How do we decide upon, and then codify, "good" practice? Here are some ideas for discussion.
Every so often a discussion flares up on the edublogosphere about what
constitutes best practice, and how we might disseminate it. In my opinion, what
constitutes best practice really depends on the local circumstances that
prevail.
A much more useful approach is to think in terms of good practice. "Good"
practice allows more scope or, to put it another way, it has a lower barrier to
entry into the rarefied atmosphere inhabited by "good" schools, departments or
teachers.
Even this, however, does not really get to the nub of the matter. Schools
should be concerned not merely with the product to be designated "good" or
"best", but the process of deciding about such things. Also, what is of interest
to other schools, and what therefore makes good case study material, is the
situation of the school or teacher concerned, and the value that has been added
in terms of educational outcome. This approach necessarily takes into account
inputs and starting points, and not just outcomes.
Perhaps what is needed is a tool such as the one shown. This might be used to
help groups of teachers decide what would constitute "good" or "best" practice
in their own situation. Much of this is subjective, of course, and the "input"
could be anything from the amount of time spent, thru staffing resources and
money, to factors like complexity or difficulty of implementation.
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| Input-impact matrix |
It is not even objectively clear which of the 4 quadrants represents the best
place to be in. We can almost certainly discount the one on the bottom left, but
for the others we may need to engage in discussion about short- and long-term
considerations.
One other thing. Just as there is now a growing tendency to use tagging
(folksonomy) rather than standard categorisation for resources, so perhaps we
need to think about allowing teachers and schools themselves to codify good
practice. Imagine a scenario in which you could look up case studies in the same
way that you can look up resources on the UK's Teachers Resource Exchange or
“Delicious”. The tag "ed_tech_case_study" hasn't been used yet or at least, not
until I used it this evening. Perhaps we might agree on using tags like
"ed_tech_case_study-good" and "ed_tech_case_study-interesting" to make it easier
for others to find case studies we think are worthy of wider consideration.
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