Education Commons^™

Why Facebook Is (And Isn't) A Pre-Service Teacher's Friend, Pauline Taylor

Associate Professor Pauline Taylor-Guy

Learning For Teaching: Building Professional Knowledge On A National Scale, Elizabeth Hartnell-Young

Dr Elizabeth Hartnell-Young

This paper takes a large-scale social perspective in describing a national project in Australia that was premised on local school communities working together and contributing ideas for the benefit of their students, and potentially, the whole country. The project was intended to improve schools’ capacity for educating boys, and in the long-term, the learning outcomes of under-performing boys, using evidence-based and action research methods. It was supported by the web spaces and tools of the National Quality Schooling Framework and Think.com. This paper emphasises the structures and processes teachers engaged in while building knowledge through their daily work, where the …

Teachers' New Roles In School-Based Communities Of Practice, Elizabeth Hartnell-Young

Dr Elizabeth Hartnell-Young

School classrooms can be conceptualised as bounded communities of practice made up of teachers and students working together to learn and build knowledge. The widespread use of information and communication technologies enables these communities to create knowledge, cross boundaries and build up intellectual capital. This paper, based on a qualitative study of thirty-two teachers in Victorian state schools, offers a model of four teachers’ roles that reflects the current situation, and suggests ways in which these roles might be developed to enhance knowledge building. It argues that safe, knowledgeable communities within boundaries, together with active boundary-crossing, can provide the conditions …