Session 5

1.Distributed leadership

Q1:How are leadership and management related to school and classroom conditions and school outcomes?
To answer this question, the article reveals a framework that is a distributed perspective in school leadership and management research.

Q2:What does it mean by having a distributed perspective of leadership?
For my understanding, I think a distributed perspective of leadership is quite the opposite from the traditional view that sees leadership in schools as monopoly of individual. As a distributed perspective of leadership, different staff on different position might be transfer as leaders or advice givers, which means the focus on leadership is changing from school principals to other staff who might be in a leading position at some points. In the article, it says, it involves two aspects: one is the leader-plus aspect and the other one is the practice aspect.

Q3:Do you think that this is a "commonsense" way of conceptualizing leadership?
Before learning this session, I believe it's important to construct conceptualisation of leadership too. The reason is very simple and also confirmed from the article that if we don't make a clear conceptualisation of leadership, we won't have a methodology to do research and all work related to this field will be weakly operationalised and poorly measured.
As for my concerned, I think leadership is like the core module such as a brain on human being. Whoever is serving as a leader should be able to send the right order to lead the school for better school outcomes and also response in a proper way to avoid further damage to the school outcomes. That's why I think it's very important to conceptualize school leadership and management.

Q4:What do you think are the most important role of leadership?
This is a really hard question for me to answer based on the current study on leadership. Should it be a good advisor? a in time corrector？a objective evaluator? a far-sighted decision maker? Or maybe all of them? I would like to look back to this question after finishing all the sessions.

Q5:What is the link between leadership and school change?
There is always a believe that leadership has a positive impact on school outcomes and that is why leaders should take a great account on staff percentage. But this article is arguing about this statement because of the insufficient empirical evidence.

Q6:This paper reports on an empirical study on leadership. What is it about?
It's about study operation and measures.

Q7:What is the methodology used?
This article collects data from a midsize urban school to study the operation and measures in a distributed perspective. Also, they provide consideration about the way how these measures capture variance among schools.

2. Dimensions of scale

Robust Design
1.depth: deep and consequential change in classroom practice, altering teachers' beliefs, norms of social interaction, and pedagogical principles as entered in the curriculum.
2.sustainability: involves maintaining over substantial periods of time and consequential changes in classroom practice enabled by an innovation's depth.
3.spread: involves diffusion of the innovation to large numbers of classrooms and schools.
4.shift: districts, schools and teachers assume ownership of the innovation, deepening, sustaining, and spreading its impacts.
5.evolution(new, require depth,spread and shift to be done first): when adopters of an innovation revise it and adapt it in such a way that it is influential in reshaping the thinking of its designers.

Q: Is there a theory of change that underpins the theory of scalability put forward in this paper?

In my perspective, the four dimensions of scale are compatible with the diffusion theory. To put it into a simple word, I think the dimensions of scale is an educational practice in school's perspective of the diffusion theory.

There are four dimensions of diffusion: innovation, communication, time and social system. The first dimension of scale can be also seen as the first aspect of diffusion as adopters have to fully understand a new innovation in depth before they can carry it out.

After that comes to the sustainability, spread and shift stages, which all could be switched to communication and time phrases in diffusion theory. In innovation diffusion theory, communication means to exchange new ideas from one adopters to one or several others. On the perspective of scale, sustainability, spread and shift are all about to spread changes in a larger or wider popularity in schools. To further this progress requires time and effort which fits the time aspect in the diffusion theory.

Last, the last dimension of scale is revolution. If we go back to the system level of diffusion theory, it is the same as to form a social system. The adopters of an innovation are no longer remain as the receivers, they are shifting their accountability to be able to revise and help reshaping the ideas along with its designers.

On the other hand, I also believe that the dimensions of scale can also fit in the epidemic theory of innovation. But not in a whole scale, only for the sustainability, spread, shift and evolution parts. Because in the epidemic perspective, it provides a way to foster an innovation in a system level. Following the epidemic theory, schools can make a successful innovation in a proper way.

3.Sustainable leadership:

Seven principals:
1. it creates and preserves sustaining learning
2. it secures success over time
3. it sustains leadership of others
4. it addresses issues of social justice
5. it develops but not deplete human or material resources
6. it develops environmental diversity and capacity
7. it undertakes activist engagement with the environment

Q1: What is the meaning of sustainable leadership as used in this paper?

Sustainable leadership matters, spreads and lasts. It is more like a shared responsibility rather than continuously consuming human or financial resources. It leaves a positive impact on the educational environment. With a shared learning community, it can foster good ideas and successful practices on it's own initiative.
There are seven principals of it as above.

Q2:Are any of the three theories of change more or less compatible with the seven principals of sustainable leadership?

The ecological theory of change posts the same aspect of sustainable development in education, which is compatible with the seven principals of sustainable leadership. To make a sustainable development of a new specie, the seven principals can be a beacon to light the right direction and which I believe is the mission of leadership in education.

Key terms glossary:
1. distributed leadership:
    leader-plus aspect and practice aspect
    formal and informal leadership
2. sustainable leadership:
    seven principals
3. robust design / scalabiliity:
    depth, sustainability, spread, shift and evolution.

Congrats to our presentation!!!

I am so flattered that we got the compliment from Dr. Law and also we did a great job on our presentation! Yay for us!!!
Looking back for the last seven days, success didn't come easily. I really want to share our preparation here.
In order to get a wide understanding of our topic, everyone of us agreed to read through all the readings before we could choose one section that we were interested in. In this way, the next time we gathered together to discuss, we had the same language. And I did think this step is very important for our success. If we followed other groups' model to separate the work at the very beginning, we wouldn't discuss in depth. 
After dividing personal work, every time we met, we posted one question about others' reading, so that we could help further each others' understanding. In this model of discussing, we had to read with a clear mind and it helped us to get a clue of all the readings in a wider view.
After the massive reading and discussing time, we then focused much on one question: How to make our audience understand what we are going to say. This was very hard for us. Because four of us just graduated from University, we don't have much experience on teaching. That's why we wanted to try harder. In order to get the attention of our audience better, we adjusted our PPT many times. The version of our PPT we used in class is the 6th or 7th one. Besides, we spent much time on rehearsal once and once again. Just to ease our nerve about going on stage.
I really enjoyed the time we spent together preparing for our presentation. Even we didn't have much time for meals so we could only had sandwich each time we met. Thanks Tina, Vivian and Carven!

Reflection on the Education Epidemic

As it can be seen that innovation in ICT can contribute many advantages to education, the outcome is always very disappointing. Innovators can’t help asking questions, why the dissemination of innovation in ICT is surprisingly slow? From this paper, we are going to reveal the mystery of this dilemma.

The current technology has a huge impact on the development in business. Because it betters the transportation forms, provides easy ways on communication and so on. The same effect is happening in schools as well, which leads to the change from improvement to transformation. Only improving the existing structures is no longer good enough, we need to build new structures in order to fit the higher standards. To catch up with this change comes the call for transformation. But this is just a piece of cliche, what’s more important is how? How to work a disciplined transformation?

The current approach of innovation is a top-down, centralist intervention. This was very effective back to 30 years ago, such as the improvement of literacy and numeracy in schools. But with the growing amount of investment in educational innovation, the recent failure is questioning this approach. On the external perspective, if the local or national institutions fail to learn in a speed catching up with the rate of change, we will fall behind.

On the other hand, the internal point of view falls in four aspects as the needs from the knowledge economy, the limitation of the strategies, the gap between different classes and the limitation of the master-plan.

Thus, the current approach of educational innovation is losing it’s advantages. We need transformation to fit the growing need in educational development.

So the next part of the paper is talking about how to evaluate the quality of a school so that we can find out whether the new approaches are working or not. There are three concepts of this framework, as intellectual capital, social capital and organizational capital. With this framework, we now have a method to evaluate the effectiveness of a new innovation.

At the very beginning, I just mentioned the importance of transformation, at the same time, we talked a lot about innovation. Thus, what is the relationship between transformation and innovation?

In this part, the author indicates there will be no transformation without innovation. But what kind of innovations can trigger a campaign in schools? The answer is radical innovation, rather than incremental innovation. That means we need innovation in schools to help students prepare for the tomorrow’s knowledge economy. Also, we need new kind of curriculum and assessment to focus on developing students’ abilities to match the knowledge society.

So now, we have a clear goal to achieve. The only problem left is how to do it.

In this paper, we have a new approach to trigger transformation in schools, differing from the existing top-down imposition approach. In order to understand this approach clearly, I summarize it as five different stages as: growing, preparing, processing, developing and producing stage.

For the growing stage, referring to creating the right climate, first of all, we have to clarify what is the right climate. Before that, I want to talk about the blame culture first. Blame culture means evaluating the performance of a school based on the student test performance, naming and shaming the weakest or failing schools in order to make a positive improvement. In this kind of blame culture, schools are not allowed to make mistakes. On the contrary, the right climate for fostering transformation is to give failure a new kind of meaning, as turning mistakes into opportunities for learning. Taking the risk of making mistakes and even encouraging to make mistakes so that we can learn from the past experience.

Secondly, turning into the second Transformation. With limited resources, we have to identify which innovation worth trying and which one gets the priority to be implemented first. In order to fullfill this task, we need to discipline innovation properly. But disciplining innovation doesn’t mean to restrict the area for innovation, but to construct an innovation system for schools to choose what to innovate. How to do this? It’s very similar to the economy developing function in China, foster the front-line innovative schools first, and then employ the successful experience of them to trigger a wilder expansion in other weaker schools.

So now we have the right climate and the right strategy for transformation, the next step is to figure out how to transfer innovation from the front-line innovative schools to the other schools. That requires a lateral strategy, aiming to help transferring innovations among schools. First, we have to identify what to transfer, here in this paper refer to the best practices, which are of high leverage and easily transferable. Back to the question how to transfer it, the paper highlights the importance of collaboration through networks among peers. In the paper, the author gives us an example of the successful improvement of Linux system, it’s sorta out of date. The latest example to demonstrate the importance of collaboration for me is the development of Andriod system. As we know, it’s an open-coded system, so that the users of this system can also be the programmers to improve it. With the dramatic collaboration from online users, Android system has developed rapidly and soon become the main system for smart phones. From this case, we can conclude that the users of the innovation can help to improve the innovation itself through peers collaboration.

The fourth step falls as using ICT laterally. In this stage, we are not talking about the magic that ICT can do to change the world. Instead, the author believes using ICT can shorten the linking lines between individuals, which means innovation networks supported by ICT could turn schools into the small world. Thus, betters transformation in return.

Last step is to the producing stage as making a learning system. In order to fullfill this system, the first step is to abandon command-and-control approach. The relationship between the upper agencies and schools shouldn’t be top-down anymore. The officials should play a role as stimulating, monitoring and helping schools to develope a self-constructing learning system.

In conclusion, I want to use a picture as a metaphor to these five components of transformation:

In order to get the positive outcome of innovation, we firstly have to create the right climate for it to grow. And then identify the best practice as preparation. So that we can follow to the next stage to transfer innovation from front-line schools to others. Using ICT can help building a wider innovation network. Last the official agencies should help to make a self-constructing learning system.

Reflection to the key readings of Session 3

o What are the key ideas underpinning the UNESCO Policy Framework?
l Introducing The knowledge ladder:

1.Basic Education

a) Policy goal: Providing the skills needed for improved health and welfare and to participated in the formal economy
i. Economic goal: to increase the number of people enter the formal economy by providing them with basic literacy and numeracy skills.
ii. Social goal: to provide life skills, increase civic participation and improve health and welfare.
iii. Education goal: universal primary education and increased participation of girls

b) Hallmark: the curriculum focuses on basic skills in literacy and numerary, as do assessment.

c) ICT implications:
i. Broadcast media: useful to disseminate information to both teachers and students
ii. Computers: limited, for teachers
iii. Internet: for management and administrative support, for school to connect to the central authorities

2.Knowledge Acquisition

a) Policy goal: increasing the knowledge level of workforce and citizenry and their ability to use technology
i. Economic goal: to build on industrial base, participative in the global economy, and begin to lay the foundations for broader prosperity.
ii. Social goal: to provide opportunities for advancement and foster social integration and equity.
iii. Educational goal: to improve a workforce that is more knowledgeable and skilled and capable of taking up new technologies.

b) Hallmark: associated with the mass production model of education

c) ICT implications:
i. Add ICT as a subject
ii. Emergence of computer-based tutorials, tools, and e-content as part of whole class, group or individual student activities.
iii. Networked ICT
iv. Computer laboratories

3.Knowledge Deepening

a) Policy goal: increasing the ability of the workforce and citizenry to use knowledge to participate in society and add value to economic output by applying school knowledge to solve complex, real-world problems.
i. Educational goal: make school learning more relevant to the workplace and to social life.

b) Hallmark: emphasizing the important relevance between teaching & learning and realistic problems.

c) ICT implications:

i. ICT becomes integrated into curriculum and into daily classroom practice
ii. Equipment is available for regular use in classroom
iii. Networking for teacher and students
iv. Emergence of digital resources and electronic portfolios

4.Knowledge Creation

a) Policy goal: increasing the capability of the citizenry and workforce to continually learn, to create cultural artifacts, to innovate and produce new knowledge, and to benefit from this new knowledge
i. Educational goal: 21st century skills

b) Hallmark: emphasizing the lifelong learning and innovation of new knowledge

c) ICT implications:
i. Various use of electronic devices among teachers and students
ii. Massive use of digital resources
iii. Web 2.0 & 3.0 social and knowledge environment
iv. ICT-based tools

l A new paradigm in education:

n A shift from mass production model to knowledge creation model:
1. From mass production paradigm to information technology paradigm
2. From producing the objects to producing the knowledge
3. From supporting the dissemination of information from centralized authorities to fostering the consumption of mass produced goods
4. From productive function to create new knowledge to using network to access and share information

n The impact of this new paradigm:
1. Knowledge is the key productive factor and products and services must meet a variety of customized needs
2. A larger and more diverse group come to participate in governmental and civic processes and institutions
3. Productively engage in the use of ICT to create, share and use new knowledge products and services

n What is the impact of ICT in this new paradigm:
The capabilities of ICT:
a) New capabilities: interactive, productive capabilities and networking capability
b) It fits with an educational system that is turned to knowledge creation and that is aligned with the emerging technological, economic, and social paradigm.
c) The new technological, economic and social paradigm demands a different response from the education system.

l The important role of policy in educational change
n Policy can facilitate change, but it does not guarantee its implementation or impact. Sometimes it fails too.
n From systemic change to transformational change:
Policies intended not only to change all the components of the education system but transform the system itself, so that education aligns with and supports an emerging social and economic paradigm shift

o What implications does this policy framework (knowledge acquisition, knowledge deepening and knowledge creation) have on curriculum and pedagogical practice in schools and classrooms?
1.Knowledge acquisition

a) Curriculum:
The curriculum enumerates a large number of facts and concepts within school subjects and emphasizes their acquisition. ICT is included as a subject in the curriculum.

b) Pedagogical practice:
Teaching is focused on information delivery. Lectures are common but information may be presented in a variety of forms. Alternatively, instruction can be individualized and self-paced.

Involving the use of various computer-based tutorials, tools, and e-content as part of whole class, group, or individual student activities but the use is often supplemental.

2.Knowledge deepening

a) Curriculum:

The curriculum identifies key, interrelated concepts and principles that organize the subject area. It emphasizes deep understanding of these within and across subjects and their application to solve complex real world problems. Curriculum implementation is responsive to local contexts.

b) Pedagogical practice:
Teaching is conducted in the context of complex, open-ended questions and problems and it is anchored in real world contexts. Classroom activities involve the application of key concepts and principles to analyze systems and solve problems across subjects. Internships and apprenticeships can be an important way to connect school learning to the real world.

It also structures collaborative classroom activities, projects, and investigations that engage students in use of the new concepts and principles to solve extended, open-ended, real-world problems.

Technology plays an important role, as students use visualizations and stimulations to explore, understand, and apply complex knowledge.

3.Knowledge creation

a) Curriculum:
The curriculum is flexible and responsive to student goals and local contexts. It emphasizes the development of collaboration, inquiry, information management, creativity, and critical thinking skills. Learning how to learn is essential.

b) Pedagogical practice:
Teaching consists of challenging students to build on their knowledge and explore new topics. Collaborative projects and investigations involve searching for information, collecting and analyzing data, generating knowledge products, and communicating with outside experts and audiences to share results.

Teachers design a learning community and a set of activities and resources in which students are continuously engaged in the sustained, collaborative process of building on current knowledge and cultural artifacts to create and share new contributions.

o Read Zhao, Lei and Conway (2006). What are the similarities and differences between the framework used in this paper and the UNESCO framework?

1. Zhao, Lei and Conway framework:

a) Educational goals
b) Portrayal of technology
c) Portrayal of teacher
d) Portrayal of student

2. UNESCO framework:
a) Policies
b) Professional development
c) Pedagogy
d) Curriculum
e) Assessment
f) School organization
g) ICT use

3. Similarities:
Both frameworks emphasize the importance of technology, talk about the goals in general and also mention about teaching and learning in education.

Both of the two frameworks have case studies on different countries based on the distance, economic development level and population size in order to verify its own theory.


4. Differences:
a) Talking about technology, in Zhao, Lei and Conway framework, technology is a more general concept, while in UNESCO framework, technology is regarding as the tools that help in teaching and learning.

b) In Zhao, Lei and Conway, pedagogical development is divided into two separate part as in teacher’s perspective and student’s perspective. On the other side, UNESCO demonstrates it in details as four different themes -- pedagogy, curriculum, assessment and school organization.

c) As policy goals, Zhao, Lei and Conway framework focuses only on the educational feild, while the other one extend it as policies of economy, social and education. Because the latter one believes a new paradigm in education can also have impact aligned with social and economy.

d) The specific countries that have been studied in these two frameworks are different:
i. Zhao, Lei and Conway: Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, U.K., U.S.A., Chile, China, India, South Africa, South Korea, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh.
ii. UNESCO: Singapore, Namibia, Jordan, Uruguay, Rwanda.

In Zhao, Lei and Conway’s paper, there is massive comparison between these thirteen countries. Differently, in UNESCO’s, it separatively talks about the implementation in different countries, adding a chapter to make conclusion in the end.

o What is your evaluation of the usefulness of these two frameworks?
First of all, the framework by Zhao, Lei and Conway gives me a general definition of E-learning based on four themes. Also, with all the comparison from these 13-countries case studies, I have gained the very first impression of how different countries expect from ICT and what have they done with ICT in education. For a first learner about policy in ICT, this paper is very informative as it illustrates as much as it can with massive comparison.

Secondly, as a 255-page book rather than a paper, UNESCO framework is more detail and this is the reason why the factors of this framework are more detailed than the other one. Besides, the case studies in this book provide a clear and overall view of different policies and implementations in different countries, which enable me the furth comprehensive understanding of the impact on this framework. Also the Knowledge Ladder covered in this book is the most attracting term in my eyes.

Reflection on 'A Global Perspective on Political Definitions of E-learning'

1. Introduction

From this paper, the author gives us a summarizing explanation of What is E-learning, using the framework first designed by Zhao and Conway(2001). To further illustrating the definition of E-learning, this paper is divided into two parts: the first part discusses emerging trends in e-learning strategies, while the second part illustrates discourses in its 13-country study and Zhao and Conway(2001) study of 15 state educational plans in the USA.

In conclusion, the key theory of this paper can be given as the following chart:

____________________________________________________________________

Educational Goals	Technology	Student	Teacher
Economic competitiveness	As “stand-alone” information machine	Passive respondent to stimuli	Luddite
Democratic equity	As “network”	Active solo inquirer	Gatekeeper or filter
		Active social inquirer	Designer

____________________________________________________________________

Luddite: In modern usage, "Luddite" is a term describing those opposed to, or slow to adopt or incorporate into their lifestyle, industrialisation,automation, computerisation or new technologies in general.

2. Emerging trends in e-learning strategies

a) Economic Development Level and Date of First ICT in Education Strategic Plan:

i. Negative correlation: the more a country is developed, the sooner it publishes its national educational ICT strategic plans.

ii. Developed countries tend to have more than one national educational ICT plan.

b) Variation: length, coverage and emphasis

i. Length:

1. Long: South Korea ICT plan & USA’s ICT plan

ii. Coverage:

1. General guidelines: Afghanistan & New Zealand

2. Detailed strategies: South Korea, India & Bangladesh

a) India’s ICT plan: detailed technology literacy standards for students at different education levels; specific curriculum guidelines; syllabus for information technology in schools.

b) Bangladesh plan: specific numbers of different educational institutions.

iii. Emphasis:

1. Specific strategies for addressing local situation:

a) Bangladesh

2. Specific strategies for addressing regional differences:

a) China

3. Specific strategies for addressing specific national condition:

a) Afghanistan

iv. Summary: The implication of the variation in the length, elaboration and coverage in strategic plans drew researchers’ attention to the important issue of policies’ strategic force.

c) Funding

i. Countries that specify the sources and amount of funds needed: USA, UK, Bangladesh, South Korea and Ireland.

ii. Countries that point out possible sources of funding: South Africa and China

iii. Other countries completely omitted this issue.

3. Definitions of E-learning, based on four focal themes: portrayal of goals, technology, students and teachers

a) Educational Goals:

i. Economic Competitiveness

1. What every country is doing: 

a) USA: Success as a nation will depend substantially on our students’ ability to acquire the skills and knowledge necessary for high-technology work and informed citizenship.(U.S. Department of Education, 1996)

b) Singapore: technology integration in education aims at “anticipating the needs of the 21st century and producing a workforce of excellence.” (Singapore Ministry of Education, 1997)

c) South Korea: the promotion of ICT use in education plays an essential role.(South Korea Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development, 2001: 79)

d) Bangladesh is determined to use ICT as the key-driving element for socio-economic development.

e) China is committed to “a new round of educational innovations which aims to change the tremendous population pressure into highly productive human resources,” (People’s Republic of China, 1998)

2. Fears:

a) USA: “Can schools afford the investment? The real question is, can they afford not to make the investment?” (U.S. Department of Education, 1996).

b) South Korea: Potential risks of not being able to make full use of current ICT in education.

ii. Democratic and human development goals

1. Digital divide between the haves and the have-nots

2. Gender equity

iii. Summary

1. Economic development plays an important part in influencing the educational goals in ICT plans between different countries.

2. Less developed countries are facing “peer pressure”.

3. A utilitarian attitude toward using ICT is pervasive in all plans.

4. The USA plan is leading any other plans.

b) Portrayal of technology

i. As network: Networked computers/Internet: 

1. Afghanistan: interconnected and interoperable network of networks

2. USA: every classroom in the U.S.A. will be connected to the information superhighway-opening up worlds of knowledge and opportunities.

3. Singapore:

a) First plan: Internet is becoming a key content and learning resource in schools

b) Second plan: connect all schools, colleges, universities, public libraries and as many community centres as possible to the Grid.

4. Ireland: A digital network for schools will be developed to provide broadband access to all schools and access to research networks.

5. New Zealand:  initiated a project to deliver high-speed Internet access to all schools and to most provincial communities.

6. South Korea:  revised its comprehensive plan for ICT in education to increase the budget input for LAN installation, PC distribution to teachers and classrooms, and financial aid for Internet access in the schools. 

ii. Stand-alone technologies:

1. Digital devices & analogue devices

2. South Korea: computers, TV, VCR, visual presenter, overhead projector and screen, printer, encoder, decoder, etc.

3. New Zealand: IT, CT & calculation tools

iii. A utopian tone: an unqualified extremely optimistic view of technology

1. It can cure all educational ills: USA, UK

2. An improvement of existing practice: New Zealand

3. High expectation and great enthusiasm.

iv. Problems:

1. the violation of intellectual property rights, distribution of inappropriate information, and hacking.

2. Undesirable outcomes: Afghanistan, India, Ireland, South Korea

v. Summary:

1. Reliance on newest technology as the default definition of technology;

a) To settle down with appropriate technologies and to take time to really integrate technologies into their current curriculum.

b) To find the most effective and efficient technologies, but not necessarily the newest technologies.

2. a utopian view of the potential of ICTs;

a) Technologies are usually used to facilitate existing practice instead of fundamentally change it.

3. myopic in relation to the long-term impact of technological innovations;

a) Potential negative outcomes: new social, ethical, and moral dilemmas; force changes upon teachers, students and school as a whole.

4. focus on “hard” aspects of ICT;

a) Focus on establishing a technology infrastructure, ignoring the “soft aspects”of it.

c) Portrayal of students

i. 1/3 of the plans do not include a discussion about the nature of the learner.

ii. The role of learners:

1. Passive learner: None

2. Active, quick, competent and confident learner

a) New Zealand: Students often approach ICT with excitement and curiosity, learning to use them quickly, competently, and with confidence.

b) South Korea: technology will transform the passive learner into an active one

3. Both independent and co-operative learner:

a) Singapore

4. Solo and social constructor of knowledge: vary along different countries

a) India: collaborate, pulish and interact with peers, experts and others

b) USA: communicate their results and conclusions

c) New Zealand: communicate and transfer data

5. Creative and independent thinking

a) Singapore emphasizes independent learning

b) UK: confidently take ownership of their learning

c) South Korea: self-directed learning

iii. Summary:

1. Learner as an active inquirer in the new environment where technology is supposed to play a major role

2. Nations differ in their views of how students construct knowledge:

a) China, Singapore & South Korea: solo learners

b) US & New Zealand: social learners.

3. Stress the importance of lifelong learning

4. State ICT plan in US: outcome-oriented views of students; ignore the important epistemological assumptions about students learning.

d) Portrayal of teacher

i. Roles of teacher:

1. Luddite: None

2. Gatekeeper: Open their classroom doors to technology

a) Teaching training has important place in most ICT plans

i. South Korea: several programs to evaluate and certify teachers

3. Designer: creatively use technology based on their curricula and their students’ needs & to design educational materials in their own fields.

4. Helper / facilitator: give assistance whenever learners need help