Research Contract: Expanding Teacher Professional Development

Our CSER MOOC project provides professional development support for K-8 teachers across Australia in defining and understanding appropriate pedagogy for the teaching of computational thinking within the primary and lower secondary context.

Research Contract: Expanding Teacher Professional Development – Beyond the CSER MOOC, Google Research Contract. K. Falkner, R. Vivian. ($95,101) (2016)

While successful in providing accessible and confidence building professional learning, and instrumental in helping define appropriate pedagogy for this new educational space, there is a pressing need for new models of professional learning that can aid teachers in quickly adopting this new curriculum area.

In our most recent offering of the MOOC, we introduced a community assessment thread specifically for ICT champions, where instead of designing a classroom activity for the related concept, they designed and shared a professional learning activity. These resources now provide a valuable grounding in how professional learning can be delivered for the CSER MOOC. This, and our own experiences in constructing face to face professional workshops based on the MOOC, indicates the need for a new blended learning model for professional learning, whereby we build on both face-to-face learning communities and virtual learning communities, together providing accessibility, just-in-time learning, sustainability, and effective community support and engagement.

In collaboration with Google, this project proposes to leverage the CSER Foundations-6 MOOC materials with an overlay of structured professional learning activities that can be used by ICT champions in Schools or regions to help them support their peers in developing confidence and skill in delivering the new curriculum area. Building upon the CSER MOOC Community contributions for professional development, we will construct exemplar professional learning activities for each year-band, that explore the breadth of computational thinking and systems thinking processes as defined within the Australian curriculum.

Expanding Teacher Professional Development – Beyond the CSER MOOC, Google Research Contract. K. Falkner, R. Vivian. ($95,101) (2016)