SETU/SAMARTH Evaluation Studies
| Title: | Collaborative learning in virtual space and learning in the physical workplace: the case of in-service public-school teachers in India |
| Author: | Deepak Maun |
| Issue Date: | 2019 |
| Abstract: | The existing approach to in-service teachers’ professional development in the Indian public-school education system has often been criticized on grounds of ineffectiveness. In recent years, peer-driven, technology-mediated online communities of government school teachers built around their common interests have emerged as an alternative avenue to engage with peers. In these communities, teachers themselves drive their learning and professional development in a bottom-up manner by focusing on finding solutions to problems specific to their contexts. In this study, the emergence of such decentralized, peer-driven, technology-mediated communities of learners was examined. The focus was on understanding the ways in which teachers learn within these congregations, and how they ‘re-contextualize’ the knowledge thus gained to reflect the realities of their physical workplaces for implementation within classrooms. Another question concerned the nature of communities that emerged when these teachers from geographically distributed schools came together in virtual spaces. The interpretive case study was used as the primary methodological approach. Data from three different virtual groups of teachers was analyzed and seventeen teachers belonging to these groups were interviewed in order to understand their experiences in the virtual groups, as well as the utility of the groups for discharging their responsibilities as a teacher. The respondents for the study were selected through purposive and snowball sampling. The data revealed that the virtual groups acted more as problem-solving or information sharing platforms and in-depth discussions were absent. The physical communities played a significant role in lives of teachers despite the wide prevalence of and participation in virtual groups. Broader social factors influenced the opportunities, as well as the nature of participation in the virtual and physical groups. These factors are delineated, and their impact on participation and learning are explicated. The ‘recontextualization’ of learning for application in physical context was not found to be a separate activity but an inherent part of the teacher’s participation in virtual spaces. The implications for policy and practice, as well as for the existing understanding of learning of teachers within virtual spaces in a situation where the community members (in-service teachers) are located within geographically distributed workplaces are discussed. |
| Download: | Deepak Maun_2019.pdf |
| Title: | Change in leadership behaviour though online professional development programme: contextualising community based identity cohesion and intentionality |
| Author: | Samvet Kuril |
| Issue Date: | 2019 |
| Abstract: | School principals play a crucial leadership role by managing four components of their schools’ organizational capacity: teachers’ skills, professional community, technical resources, and program coherence. Though important in most contexts, leadership behaviour is particularly crucial in developing countries such as India where public schools struggle with many problems such as teacher absenteeism, learning difficulties among students, shortage of resources, and the difficulties faced by first-generation learners. In such contexts, conventional professional development programs, which are usually academic knowledge-based and expert-driven—identified in literature as ‘first space’ programs—have been criticized for their effectiveness. ‘Second space’ programs, based on field or experiential knowledge generated from solving the problems faced in practice, are rare, and perhaps can be criticized for their neglect of theory. A program developed in the conceptual 'third space' that dissolves the boundaries between the first and second spaces, giving equal importance to theory and practice, the expert and the novice, and teacher educators and teachers, therefore, seeks to blend academic knowledge and field-based knowledge related to leadership. This thesis uses a mixed method approach to study such a professional development program, developed in India for government elementary school principals, and delivered online, in order to assess its effectiveness in developing school leadership behaviour. Second, the thesis studies the program’s emergent virtual community, given that the broader social context in India is characterized by high context cultural discourse, values hierarchy, and high power distance. Both these aspects are missing in the current literature of third space and online professional development programs in developing countries. The results of structural equation modeling indicate that the program was successful in positively influencing the change-oriented behaviour of school principals. Case study analysis showed that the emergent community exhibited features of a ‘goal oriented community of interest’ based on membership, with interactions among members of an inner circle. The findings also show that schools exhibiting features of learning organizations where boundaries between different groups of teachers were broken and collective learning was promoted reflected higher change in positive perceptions of leadership behaviour. |
| Download: | Samvet Kuril_2019.pdf |
| Title: | DETERMINING EFFECTS OF A WEB-BASED TEACHERS’ PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME ON TEACHING SELF-EFFICACY BELIEFS AND CLASSROOM PRACTICE |
| Author: | KETAN SATISH DESHMUKH |
| Issue Date: | 2021 |
| Abstract: |
The design of large-scale professional development (PD) programmes for teachers in the public schooling system faces two challenges. The first is identifying a suitable malleable construct which influences student performance, for designing interventions. Given the positive impact of teacher self-efficacy beliefs on student achievement, improving a teacher’s teaching self-efficacy beliefs is a desirable goal for a PD programme. Second, in a large resource-constrained public system, cost-effective reach is important. PD programs that have used technology judiciously for this purpose have shown promise, but the related research has reported mixed results, thus warranting further investigation. An online PD programme for Class 6-8 teachers in the public schooling system in Gujarat, aimed at improving teaching self-efficacy, provided the empirical context to study the effective use of technology in teacher training. A two-group randomized control trial was implemented to examine the effects of PD programme on self-efficacy beliefs. The PD design was in accordance with Desimone’s (2009) five core features PD programme viz. content focus, active learning, coherence, duration and collective participation. The study analyses survey responses of 19135 teachers and the classroom observations of 710 classrooms. The teachers who attended the online PD reported a positive change in subject-specific self- efficacy beliefs. Mixture modelling of participant activities found four latent profiles based on latent profile analysis of pageview logs of 7037 participants, and six latent classes based on latent class analysis of responses to off-platform activity questionnaire of 7794 respondents. The variation in off-platform activities was significantly associated with the change in self-efficacy beliefs of the participants. The different latent online profiles were mostly associated with variation in change of subject-specific self-efficacy beliefs. The comparison of classroom observation of participant teachers with non-participating teachers found no significant difference in teacher’s classroom actions (i.e. teacher activities & use of materials). But found significant difference in teacher’s use of textbooks (i.e. reading materials) in science classrooms. Finally, the teacher’s self-efficacy beliefs before training were found to be significantly associated with classroom activities, but the association of prior classroom activities to post-training self-efficacy beliefs was limited. The study provides insights on the "what works?" and "for whom?" questions in the context of large-scale PD for teachers. |
| Download: | Ketan Deshmukh_2021.pdf |