The main theme of the study is exploring and understanding the impact of an innovative continuing professional development model for integrating ICT into classroom pedagogy. The focus is on the relationship between teachers’ beliefs, knowledge and pedagogic practice in the process of developing and adopting new knowledge and skills to cope with 21st century education. The study explores the 'future schools' primary teachers’ education, in-service training, status, beliefs, knowledge, and skills of using ICT in practice in the Kuwait context. The finding from the exploratory study shows that teachers’ lack of Technological, Pedagogical and Content knowledge TPACK and that this impacts on their capacity to improve their pedagogic practice. The study applied a social-constructivist approach to understand the process of change in the nine participants' teachers' beliefs, knowledge through an innovative continuing professional development model, and stimulating teachers to develop a reflective practice skills focusing on improving pedagogic practice and using ICT. A case study approach was used as the methodology of the study to develop an understanding of the process of change in the nine participant teachers' reflection on and experienced of the effects of adopting alternative pedagogic practice and integrating ICT. The numerous small findings from the quantitative and qualitative methods applied to the six months of continuing professional development involving nine primary teachers come under four main themes: 1) In-service teachers' beliefs and knowledge development, 2) Classroom pedagogy for autonomy with ICT integration, 3) Constraints affecting future schools’ teachers' integration of ICT, and 4) The key principles of an RP-BCPD model for teachers CPD in Kuwait. The understandings from the findings of the study show that the quality of the CPD for improving teachers' pedagogic practice is affected by the socio-cultural context of the 'future schools'. The study shows that the nine participant teachers can develop effective alternative pedagogic practice and successfully integrate ICT, when they are empowered to reflect, inquire into their practice, and learn from each other and from cross-cultural best practice. The unique finding of the study indicated that the nine participant teachers experiences some difficulties with engaging in the change process because of classroom cultural context such as: teachers' TPACK knowledge and competences, curriculum overload, and classroom size. Finally, the finding shows that providing the participant teachers with reflective practice as the base of CPD programme within schools context linked learning theory to improve pedagogic practice.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:630892 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Mohammad, Hasibah |
| Contributors | Wegerif, Rupert; Mansour, Nasser |
| Publisher | University of Exeter |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/10871/15932 |
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