Introduction

As a case study for KP-Lab, this case study will focus on teachers’ professional development at different institutional levels by use of new technologies and the evolving, collective professional practice at the institutional level. The motivation for this case study relates to the rapid growth of digital and networked learning environments. Herein are dramatic challenges to teachers and schools as institutions  – in terms of increasing complexity with new opportunities in available tools, and coping with emerging and little understood learning contexts and activities. Understanding how teachers navigate and position themselves and their practice in the physical, co-located classroom setting and the various online/virtual environments points to major challenges. New technologies escalate these challenges, requiring institutional practice changes to contribute to sustainable development over time.

Research focus – questions

The case study’s research focus is

1. Exploring evolving social practices when introducing a so-called “P-team” (new institutional body) for collective knowledge advancement in the school (as work place)
2. Inform design, use and evaluate KP-Lab Shared Space to support productive interactions and the new social practice.

Significance of the case study

Work places, including environments like educational systems, increasingly make use of more and more sophisticated, networked technologies for practice development and change. The traditional hierarchical structures with clear-cut command lines and delineated tasks are challenged in the new, emerging environments, and activities in and across small or larger groups and networks are emerging. The involvement of the school leadership team to sustain the new practices is of outmost concern. To meet the demanding situation requires an educational discourse about activities and designs for learning that reflect, align with and take advantage of the opportunities in this development. While Learning Management Systems (LMS and also LCMS) to some extent have taken care of the managerial aspect of literacy and expertise, educational institutions are still challenged by problems of utilizing advanced technologies as part of professional development and institutional change.

The case relatedness to KP-Lab theoretical ideas

This case study incorporates 1) longitudinal, descriptive analyses - historical analysis - of evolving knowledge practices when customizing and adapting tools, and 2) use and evaluation of new tools focusing on productive interactions with the new technologies. The study focuses on teachers’ professional development at different institutional levels by use of new technologies. Over time InterMedia have been involved in development processes of transforming teaching practices from individual knowledge acquisition into collective knowledge advancement. The processes have been linked to three levels: classroom level, team teacher level and institution level. Such processes cannot be understood, much less be done, unless we conceptualize the demanding situations in light of Vygotsky’s methodological approach of double stimulation (Vygotsky, 1986; Wertsch, 1991).

As the next iteration in this ongoing collaboration, the experiences from the previous iterations can be further developed into an institutional model of experiential learning in 2007 – 2008. Part of this strategy is to establish a new group that is a leadership team that act as intermediate between the principal and the teacher teams. This is also an opportunity to explore tool use and tool development in establishing and maintaining this evolving institution-wide practice. Several KP-Lab tools could be experimented with in this iteration to support institutionalized practice development. In particular, configuring a set of tools and services to act as a collective memory (knowledge repository), e.g., sharing, storing, editing, and annotating material collectively, repository with examples of teaching practice and local ontologies (e.g., lists of terms) to support evolving practice, should be further explored.

Understanding and experimenting with design as well as collect experiences of support from a shared space technology could provide teachers, researchers and developers further insights to adapt, customize or extend tool functionality according to requirements from an institutional perspective.  This points towards development, transformation as well as innovation in a school’s curriculum and pedagogy; i.e., designs and support for knowledge advancement, technology; i.e., designs that afford technical as well as social prompts, and theoretical perspectives; i.e., object-orientation of collectives, theorizing tasks as primary stimulus.