Exploring teacher professional learning in a virtual environment

Project Details

The focus of this innovative project is on the design, development and trialing of a proof-of-concept virtual environment as a model for professional learning for teachers of mathematics. This project will establish a virtual classroom where participants can observe and explore teacher and student thinking. The virtual classroom will provide currently unavailable opportunities to immerse participants in a range of classroom situations, informed by research.

Participants can:

• view an individual student’s work
• ‘hear’ the thinking of a particular student (provides insight into student understanding)
• listen to a justification from the teacher for their choices
• complete tasks to demonstrate understanding of student thinking
• ask an ‘expert’.

The proof-of-concept project targets one mathematics topic (understanding decimal numbers) for in-service teachers; however the technology has the capacity to support many topics across a wide range of subject areas into the future.

Research questions

• Does a virtual environment enable teachers to explore the pedagogical issues involved in teaching a particular mathematics topic?
• What aspects of the virtual environment appeal to teachers the most, from a professional learning point of view, and why?

Researchers

Lynda Ball
Chief Investigator
lball@unimelb.edu.au

Professor Kaye Stacey
Chief Investigator
k.stacey@unimelb.edu.au

Dr Vicki Steinle
Chief Investigator
v.steinle@unimelb.edu.au

A/Professor Robyn Pierce
Chief Investigator
r.pierce@unimelb.edu.au

There are three Chief Investigators in other departments in The University of Melbourne:

Dr Shanton Chang (DCIS*), Ken Clarke (IBES*) and Brad Gathercole (IBES*).

* Department of Computing and Information Systems(DCIS), Institute for a Broadband Enabled Society (IBES)