narrative inquiry into k12 teachers’ change in classroom practices

Narrative inquiry into K12 teachers’ change in classroom practices

Beatriz de los Arcos

@celTatis

http://oerresearchhub.org

@OER_Hub

reflection

Photo: think hard CC BY-NC-N

D 2.0 by M

utiara Karina

Photo: CC BY-NC-SA by David Lee King

flippedlearning

Photo: Upside Down Roller Coaster CC BY 2.0 by Austin Kirk

How has your use of OER changed the way you think about teaching?

“Fundamentally it’s changed my role: I’m not so much the all-knowing Oz behind the curtain that we

grew up with… teachers were the holders of all knowledge and we were students, lucky to be in their

presence. My students are able to see the fact that I’m a learner alongside of them and we can learn from

each other (…) I by no means profess that I’m the only one that has this knowledge, I’m the only one they can learn from, the only one who knows the right answers. This has changed the way my classroom

operates”

English teacher

“It used to be that when I thought about preparing for a lesson I would look at a book and see what they did and then I would teach a lesson similar to it. But now I

can go online, watch a video or look at somebody else’s materials that they put out there, see what they are doing and either modify what they are doing and

bring it into my classroom, or just get a totally different perspective on it and allow my students to get multiple perspectives on a topic (…) so I guess

searching what’s out there online allows me to be a better teacher”

Math teacher

“In most courses, teachers use a reference textbook combined with their own material to teach.  In some courses, teachers or teacher teams develop their own materials instead of a textbook, but those materials are usually private or unable to be shared openly due to copyright restrictions connected to how they were made.  This course has been fully developed from scratch without such restrictions and is released free on the web for any teacher or student to use or remix.  As a result, I do not treat this curriculum as "mine" -- it belongs to the class and to the world.  This also means that I encourage and expect you to contribute to its development and improvement.”

“I make my students do a course improvement project; they have to make the course better, so I actually give them edit access to my website and have them changing things. My kids are actually making the curriculum better each

year (…) I know [the course] can be better and I feel the same about other people’s resources: if

I know I can’t modify as a starting point to improve, it’s a waste of investment for me to

use those resources”

Math teacher

“I was on a teaching team: I taught all the Math and one Social Studies, another teacher taught

all the Language Arts (…) From our view point VS connected to all four subjects: because they had

to do some graphing, there’s your Math; they had to identify species, there’s your Science; to

write field notes it was all Language Arts, and for us Social Studies, it’s the five themes of

geography: location, movement, human-environment interaction, place and region”

Math & Social Studies teacher

“Vital Signs hasn’t really changed the way I think about teaching. It’s made my

teaching that much richer”

Math & Social Studies teacher

Photo CC BY-SA 2.0 by Michael Mandiberg

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