Blog

High Possibility Classrooms: a new model for technology integration in schools

This post is dedicated to my parents, Patrice and Noel, and to Anna who all had great passion for education and sadly passed away in 2014*.

Front Page Book Cover Teaching Resources
Figure1

On the 5 March Sir Ken Robinson gave the first annual Anna Craft memorial lecture: Educating for creativity: From what is to what might  be at Exeter University in the UK. It will be available on YouTube at a later date. Professor Craft passed away last year after a very brief  battle with an aggressive cancer. She was 53. She and Sir Ken worked closely together for many years prior to his departure to the US and it  is her seminal work in ‘possibility thinking and creativity’ (Craft, 2002; 2005; 2006; 2011a; 2011b; 2012) that leaves a significant  intellectual legacy for education in schools. Groundbreaking studies – years ahead of their time.

Craft’s writing and scholarship formed the epiphany moment in my doctoral studies – that instant when all that I had read, the data from research, the years of teaching and thinking about the role of technology in learning in schools … it suddenly all made sense. Light bulb! Light bulb! Light bulb! I emailed Professor Craft at the time and she emailed me back – we planned to work together this year.

Teachers who forge ahead and integrate technology in the most highly creative, intellectual and imaginative ways view childhood and youth as empowered, not at risk, in digital landscapes. The notion of LifeWork became important in my research and “how creativity in children and young people must engage with the needs and rights of the inward, in the home and the personal, and with theoutward, in work and in public life” (Craft, 2005, p.150). Craft (2005)provided an important and provocative lens quite early on, that on the one hand questioned the promotion of children’s creativity in schools, and yet on the other, there was a “parallel drive towards technicisation and bureaucratisation, which, had the effect of reducing creativity in the teaching profession” (p.10). Creativity and the role of the Arts in education is also a major pre-occupation in Robinson’s intellectual work; both scholars write, argue, research and promote ideas of possibility in teaching and learning in schools.

The name High Possibility Classrooms or HPC for a fresh model for contemporary teaching practice seemed a logical step towards the end of my research of four exemplary teachers’ knowledge of technology integration in the classrooms of 6-16 year olds in NSW public schools. The doctoral study is now the subject of a new book Technology Integration and High Possibility Classrooms: Building from TPACK; it was published by Routledge on March 9, 2015. See here to order a copy.

The warrant for the book stems from a need for robust theory drawn from research to underpin technology integration in learning in education contexts – Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge or TPACK (Mishra & Koehler, 2006) is a well known theoretical framework, heavily researched and is highly respected in schools and in higher education – the HPC model for technology integration builds on the important work of TPACK. HPC has five conceptions – see Figure 2 and 22 themes of students learning processes and teaching strategies – see Figure 3.

Header-Image
Figure 2

Professor Punya Mishra has written the foreword in the book. He refers to the core of TPACK as directly relating to teacher creativity: “the framework acknowledges that teaching (particularly in novel, and technology-rich contexts) is complex, and requires both problem seeking and problem solving. The flexibility and range of knowledge that are necessary to integrate technology thoughtfully makes technology-savvy teaching an inherently creative act” (Hunter, 2015, p. xi).

Briefly, the first chapter in Technology Integration and High Possibility Classrooms: Building from TPACK examines global policy and education trends in technology integration in Australia, the USA and the UK. There is a critique of East Asian models of schooling and a picture of technology integration in schools in Singapore and South Korea is illustrated. Chapter 2 discusses other models for technology integration principally TPACK and there is a brief reference to SAMR (Puentedura, 2006). The view of HPC as action knowledge is proposed towards the end of this chapter.

The following four chapters (3-6) are the case studies from the research and readers come to understand the worlds of Gabby, Gina, Nina and Kitty: early years, primary or elementary, middle and high school classrooms. In January Education HQ commissioned a series of articles about the teachers in the HPC study and if you click on each of the links above you will see a quick offering from the classrooms to acquaint yourself with the kind of practices that I argue will shift teaching and learning in our schools.

Optimized-Latest HPC
Figure 3

Each chapter in the book has an end section for professional conversation using a series of discussion pointers to guide professional learning in technology integration in teacher education whether that might be in-service or pre-service teachers. I trust it will be useful. The case studies in the book are timely and add to what we know about technology integration from exemplary teachers’ perspectives – see Figure 1. They are inspirational examples for all teachers, they are being mapped to the AITSL standards and more research to validate the HPC model in mainstream classrooms is currently being conducted in primary and high schools.

I will use Technology Integration and High Possibility Classrooms: Building from TPACK in my own teaching – in teacher education we have the dual imperative to know how to use technology/learning management systems/blended learning approaches and so on; however we also have to model the rich pedagogical practices that we want our future teachers to action in classrooms.

I look forward to continuing the conversation.

References

Craft, A. (2000). Creativity across the primary curriculum: Framing and developing practice. London: Routledge.

Craft, A. (2002). Creativity in the early years: A lifewide foundation. London: Routledge.

Craft, A. (2005). Creativity in schools: Tensions and dilemmas. Abingdon: Routledge.

Craft, A. (2006). Creativity and wisdom? Cambridge Journal of Education,36(3), 336-350.

Craft, A. (2011a). Approaches to creativity in education in the United Kingdom. In J. Sefton-Green, P. Thomson, K. Jones, & L. Bresler, (Eds), The Routledge international handbook of creative learning. Abingdon: Routledge.

Craft, A. (2011b). Creativity and education futures: Learning in a digital age. Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books.

Craft, A. (2012). Childhood in a digital age: Creative challenges for educational futures. London Review of Education, 10 (2), 173-190. Retrieved fromhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14748460.2012.691282

Furlong, J. (2013). Education – An anatomy of the discipline. Abingdon, England: Routledge

Hunter, J. (2015). Technology Integration and High Possibility Classrooms: Building from TPACK. New York: Routledge.

Mishra, P., & Koehler, M.J. (2006). Technological pedagogical content knowledge: A new framework for teacher knowledge. Teachers College Record,108(6), 1017–1054.

Puentedura, R.R. (2006). Transformation, Technology, and Education. Retrieved from http://hippasus.com/resources/tte/

* The post was first published on the School of Education 21st Century Learning blog supported by academics at the University of Western Sydney on 9 March.