RSA #4 Teacher Professional Development in the Amazon
Region: Strategies to Create Successful Learning Communities. Written by Lucio Teles, and Laura Maria Coutinho.
The article can be found here.
This week, Palloff and Pratt (2007), discuss the importance
of collaborative learning (pg 157-204).
They stress that the instructors need to structure the class in a way
that promotes collaboration between the students. Palloff and Pratt (2007) say “collaborative effort helps learners
achieve a deeper level of knowledge generation while moving from independence
to interdependence (pg 157).” The
students need to go from working by themselves to being an integral part of a
team. They stress that once a students
feels that they are an important part they will gain more knowledge. It is the responsibility of the instructor
to set up the activities to foster this growth.
Teles and Coutinho show the same feelings in their
article. The article is about a group
of student- teachers that needed to complete a teacher degree program in order
to be able to continue teaching in their classrooms. Most of the teachers had only completed schooling until high
school, but “the Ministry of Education made it mandatory to have a degree in
education in order to be a classroom teacher (Teles,
L., and Coutinho, L., 2011, pg
81).” Because of this mandate, if the
teachers did not complete a degree program they were not going to be allowed to
continue teaching in the classroom.
They would be moved to administrative positions in the school (Teles,
L., and Coutinho, L., 2011, pg 88). The University
of Brasilia set up a blended program for the teachers to participate in. The
university worked hard to make sure that there was collaboration between the
student teachers.
Teles and Coutinho (2011) write, “it is above all necessary
to work for the development of a human being who is capable to establish
knowledge sharing relations and construction, in both online and face-to-face
group meetings (pg 84). This goes along with Palloff and Pratt’s (2007)belief “that a
cyclical relationship exists in online classes wherein collaborative activity
supports the creation of community, and the presence of community supports the
ability for collaborative activity to occur successfully (pg 157).” Both authors stress that working together
forces both parties to want to succeed.
We need other people in order to succeed.
Personally, going through online education myself, I would
completely with this idea of collaboration.
When I do not feel a part of the group and all alone I do not gain as
much knowledge as I do when I am working with someone. I have felt alone at points, but it is the help
of my fellow classmates that have helped me succeed in the classes we have taken
so far.
The article and the book also have further explained to me
the importance of the class discussions.
Palloff and Pratt (2007) write that “an important element should be
built into an online is the expectation that student will provide constructive
and thoughtful feedback to each other (pg 176).” They also acknowledge that this can be a source of conflict
(Palloff, R. and Pratt, K., 2007, pg 177). I can see how this could be true but
I have not personally experienced this.
I can see now how important the feedback from other people can be. I have personally given some feedback that
has helped some of my classmates and also have been on the receiving end.
References
Palloff,
R. M., & Pratt, K. (2007). Building online learning communities:
effective strategies for the virtual classroom (2nd ed.). San Francisco,
CA: Jossey-Bass.
Teles,
L., & Coutinho, L. (2011). Teacher Professional Development in the Amazon
Region: Strategies to Create Successful Learning Communities. Journal Of
Asynchronous Learning Networks, 15(3), 81-92.
