers collect more methodologically transparent data about blended teaching and that teacher education programs include the identified skills in curriculum.     

Enhancing the facilitation of online groups in higher education: a review of the literature on face-to-face and online group-facilitation

There still appears to be a gap between what online learning promises and what it can deliver in terms of student learning. Developments in online pedagogies and professional learning appear to lag behind the developments in technology and the promised benefits of technological transformation may not be realised. In this paper, we bring together perspectives that highlight vital aspects of online group-learning by reviewing the group-facilitation literature and the latest online learning literature to interrogate the pedagogical theories and practices currently used in online group-learning in higher education. We specifically focus on the interpersonal interactions between teachers and students, which are described in the online learning literature using the terms instructor immediacy, teaching presence, and social presence. We note differences in the literature regarding how teacher presence is interpreted and enacted and we expound the importance of the personal characteristics of the online teacher. Finally, we provide some signposts that might help course designers and teachers to improve online group learning: the intentional use of effective online learning pedagogies; a deeper understanding of what constitutes teacher presence; and strategies to enact that teacher presence with online groups. Recommendations for further research in online group facilitation are provided.     

Transforming online teaching practice: critical analysis of the literature on the roles and competencies of online teachers

Understanding what is lacking in the online teaching literature is critical to helping researchers and practitioners develop programs and support mechanisms for online teachers in higher education. This review formulates a critique of the standards- and competency-driven vision of online teaching from the perspective of transformative learning theory, in order to offer an alternative exploration of the professional development of online teachers as adult learners. The results indicate that while research about online teacher roles and competencies guides the development of teacher preparation and training programs, it lacks in terms of addressing the issues of empowerment of online teachers, promoting critical reflection, and integrating technology into pedagogical inquiry. An alternative perspective is suggested that considers teachers as adult learners who continuously transform their meaning of structures related to online teaching through a continuous process of critical reflection and action.     

Informal online communities and networks as a source of teacher professional development: A review

Informal online communities and networks offer teachers the possibility of voluntarily engaging in shared learning, reflecting about teaching practice and receiving emotional support. Bottom-up online communities and networks are an important source of professional development, although research around these social learning structures mainly consists in describing particular cases using a wide diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches. This review analyses the existing theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches, the main characteristics and practices of online communities and networks, as well as their principal repercussions in teacher professional development. A critical analysis of the emergent themes in the revised articles sheds light on eligible perspectives for further research.     

A systematic review of teacher roles and competences for teaching synchronously online through videoconferencing technology

As a growing number of educational institutions are offering online programs, teachers need to be competent in this new way of teaching. This is especially the case for synchronous online learning through videoconferencing technology, an emergent and so far understudied form of online education. Based on a systematic literature review of 30 studies, this study identifies 24 competence clusters, which can be grouped into 5 teacher roles associated with synchronous online teaching through videoconferencing: the instructional, managerial, technical, communicational, and social role. This framework can act as a starting point for future research on this understudied topic and can also provide directions to support teachers’ professionalization and practice.     

K-12 online lesson alignment to the principles of Universal Design for Learning: the Khan Academy

The field of K-12 education is being transformed, with an influx of students, including those with identified disabilities, engaging in blended and fully online learning. While online learning shows promise for students with disabilities through flexible content and personalised instruction, concerns regarding accessibility and appropriateness of online learning for this population still exist. In order to examine this concern, researchers developed and used a Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Scan Tool to measure lesson content and alignment with UDL principles, guidelines and checkpoints. Four hundred and seventy-eight math, science and world history Khan Academy lessons were randomly selected and evaluated for this study. The paper highlights the results of the study, in terms of the lessons’ alignment with UDL principles and guidelines, as well as a discussion on limitations and future research.     

University teacher roles and competencies in online learning environments: a theoretical analysis of teaching and learning practices

The aim of this article is to clarify the university teacher roles and competencies in online learning environments, with a view to assisting in the design of professional development activities. This referential framework results from an extensive review of the literature and from analysing professional development designed in different European universities. It is worth mentioning that the definitions that will be produced do not refer to standards of teacher performance; on the contrary, we would like to emphasise the notion of socially situated competencies which are derived from the roles and tasks attributed to university teachers in online learning environments, without losing track of the dialectics and integrity of their exercise.     

Developing a teacher identity in the university context: a systematic review of the literature

This literature review summarises the growing body of literature discussing teacher identities of university teachers. The aim was to understand what strengthens or constrains the development of a teacher identity. A qualitative synthesis of 59 studies was carried out. The review showed that several factors contribute to the development of teacher identity. While contact with students and staff development programmes were experienced as strengthening teacher identity, the wider context of higher education was experienced as having a constraining effect. Furthermore, the impact of the direct work environment was experienced as either strengthening or constraining, depending on whether or not teaching is valued in the department. Five psychological processes were found to be involved in the development of a teacher identity: a sense of appreciation, a sense of connectedness, a sense of competence, a sense of commitment, and imagining a future career trajectory. The findings suggest that developing a teacher identity in the higher education context is not a smooth process. In order to empower university teachers, it is important to reward teaching excellence and build community. Staff development activities can play a role in helping teachers to develop strategies for gaining confidence and taking active control of their work situation, both individually and collectively. The authors argue that more attention should be paid to the implicit messages that departments convey to their teaching faculty.     

Learning in context: Technology integration in a teacher preparation program informed by situated learning theory

This investigation explores the effectiveness of a teacher preparation program aligned with situated learning theory on preservice science teachers' use of technology during their student teaching experiences. Participants included 26 preservice science teachers enrolled in a 2‐year Master of Teaching program. A specific program goal was to prepare teachers to use technology to support reform‐based science instruction. To this end, the program integrated technology instruction across five courses and situated this instruction within the context of learning and teaching science. A variety of data sources were used to characterize the participants' intentions and instructional practices, including classroom observations, lesson plans, interviews, and written reflections. Data analysis followed a constant comparative process with the goal of describing if, how, and why the participants integrated technology into their instruction and the extent to which they applied, adapted, and innovated upon what they learned in the science teacher preparation program. Results indicate that all participants used technology throughout their student teaching for reform‐based science instruction. Additionally, they used digital images, videos, animations, and simulations to teach process skills, support inquiry instruction, and to enhance student engagement in ways that represented application, adaptation, and innovation upon what they learned in the science teaching methods program. Participants cited several features of the science teacher preparation program that helped them to effectively integrate technology into their instruction. These included participating in science lessons in which technology was modeled in the context of specific instructional approaches, collaborating with peers, and opportunities for feedback and reflection after teaching lessons. The findings of this study suggest that situated learning theory may provide an effective structure for preparing preservice teachers to integrate technology in ways that support reform‐based instruction. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 50:348–379, 2013     

Adapting to large-scale changes in Advanced Placement Biology,Chemistry, and Physics: the impact of online teacher communities

Over the past decade, the field of teacher professional learning has coalesced around core characteristics of high quality professional development experiences (e.g. Borko, Jacobs, & Koellner, 2010. Contemporary approaches to teacher professional development. In P. L. Peterson, E. Baker, & B. McGaw (Eds.), International encyclopedia of education (Vol. 7, pp. 548–556). Oxford: Elsevier.; Darling-Hammond, Hyler, & Gardner, 2017. Effective teacher professional development. Palo Alto, CA: Learning Policy Institute). Many countries have found these advances of great interest because of a desire to build teacher capacity in science education and across the full curriculum. This paper continues this progress by examining the role and impact of an online professional development community within the top-down, large-scale curriculum and assessment revision of Advanced Placement (AP) Biology, Chemistry, and Physics. This paper is part of a five-year, longitudinal, U.S. National Science Foundation–funded project to study the relative effectiveness of various types of professional development in enabling teachers to adapt to the revised AP course goals and exams. Of the many forms of professional development our research has examined, preliminary analyses indicated that participation in the College Board's online AP Teacher Community (APTC) – where teachers can discuss teaching strategies, share resources, and connect with each other – had positive, direct, and statistically significant association with teacher self-reported shifts in practice and with gains in student AP scores (Fishman et al., 2014). This study explored how usage of the online APTC might be useful to teachers and examined a more robust estimate of these effects. Findings from the experience of AP teachers may be valuable in supporting other large-scale curriculum changes, such as the U.S. Next Generation Science Standards or Common Core Standards, as well as parallel curricular shifts in other countries.     

Learning to teach,learning to act: becoming a critical literacy teacher

Critical literacy requires an exploration of privilege and social justice. This includes an exploration of power and action in one’s “inner” and “outer” lives. This qualitative case study illustrates the ways in which Jonah, a preservice teacher, navigates social practices and actions in his roles as a student, activist, and literacy teacher. Through critical discourse analysis, we conceptualize social action in relation to critical literacy teaching, using a framework of discourses of, discourses as, and discourses in action to construct a nuanced understanding of social action in relation to critical literacy. Given the demands of a standardized curriculum on teachers’ autonomy, this is an important illustration of how social action can be enacted and embodied through the act of teaching.     

Supporting online collaborative design for teacher professional development

ABSTRACT

This article describes a study of online collaborative design in the context of teacher professional development. Twenty-five teachers from different Spanish universities participated in the online course. The aim was to understand how to support teachers in interuniversity teams to collaborate fully online throughout the learning design process of a scenario based on their discipline integrating information and communications technology (ICT), an issue scarcely tackled in the literature. The described interpretive study, using mixed methods, explores the support of online co-design provided by a novel ICT community platform named ILDE (Integrated Learning Design Environment). Lessons drawn from the results can contribute to the improvement of online collaborative design processes in the context of teacher professional development.     

关于加强网上评教结果科学性的几点建议

介绍了学生网上评教与传统纸质问卷调查相比的优点,指出了网上评教存在的问题。最后对完善网上评教体制、建立起科学的网上评教机制提出了几点建议,以此保证网上评教结果的可信性、科学性,同时保护教师改善教学的积极性,最终使网上评教起到提高教学质量的积极作用。     

Student identity construction in online teacher education: a narrative life history approach

This paper explores student identity construction through the narrative life history of one non-traditional student, engaged in teacher education in a non-traditional way – a fully online university degree course. The students within this course are all mature-aged. Most are female, and have already developed personal identities as partners, friends and mothers, as well as professional identities such as teacher aides. Adding the new identity of “student” to these already established roles has an impact on these participants’ actions, beliefs, experiences and hence on their identities. Further, the notion that they are now “pre-service teachers” forces students to consider their professional identity in new and sometimes uncomfortable ways. This paper explores the challenges for one student created by the need to negotiate this complexity. Through this exploration using narrative life history methods, the paper considers the implications of the experience of becoming a student and a teacher.     

A systematic literature review of faculty development for teacher educators

Although ample literature exists regarding the effectiveness of faculty development (FD) activities, there is a gap in the literature synthesizing its outcomes. This review, using a predetermined review protocol, analyzed 22 publications on FD for teacher educators using Kirkpatrick’s training evaluation taxonomy. We found that North American universities provide the most empirical evidence about FD activities, focusing on technology integration in teaching and pedagogical skill improvement. Formal programs, such as serial workshops and developmental relationship, were reported with high frequency, compared to self-directed learning and organizational development activities. Empirical research was heavily based on self-reported, qualitative data and emphasized individual-level outcomes. There is a lack of information regarding the impact of FD activities for teacher educators on subsequent student learning or the downstream effect on school systems. Similarly, institutional involvement in FD remains largely unexplored. We conclude with robust recommendations for research and practice.     

“Too many theories and not enough instruction”: perceptions of preservice teacher preparation for literacy teaching in Australian schools

In this paper, we describe part of an Australian national research project that aimed to find out how well prepared beginning teachers are to teach literacy. A majority of beginning teachers participating in a series of national surveys and focus group meetings were confident about their personal literacy skills, their conceptual understandings of literacy, their understanding of curriculum documents and assessment strategies and their broad preparation to teach. Fewer beginning teachers were confident about their capacity to teach specific aspects of literacy such as viewing, spelling, grammar and phonics, or about their capacity to meet the challenges of student diversity. Senior staff working with beginning teachers were generally sceptical about the quality of teacher preparation for teaching literacy and were less confident than the beginning teachers about personal literacy skills. We discuss these findings in relation to the relative importance placed on particular substantive and structural issues by the study participants and in terms of previous findings.     

Conceptions of,and approaches to,teaching online: a study of lecturers teaching postgraduate distance courses

This paper presents the outcomes of a study into online teaching. It builds upon previous research and conceptual frameworks produced by Kember and Kwan (Instr Sci 28(5):469–490, 2000) and Roberts (Instr Sci 31(1–2):127–150, 2003). It advances research on conceptions of, and approaches to, teaching by examining teaching in a novel context: distance-taught courses at the postgraduate level. Lecturers were interviewed from a Faculty of Health Sciences in a research-intensive Australian University. Relationships between conceptions and approaches found in previous research were confirmed in this study. However, it was found that the conceptions of online teaching proposed by Roberts (Instr Sci 31(1–2):127–150, 2003) did not adequately distinguish between the conceptions held by the lecturers interviewed in this study. Three modified conceptions of online teaching are proposed: ‘for individual access to learning materials and information; and for individual assessment’; ‘for learning related communication (asynchronous and/or synchronous)’; and ‘as a medium for networked learning’. Some of the dimensions developed by Roberts to describe approaches to online teaching were not applicable in this study setting and needed further modification. Two broad approaches emerged: ‘informative/individual learning focused’ and ‘communicative/networked learning focused’. Contextual influences on teaching reported by Kember and Kwan (Instr Sci 28(5):469–490, 2000)—that is, institutional influence, nature of students and subject and curriculum—were revealed in this study to have different levels of influence over approaches to online teaching: the first two being the more relevant ones.     

Understanding the use of online role-play for collaborative argument through teacher experiencing: a case study

As computers and the Internet are increasingly employed in language teaching and learning, preparing teachers for the impending reality of online teaching is of paramount importance. This study investigated 10 in-service teachers participating in an online role-play as part of a digital education methods course to acquire an understanding of the use of online role-play for collaborative argument. The role-play lasted for 3 weeks and underwent three stages: preparation, implementation and reflection. Analyses of data gathered from the questionnaire survey, the class website for role-play, the blogs and the interviews indicate that online role-play was an appropriate way for teaching collaborative argument given that the topics were well-chosen and well-prepared, and that asynchronous role-play was more helpful than the synchronous role-play given the challenge of tracking the development of ideas. Benefits and problems of online role-play through synchronous chat were analysed and solutions were discussed. The research provides a new perspective on how teachers can be educated to integrate technology into their language instruction through their own experience of learning.