Teacher Development with Mobiles – Comparative Critical Factors

This presentation draws on the diverse experiences of teacher educators engaged in integrating the social digital habits of teachers and learners into both formal and informal educational spaces.

Focusing not only on the phenomena of digital tool use but the oft overlooked need for radical pedagogies and the transformation of teachers’ roles and identities, the presentation will draw on recent practice interventions in Palestine, the UK, the US and Kenya in order to draw out key-factors of value to colleagues and policy makers seeking to leverage mobility to improve the quality of education, looking the common and transferable. It will do this by answering four sets of key questions that have impact on the improvement of teacher education quality by leveraging mobility and digital habits and show how these questions are relevant in communities confronting other difficulties, including high unemployment, poverty, unreliable infrastructure, and political instability.  The questions directly address issues that are wider than technology and access and various theoretical standpoints will be used to frame our answers.

The four key sets of questions are:

  1. How can teachers be supported in training through mobility?  What are the challenges?
  2. How can they be made aware of the learning potential of mobility? Do they recognise it? Does it require a reappraisal of the “social status” of the technology to understand and construct its “learning status”?
  3. What pedagogies can they use to incorporate mobile technology into predominantly content-based lessons in formal settings?  What changes are required in learning and in role identity?
  4. How can they take on the agenda for using their learners' digital habits? (predominantly social/ communication/gaming/ consumption) for learning/ work practices.

An additional activity: will use software for sms participation/ freely available on the web.

  1. Participants will be presented with the challenges that the questions frame and be asked to work openly to provide their own solutions to them.  Participants will be asked to also add any other issues.
  2. Presenters will give examples and partial answers to the questions framed through the different case study lenses. Verbal and short written take away sheets with QR code links to videos that address the questions.
  3. Participants will reframe and modify their answers
  4. We will conclude with a recommendations for action statement

Karl Royle

Karl Royle is Principal Lecturer for Curriculum Innovation and Knowledge Transfer at the Centre for Developmental and Applied Research in Education (CeDARE), University of Wolverhampton where he works as a research project director. Karl has considerable experience of project management (Certified Scrum Master) and materials development for both screen and print-based media and has a background in teacher education, professional development and education management. His current interests are around the development of thinking skills in game based learning and the digital skills & habits of learners using ubiquitous technology and its transfer to educational contexts. He is currently working on several trans national projects with Higher Education teacher training establishments in Palestine and as a consultant for UNRWA on the accreditation process for their educational reform programme, an In-Service School Based Teacher development initiative.

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