Active classroom: A platform for constructing community of practice and promoting knowledge transfer
Author: Dr Lam Bick Har
The educational reform in 2000 emphasized student-centered learning. To ensure the all-round development of students, teachers should teach according to the needs and interests of students. Reform Proposals for the Education System in Hong Kong (Education Commission, 2000) stated that “students should be the main protagonists in learning that teachers should give them more room and flexibility to organize and take charge of their own learning” (p. 36). Teachers should provide students with various interactive learning experiences to facilitate their enjoyment of learning while cultivating in them an interest in learning.
The educational structure has changed in the past 15 to 20 years. Under the new structure, higher education is extended to four years. The University Grants Committee (UGC) reported in 2006 the trend of higher education in “Education Quality Work: The Hong Kong Experience — A Handbook on Good Practices in Assuring and Improving Teaching and Learning Quality.” Teachers should design curricula in ways that address student learning, needs, and characteristics. Teachers should ensure correspondence between the teaching content and the prior knowledge of students as well as the intended learning outcomes. An interactive teaching approach is recommended to stimulate active learning among students. Teachers are encouraged to adopt outcome-based education, authentic learning, inquiry learning, and other student-centered pedagogies and assessment practices.
The new tides of education in the 21st century have made the job of teachers more demanding: teachers have to re-select teaching materials, redesign curricula, and use new teaching methods. Teachers have to learn new theories and conduct trials to investigate pedagogies based on the new era of education. However, the effort of a single individual is very limited. Teachers cannot work alone.
The key to successful educational reform is the joint effort and synergy of teachers. One useful way is by forming a “community of practice” (CoP). A CoP is a group of people that has developed an identity defined by a shared domain of interest. Therefore, CoP membership implies commitment to the domain (e.g., commitment to improve teaching to benefit students) and thus a shared competence that distinguishes the group from other people. A CoP engages in joint activities, dialogues, and discussions; its members support one another, share information, and build relationships that enable them to learn from one another. A CoP also has a productive function. CoP members are practitioners who develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, and ways to address recurring problems. In other words, CoP members have a shared practice. This sharing sustains interaction through a period of time. However, the development of a CoP may be more or less self-conscious. Studies on school organizational management have often addressed the creation of CoPs to form settings in which teachers can develop learning groups (e.g., for collaborative lesson planning, peer observation, learning studies, and action research) to utilize the generative nature of CoP to reform teaching.
Knowledge transfer (KT) is a concept that can be used to increase the impact of a CoP. Based on the broader concept knowledge management, KT seeks to organize, create, capture, or distribute knowledge and ensure its availability for future use. KT concerns the process of systematically identifying, acquiring, creating, representing, distributing, and maintaining knowledge. By this concept, teachers do not learn alone or benefit only from their own acquired knowledge. Teachers should be provided an environment for sharing and transferring knowledge to make the school a place for learning. In KT, tacit knowledge is transformed into practice; that is, teaching ideas are implemented by certain methods and articulated and systematically transferred to benefit other people.
Traditionally, teachers work alone in the classroom and learn by formal study, reading, and experience. With CoP and KT, teachers can learn from other people and the organization. This learning is a beneficial two-way process (UGC, 2013): not only does the community enjoy realizable benefits from the knowledge transferred from schools and institutions, but teachers, academics, and researchers are also enriched by closer ties with the organization and the larger community. This learning circle can be facilitated by the speedy, wide-ranging, and popular Internet.
CoP and KT have led to the development of Active Classroom (AClass, http://www.eduhk.hk/aclass/), an online platform in which both school and university teachers share ideas and teaching methods to improve student learning. AClass aims to bring teachers together for professional learning by providing free access for all teachers in the community to pilot-tested materials contributed by practitioners in schools and higher education institutions. The teachers who join AClass are those who have developed a clear identity as practitioners to put innovative ideas into practice and share their experience with more people. The common philosophy of AClass is learner-centered education, which places students at the center of the educational process. AClass materials reflect the effort of teachers to identify the “learner” as an important agent in learning; consider learner interest, characteristics, and prior knowledge; make learning meaningful to learners; and eliminate the struggle of learners with the “power” of the teacher and of knowledge and help them recognize their “self” in learning.
AClass was established in 2005 when the demand for schoolteachers to acquire new skills and knowledge to face the teaching changes brought by the education reform was considerable. During this time, the author was working with a local primary school on an action research to develop the questioning skills of Chinese, English, mathematics, and general education teachers. For a full semester, these teachers pilot-tested the materials they designed on the use of questioning skills. To meet the increasing demand on the school community for professional development support for new skills in teaching, the author and her team utilized the output they gathered from the research partner school and built a website. That website was the original version of AClass.
In 2013, AClass was provided a Knowledge Transfer Grant by The Education University of Hong Kong. Thus, AClass extended its audience from the school community to the higher education community. More courses have been added to the website to accommodate the needs of educational development in a new direction. “Enhancing Teaching Excellence through AClass” is the theme of this phase. The AClass website contains self-study materials, lesson plans, exemplars of innovative practice, research articles, and other useful information voluntarily contributed by the teaching community. These materials reflect the learner-centered philosophy of teaching.
Given that the new curricula emphasizes “learning to learn” and “lifelong learning,” students should be provided with diversified, multi-faceted, and interactive learning activities to enjoy and be satisfied with learning and thus become independent learners.
AClass also presents theories regarding active learning, such as experimental learning, authentic learning, constructivist learning, and cooperative learning, to enrich the rationales and ideas of teaching professionals in preparing their teaching in a new paradigm.
AClass is not a mere prescription for practice; it requires the expertise and judgment of the teacher to develop the concepts into workable ideas to maximize student learning in the teacher’s own context. We hope that teachers will include AClass materials in their professional toolbox.
A website in itself is not a CoP, and AClass cannot involve a visitor in physical interaction and sustained dialogue. However, AClass brings inspiring ideas and a dedicated group of teachers who are keen to change practice to improve student learning. AClass members are expected to interact with the materials and learn together, although they do not work together daily. These interactions can make us members a CoP, and we may become a real CoP in different corners of an organization or in events of different forms.
“Putting our heads together” is the spirit of AClass. We thus invite you to visit AClass and use the site materials, contribute to the site, and share your work in this platform. You may also make comments to improve AClass by simply filling in the evaluation form on the site.
We hope that you will join us and make use of the website for dissemination, sharing, and exchange, as a home for your professional development.
Contact
aclass@eduhk.hk
Dr Lam Bick Har
Department of Curriculum and Instruction
The Education University of Hong Kong
10 Lo Ping Road, Tai Po, N.T.
HONG KONG
AClass website: http://www.eduhk.hk/aclass/