Teachers Stories

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Teachers Stories

• Eygló R. Sigurðardóttir
• Teacher and M.Ed. Student KHÍ

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Teachers Stories

• PEEL (Project for enhancing effective learning)
• Action research
• My project - the website teachers stories
  (www.kennarasogur.is)

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Theachers Stories

• Database on the web
• Stories from teachers
• Enhancing effective learning
• Teachers share their knowledge
• Teachers document their practice

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The idea

• From PEEL (Poject for enhancing effective
  learning)
• Australia 1985
• A group of teachers and academics who shared
  concerns about students learning

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PEEL-Teacher Concerns (1)

• Students rarely contribute ideas
• Students don't think about the meaning of what
  they read or hear
• Students don't link different lessons
• Students don't think about why or how they are
  doing a task
• Teachers find negotiations difficult
• Students keep making the same mistakes
• Students don't read instructions carefully
• Students don't learn from mistakes in assessment
  tasks

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PEEL-Teacher Concerns (2)

• Students won't take responsibility for their
  learning
• Students dive into tasks without planning
• Students have no strategies when stuck
• Students don't link school work with outside life
  
• Dealing with mixed ability classes
• Students don't believe that their own beliefs are
  relevant
• Students are reluctant to take risks in creative
  tasks
• Students are reluctant to edit or check their
  work
• Students' existing beliefs are not easy to change
  
• Classroom management

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PEELPoor Learning Tendencies

• Superficial attention to content
• Impulsive attention
• Inappropriate application
• Superficial attention to instructions
• Staying stuck
• Non - retrieval
• Ineffective restructuring
• Lack of Reflective Thinking - within the subject
  boundaries
• Lack of External Reflective thinking

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PEEL Good learning behaviours

• Checks personal comprehension for instruction and
  material
• Plans a general strategy before starting
• Offers or seeks links between
• different activities and ideas
• different topics or subjects
• schoolwork and personal life
• Searches for weaknesses in their own
  understandings
• Suggests new activities and alternative
  procedures
• Offers ideas, new insights and alternative
  explanations
• Justifies opinions
• Reacts and refers to comments of other students

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PEELPrinciples of teaching for quality learning

• Share intellectual control with students
• Provide opportunities for choice and independent
  decision-making
• Promote talk which is exploratory, tentative and
  hypothetical
• Encourage students to learn from other students'
  questions and comments
• Build a classroom environment that supports
  risk-taking
• Teach student how to learn
• Promote assessment as part of the learning
  process

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Action Research

• What is action research?
• Why doing action Research?
• How can I help my student to improve their
  learning?
• How can I improve what I am doing?
• How can I link theory and practice?

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Action Research

• Action research is practical. It is so practical
  that when people first meet the idea they often
  say, Thats what I do in any case. Whats the
  different?
• ...action research insist on teachers justifying
  their claims to knowledge by the production of
  authenticated and validated evidence, and then
  making their claims public...
• Jean McNiff and Jack Whitehead

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Action Research

• We all have theories about how things work.
• We all have theories about the way things should
  be, and these guide our action.
• Action research is part of your everyday
  practice, something you do, not only something
  you read and write about.
• Jean McNiff and Jack Whitehead

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www.kennarasogur.is (teacher stories)

• Database on the web contains teacher
  stories/ideas
• Action research/teacher research
• What teachers can do to research their everyday
  practice
• Enhance effective learning

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www.kennarasogur.isThe database

• The users of the database are teachers and/or
  school employees
• They document their new idea/story and publish on
  the web
• Other users can read the stories

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www.kennarasogur.isThe database

• Search for
• Students age (kindergarten, primary school etc.)
• Subject (english, math, ...)
• Teachers concerns
• A word in the text or in the headline

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Who will use the website?

• Teachers, principals and others school employees
  who want to
• enhance their teaching and projects in the school
• present their new ideas
• read others ideas
• enhance effective learning for their student

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www.kennarasogur.is

• Tell other people what you are doing in your
  classroom !
• Write down make notes !
• Share your new idea on the web!