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From the The Educational Technology: ICT in Education website Articles on e-learning and information & communication technology containing practical advice Using & Teaching Educational Technology 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. 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.
& © Terry Freedman Tue, 10 Oct 2006 |
