Shironica P. Karunanayaka

Preamble

As educators we are in the habit of weaving dreams. These include the dreams of school teachers who are aspiring to become better teachers as well as the dreams of teacher educators about building teacher capacity in relation to teaching and supporting their students’ learning.

The work captured here is about helping dreamers realize their dreams and weaving these dreams into a coherent picture of the impacts of the integration of open educational resources and the adoption of open educational practices by teachers in the Sri Lankan school system.

Teachers as dreamers

Teachers often have dreams about their teaching and learning practices and how to realize them. Most new teachers venture into the teaching profession with dreams of becoming ‘good’ teachers’ and about bringing in new ideas, using new resources, trying out new methods, and hoping to make a change in the lives of their learners.

However, many a times these dreams are vanished into thin air without teachers being able to realize them. This happens because of various challenges faced by the teachers in real life such as, limited access to resources and facilities, time constraints and lack of support and appreciation by school administration for the work that they do. Hence, over time, this enthusiasm gradually dwindles making teachers frustrated and de-motivated, compelling them to just shuffle along with existing prescriptive, conventional thinking and teaching practices. This is a familiar story for teachers in Sri Lankan schools.

When this is the case teachers are criticized for not being innovative, creative or collaborative and being resistant to ‘change’. Rather than blaming teachers, further de-motivating them and shattering their dreams of doing better, it is best to think about how to help them realize their dreams and become better teachers. As teacher educators, our goal has been to build that kind of teacher capacity, empowering them to achieve their dreams to become great teachers who can make a difference.

Opening up educational practices

We believe that education is, and always has been about sharing, and that knowledge should be shared – freely, openly and equitably. The concept of Open Educational Resources (OER) supports this notion of ‘opening up’ education, by providing teachers and learners with opportunities for sharing educational resources openly and freely. This notion is captured by the 5-Rs framework for OER – Retain; Reuse; Revise; Remix & Redistribution (Wiley, 2014), and the ‘open licensing’ of materials (https.creativecommons.org) to empower teachers do what they have not been able to do before. This paves the way for teachers to be creative, innovative and collaborative in their educational practices, providing them with an opportunity to accomplish their dreams.

Making teachers’ dreams come true

Our goal in the work that is presented here has been to help teachers “make their dreams come true” in relation of adopting and developing a culture of sharing in educational settings where resources are often lacking and where there is a need to promote such a culture.

Our work in this regard was made possible with a seed grant from the International Development Research Center (IDRC), Canada, administered by Wawasan Open University, Malaysia as part of the Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) program. A key goal of this project has been to investigate how, and in which ways the integration of OER is having an impact on teaching and learning in Sri Lankan schools.

To achieve this goal, we engaged with student teachers of the Post Graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) Programme of the Faculty of Education at the Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL) to integrate OER in their teaching and then study its impacts, in terms of changes in the quality of teaching-learning materials teachers use, and changes in their pedagogical perspectives and practices. The project has been implemented at nine OUSL centres – Anuradhapura, Badulla, Batticaloa, Colombo, Jaffna, Kandy, Kurunegala and Ratnapura, representing the nine Provinces of Sri Lanka. This ensured that the benefits of this work did not remain confined to the central campus of the University, and that it filtered down to remote areas where the teaching and learning is actually taking place.

We expected that participant student teachers will develop their competencies in identifying, using and creating OER and engaging in sharing and innovative use of freely available teaching-learning materials. An intervention program was designed that offered opportunities, support and appreciation, and motivation to help these teachers overcome their uncertainties and to progress confidently towards fulfilling their hopes and dreams.

Adopting a design-based approach to this intervention

Since OER is a novel concept for school teachers in Sri Lanka, it was essential to raise teachers’ awareness of OER and the opportunities afforded by it and build their capacity in OER integration. Therefore we took a design-based research (DBR) approach to this task. DBR is a systematic and flexible methodology aimed at improving educational practices through iterative analysis, design, development, and implementation, based on collaboration among researchers and practitioners in real-world settings, and leading to contextually-sensitive design principles and theories (Wang & Hannafin, 2005).

Using this approach, we designed an intervention to support the adoption of OER and OEP among the participant teachers. Our intervention was implemented at nine OUSL Centres in three iterative cycles during the project (March-July’15; Aug’-Dec’15; Jan-June’16). The process started with the first intervention workshops in March 2015, which was followed up with continuous communication and monitoring via a dedicated Learning Management System (Moodle) titled “OER-integrated Teaching and Learning”, as well as a series of intermediate evaluation workshops, culminating in the final evaluation workshop held in June, 2016.

During this intervention process the researchers, together with the participant teachers, attempted to find viable answers to the issues identified in relation to the adoption of OER and OEP in the teaching-learning process, using a variety of data gathering strategies, as part of the four stages of the DBR cycle – Analysis; Solutions; Testing & Refinement; Reflection (Reeves, 2004).

A detailed description of specific strategies we employed in the intervention are presented in Table 1.

Table 1: Specific strategies employed in the intervention at different phases of DBR approach

Phases in DBR Approach	Experiences & Strategies Designed in the Intervention
Phases in DBR Approach	Purpose	Teacher/Researcher Experiences	Data Collection
1. Analysis of practical problems by researchers & practitioners in collaboration	Analyze existing degree/s of OEP in teachers (in terms of Resource usage; Pedagogical thinking; Pedagogical Practices)	Opportunity to reflect on current thinking and practices in relation to openness in education	Pre/Mid/Post Intervention surveys Concept mapping Observation of instructional methods and materials used (lesson plans) Focus group discussions Self-reflections In-depth interviews OEP-IE Index LMS activities- Uploading lesson plans Sharing OER found Creating OER Reflective journal Extension activities Teacher Reflections Researcher Reflections – Writing “Stories
2. Development of solutions informed by existing design principles & technological innovations	Raise awareness on OER and its affordances and build capacity in identifying, searching, selecting and integrating OER in their teaching practices.	Intervention Workshops; Capacity building in identifying, searching, selecting and integrating OER; Access to LMS supporting OER integrations and OEP ; Opportunities to engage in integration of OER and adoption of OEP in teaching and learning; Monitoring activities and providing constructive feedback; Encourage collaborations, peer review and self-review
3. Iterative cycles of testing and refinement of solutions in practice	Finding solutions to authentic problems in teaching and learning with the teachers’ active participation in this process.	Monitoring/ Evaluation Workshops; Opportunities to experiment with integration of OER and adoption of OEP in teaching and learning; Monitoring activities and providing constructive feedback; Encourage collaborations, peer review and self-review ; Promote healthy competition – Most Active Participant; Centre
4. Reflection to produce design principles and enhance solution implementation	Teachers and researchers reflecting ín’ and ‘on’ their experiences, functioning as reflective practitioners	Monitoring/Evaluation/Writing Workshops; Opportunities to engage in a constant dialogue among teachers and with the researchers via the LMS, and through face-to-face discussions; Promote reflective practice; Support extension activities by teachers – seminars, workshops, publications…etc.

Weaving Dreams

Our journey began with believing in teachers, their hopes and dreams. Our aspirations have been to empower teachers to help them become creative, innovative and self-directed so that they can explore their own ambitions and aspirations. The intervention we designed offered them the opportunity to explore new possibilities for open educational practices in their teaching and learning.

This has been a process-oriented, self-reflective journey, where researchers and teachers worked together in partnership as co-researchers, actively engaging in finding solutions to authentic problems and situations in real-life settings, and to overcome challenges in fulfilling their dreams for being better teachers. A range of ‘pull’ and ‘push’ factors were deployed as part of this process and used to lead, guide and motivate teachers to rekindle their enthusiasm, overcome their uncertainties to progress more positively and confidently towards fulfilling their dreams and expectations towards OEP.

By encouraging teachers to explore the adoption of OER and OEP, and then reflect on their experiences, we offered them the opportunity to become reflective practitioners. The meaning of this experience for teachers was discovered through their and researchers’ interpretations of their ‘lived experiences”. As part of this, the teachers’ journeys towards fulfilling their dreams were captured in the form of reflective narratives or “Stories”. And then these stories were woven together by the researchers creating coherent stories to give a clear picture of their journeys towards OEP.

Dreamers:

Shironica Karunanayaka & Som Naidu

1st July, 2016