This paper discusses the challenges faced by a group of Smart School teachers in a partnership model designed to help them develop professionally through the use of online tools. This model known as e-CPDelT: Model 2020 is loosely based on the successful, UK based Improving the Quality of Education For All (IQEA) project (Hopkins et al., 1996). The model was piloted on 20 teachers of English, mathematics and science from 5 Smart Schools around Kuala Lumpur. It features collaboration between these teachers in the hope that it would lead to the development of viable communities of practice. Teacher collaboration in this pilot was in the form of (a) sharing text based narratives of perceived good lessons through blogs and (b) sharing of video clips of good lessons through the ViP (Virtual interactive Platform) and (c) forum discussions of lessons. Data were obtained from teacher interviews and mentor reflections. Brinkerhoff's (2006) framework on technology adoption was used to identify the challenges faced by these teachers. The findings revealed that teachers faced resource, institutional, informational and attitudinal problems. The paper concludes with discussion of suggested measures to improve technology adoption by teachers.
The implementation of the Smart schools project was one of the seven flagships' initiatives of the Malaysian Government aims at optimalising ICT utilisation in schools in line with Malaysia's aim to position the country as a globally competitive knowledge-based economy. However, research studies reported a lack of success of the project towards promoting effective ICT usage and developing teacher professionally. This situation became the impetus for the development of the e-CPDelT research project which intends to develop an online learning system based on action research and personal involvement for Smart school teachers. The model adopted is loosely based on the successful UK-based Improving the Quality of Education for All (IQEA) project (Ainscow et al., 1994) and the Communities of Practice (CoP)'s approach (Wenger, 1998). The data were obtained from the blog entries made by the 20 participating Smart schools teachers and triangulated with focus group interviews and mentor reflections. The preliminary findings revealed both internal and external problems. Drawing upon these findings, the eCPDelT learning system was designed and steps were undertaken to promote the new system. However, the response to this promotion was far from satisfactory. The paper concludes by discussing the reasons for such disappointing results and proposes a new plan of action that involves the introduction of the Critical Friends Group technique.
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