Facultad: Eliminar Miembros Individuales de la Junta Directiva de la ICANN

Participation in the online platform helped teachers to develop their critical skills. The teachers were pleased that the participation in the program raised their awareness of the need to critically assess any ready materials and have au- tonomy in a classroom (meso factors). Emma ,for example, praised the organ- izers of the platform for organization of each module of the program. In her opinion the organization of each module enabled the teachers to critically as- sess the knowledge she received during different parts of the platform, their previous teaching experiences and her pupils needs. She made a following comment:

“At first we had lectures, read different articles, watch films and then during preparing bank activities in small groups and further discus- sion we were able to think critically if our activities are in accordance to our pupils and our teaching preferences”

Emma added the following comment:

“ Discussions with colleagues after group presentations were very valuable to me. After we presented our activities we had discussion with other colleagues. They provoked us to think critically about different options, ask questions. It was great experience”.

Teachers learned that they could not only rely on ready materials but also on their previous teaching experiences. For example, Marta claimed that the idea of involving pupils in making masks or decorations for theatrical plays which was proposed by the experts in a platform did not stay in accordance with her teaching experiences and the needs of her pupils.

“ In Polish reality older and more experienced teachers and experts always have a right. In this platform we had unique chance to learn reflection skills. I will give you an example : We have been told numerous times that children should make decorations for theatrical play as in this way they will be more mo- tivated to learn. My experience shows the opposite. Even when I worked in pri- vate language school I learned never to ask my pupils to do art work at home, as I knew that 80% of pupils would not do it. On the other hand, for me, and parents doing cuts ups in a classroom is a waste of time. I proposed that in- stead of doing cuts ups, the children do painting projects on a large piece of pa- per. Together with my partner we proposed an activity which in our opinion is better for children.”

111

Krystyna, on the other hand, was sceptical about the suggestion to engage pu- pils from the first grade of primary school in the learning process.

“ The experts from the agency asked the teachers to ask a question : “What I am going to learn today? The teacher presents the pupils with a set of statements , for example can you name five toys in English. Then the pupils ask themselves if they know the answer. I am not convinced that this method works in mixed ability classes. When I tried to introduce this method it was a disaster. Half of the children knew the answer for almost all questions, half did not. The stronger children asked me later what is the point of learning things we already know. I wanted to introduce the idea later when the dif- ferences between pupils are smaller, however, this was not met with approval of the head teacher”

Krystyna who is proud of her extensive methodological knowledge is astonished of the fact that other teachers do not appreciate her knowledge and do not have willingness to critically assess the decisions of the experts. She mentioned the following

“The attitude of the teachers were at first hopeless. At first they be- lieved the head teachers, now the experts. However, during doing bank activities and discussions with other teachers they realized that they need to revaluate their teaching methods”.

Later, she noticed that teachers developed awareness of critical assessment of different teaching practices. Krystyna made the following statement:

“I think that teachers’ attitude to thinking about teaching changed dramatically after the presentation we made on the platform. The presentation was about movement activities which are suited to the needs of our classroom. Of course the activities were different than those present in the teachers books. These suggestions were met with enthusiasm of other teachers. Later we heard that they used in their classroom. This accident I believed motivated the teachers for harder work to critically evaluate any teaching materials.

It should be noted that participation in the online platform helped teachers to assess their future learning needs. Initially, they tried to depend only on training provided by the online platform for teachers professional development. Later however, when their activities progressed, they developed more critical ap-

112

proach to learning. Emma provided valuable account which explained why teachers sought other learning opportunities.

“Discussions with experts and colleagues convinced me that every teacher need to search different sources and learn how to analyse different materials. We have been encouraged to do this. We have been told numerous times that our identity as teacher will be strengthened when we try to learn actively, think about different op- tions”.

Agnieszka also provided the reasons why she decided not to depend only on the platform as a main source of knowledge.

“ After initial enthusiasm I realized that some important issues were only tackled by the organizers. For example, we had a chance to watch a film on different alternative methods of teaching like: Mon- tessori method, Dalton plan. At first I found it useless, and not appli- cable to a classroom full of 27 pupils. But then I tried to search in- ternet sources on the internet and found out that some of elements from Montessori method can be useful. Together with my partner we tried to explore this issue further”.