December 2020 - EERA Blog

Caring for Those who Teach Online – Reflections from a Virtual Staffroom

by Dr Sandra Cullen | ESAI, General, NW 1 Professional Learning and Development, NW 26 Educational Leadership

When schools and higher education institutions closed their doors in March 2020, some of the implicit and informal supports for teacher educators disappeared. As teacher educators migrated to new modes of teaching and learning, institutional supports such as IT upskilling, educational technologies, professional development, and assistance from HR were provided. However, many staff commented that the burden of the expectations placed on them often exceeded what they felt capable of responding to in a personal capacity. With this as the backdrop, I want to reflect on how staff in one institution developed more informal ways of supporting each other and building community in a time of isolation and fragmentation.

The imperative to create what Noddings calls ‘a climate in which caring relations can flourish’, and through which a sense of belonging can be maintained, led to us setting up a virtual staff room. The staff room doors opened for a coffee break from 11.00 to 12.00 every morning. To date, this has happened on over 120 occasions with more than 90 colleagues engaging in the staff room at different times. This casual drop-in space was hosted on Zoom with a reminder sent to all staff ten minutes before the room was opened. The live interaction was supported by emails, phone calls, and some shared photography and cooking projects.

As with any staff room, the tone was set by the people in the room at any given time. Ultimately what emerged was a supportive conversational space which broke down barriers as people swapped the small details and intimacies of everyday living and allowed colleagues glimpses into one another’s lives. This online space was characterised by a framework of CARE: a space for free-flowing conversation on a range of topics from the sublime to the ridiculous, attention to each other, deepening relationships with colleagues, and an increasing empathy as we observed something of each other’s homes and family lives. What we learned from the virtual staff room is that each element of this framework of CARE has to be supported by a number of integrated principles for practice: presence, production, performance, persona, personal, pastoral, and peer-to-peer.

Presence: Developing and maintaining a supportive space for conversation demands the fully engaged presence of the host in the virtual space. The host cannot dominate the conversation but will have to facilitate it. The continuity of having the same host, meeting at the same time, and sending a regular reminder, offered people a sense of assurance that some things stayed the same. As one colleague noted: ‘Just knowing that there are opportunities like this to connect goes a long way to help you feel more connected right away’.

Production: We learned that there should be no agenda or expectation of having to engage in quizzes or activities so that participants have the chance to ‘switch-off’ from having to do something. Participants wanted to ‘be’ with each other rather than to ‘do’.

Performance: Some personality types were comfortable adopting a virtual persona and spoke comfortably to the camera in the early stages of the virtual staff room, whereas it took others time to be comfortable in the space. Trying to ensure that all participants can be seen on one screen is vital for bringing quieter participants into the chat.

Persona: During the early weeks of meeting each other, there was a sense that participants were conscious of performing for the camera and projecting a positive persona. This mitigated against revealing what was really happening for them. Empathic conversations ensued when someone risked saying that things were not going so well for them.

Personal: The host has to ensure that people are introduced to each other as many colleagues may not have met in real-life. Deepening relationships in a CARE framework means that the virtual staffroom welcomed children, partners, and pets and provided glimpses of each other’s homes and gardens as part of caring for each other. In the words of one participant: ‘I like meeting people’s children and pets and seeing their homes and gardens – makes me feel more connected.’

Pastoral: Taking a CARE approach to hosting the virtual staff room will occasionally draw the host into providing pastoral support for some participants. CARE will sometimes call for actions that we might not have anticipated.

Peer-to-peer: CARE is ultimately a peer-to-peer activity based on the realisation, again in the words of a participant, ‘that we are in this together, I look forward to seeing the familiar faces.’ The virtual staff room extended people’s social network by creating new links and new modes of engagement between colleagues.

What began as an informal approach to caring for staff and keeping us connected with each other, the virtual staff room has become an example of how taking a CARE approach to an online space can provide a positive space for conversation, characterised by empathic attention to each other in our evolving relationships.

The door remains open, and the kettle is on.

Dr Sandra Cullen

Assistant Professor of Religious Education, Dublin City University

Dr. Sandra Cullen is Assistant Professor of Religious Education at Dublin City University where she specialises in second-level religious education. As Director of the ICRE (Irish Centre for Religious Education) she supports research and teaching in religious education in a variety of contexts. She is the APF (Area of Professional Focus) leader for Religious Education on the Doctor of Education Programme at DCU, and serves on the Executive of EFTRE (the European Forum for Teachers of Religious Education) and on the International Advisory Board of the Journal of Religious Education.

Education Outside the Classroom – An Innovative Teaching Concept During COVID-19

by Dr Christoph Mall | NW 27 Didactics - Learning and Teaching, NW 3 Curriculum Innovation

These days, pupils’ everyday life is characterized by health-endangering behaviors e.g. lack of physical activity or excessive sedentary times, resulting in physical but also mental health problems.

Additionally, pupils nowadays have to deal with unprecedented challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Imposed restrictions of contact and limitations of recreational activities or sport might affect their physical and mental health status negatively.

Pupils – mandatorily – spend most of their waking hours in schools. Schools further have been identified as stress-provoking, which can be a source of mental health problems. Consequently, schools represent an ideal setting for health-related interventions reaching all kids and adolescents. This is where Education Outside the Classroom (EOtC) comes in. EOtC represents a health-related intervention in terms of a teaching concept which aims to counteract the abovementioned health risks and further support the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

But what is Education Outside the Classroom (EOtC) exactly?

Is EOtC an outdoor excursion over several consecutive days in summer, detached from the core curriculum? No!

EotC is integrated into the regular curriculum. On a regular and long-term basis, learning environments are deliberately moved outside the regular classroom setting.

EOtC typically takes place in nature, e.g. in forests, fields, or parks. Places of cultural, political, and social significance, such as museums, libraries, and other public institutions, further represent suitable learning environments.

Wherever EOtC takes place, the outdoor location most often becomes part of the object of learning. EOtC is by no means limited to subjects that everyone would immediately associate with outdoor lessons, such as biology, physical education, or geography. EOtC can be integrated into the regular curriculum and enhance teaching of all school subjects.

Research into EOtC

In a systematic literature review, we found several studies reporting positive effects of EOtC on pupils’ social interaction, learning motivation, physical activity, and mental health. Our early results from this evolving research field—both on a practical and scientific level—are supported by more recent findings, e.g.:

Breaks and rest periods during outdoor classes seem to have a positive effect on pupils’ stress reduction
High levels of light physical activity during EOtC are associated with a health-relevant reduction in pupils’ cortisol levels
EOtC promotes pupils’ physical activity and learning motivation
Teachers also report EOtC’s potential to improve students’ learning performance and life skills

Practical Implementation of Education Outside the Classroom

In our opinion, teachers cannot simply transfer indoor teaching and the respective teaching methods to an outdoor learning environment. Similar to regular classroom teaching, teaching outside the classroom requires thorough planning geared to the respective setting in order to enable EOtC to its highest potential.

EOtC involves e.g. the following characteristic features:

no walls limiting the learning environment
unpredictable and changing weather conditions
new and unknown materials
a variety of affordances and stimuli (e.g. interaction with natural elements such as trees, rivers, living animals)
several logistical challenges (e.g. active transport to the outdoor learning environment, transport of material for an outdoor laboratory)

EOtC’s organization differs depending on e.g. the school subject, weather, and location. If schools have a suitable permanent outdoor location nearby, classes can e.g. build long-term shelters with branches for rainy days, plant their own vegetables or use tree trunks as seating accommodations. Regardless of the general variety and flexibility in EOtC, fixed routines can provide clarity and promote discipline as well as motivation.

EOtC has great potential to enable pupil-centered and hands-on learning experiences in which teachers support pupils’ autonomy in their learning process by e.g. transferring responsibility to the students. Examples in this regard are learning by doing, trial and error, and the experience of competence or social relatedness.

Education Outside the Classroom during COVID-19

EOtC is a teaching concept that might help to reduce the risk of a SARS-CoV-2 infection as study results indicate that the risk of infection is highly increased in closed environments via aerosols in comparison to outdoor environments. Outdoor infection is very unlikely if distance and hygiene rules are being followed (Nishiura et al., 2020; Qian et al., 2020).

During the tuberculosis-pandemic in the 20th century, ill pupils or pupils suspected to have tuberculosis were taught outside (Open-Air-Schools) to separate them from healthy children. Instead of getting the infectious disease or becoming more ill, most pupils stayed healthy or recovered in the Open-Air Schools. In these Open-Air Schools, pupils sat on their normal tables in open-air environments, such as rooftops, factories without windows, walls, or gardens. In a New York Times article, Open-Air Schools were lately reconsidered as a promising approach during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Similar to the idea of Open-Air-Schools, EOtC could enhance teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. The outdoor learning environment on the one hand involves a provably reduced – but by no means non-existent – risk of infection. On the other hand, EOtC might issue a challenge to teachers as well as students – and their parents – who are not used to outdoor teaching and learning. By our work, we aim to meet these challenges and form a basis which facilitates including EOtC into everyday teaching – now and in the future.

We hope that the current need for innovative teaching concepts which involve minimal risk of infection and enable regular classroom teaching will create awareness of EOtC’s various possibilities.

Together with colleagues from the German Forest Conservation Society, we publish EOtC teaching materials for various subjects and grade levels open access. These documents may help interested teachers taking their pupils outdoors more often.

If now is not the time to teach pupils outside the classroom in forests, on fields, in parks, or anywhere in nature, when will it be?

References and Further Reading

If you’ve enjoyed this blog, you can find out more about our research here.

Global trends in insufficient physical activity among adolescents: a pooled analysis of 298 population-based surveys with 1·6 million participants – Guthold, Stevens, Riley, & Bull, 2020

Analysis of Sedentary Times of Children and Adolescents between 4 and 20 Years – Hubert & Köppel, 2017

The pandemic of physical inactivity: global action for public health, Kohl et al,. 2012

Child and adolescent mental health worldwide: evidence for action Kieling et al., 2011

Sources of stress and worry in the development of stress-related mental health problems: A longitudinal investigation from early- to mid-adolescence – Anniko et al., 2018

The extent and dissemination of udeskole in Danish schools Bentsen et al., 2009

Effects of Regular Classes in Outdoor Education Settings: A Systematic Review on Students’ Learning, Social and Health Dimensions – Becker et al., 2017

Stress in School. Some Empirical Hints on the Circadian Cortisol Rhythm of Children in Outdoor and Indoor Classes Dettweiler et al., 2017

Stress Response and Cognitive Performance Modulation in Classroom versus Natural Environments: A Quasi-Experimental Pilot Study with Children – Mygind, et al., 2018a

Stress in School. Some Empirical Hints on the Circadian Cortisol Rhythm of Children in Outdoor and Indoor Classes – Dettweiler et al., 2017; Becker et al., 2019

Children’s physical activity during a segmented school week: results from a quasi-experimental education outside the classroom intervention – Schneller et al., 2017

The association between education outside the classroom and students’ school motivation: Results from a one-school-year quasi-experiment – Bølling et al., 2018

Primary teachers’ experiences with weekly education outside the classroom during a year – Mygind et al., 2018b

Closed environments facilitate secondary transmission of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) – Nishiura et al., 2020

Indoor transmission of SARS-CoV-2 – Qian et al., 2020

Dr. Christoph Mall

Senior Research Fellow at the Associate Professorship of Didactics in Sport and Health, Department of Sport and Health Sciences, Technical University of Munich (TUM).

Christoph is a sports scientist particularly interested in student physical activity, health, and learning motivation during Education Outside the Classroom. He furthermore studies how interventions taking place in open community spaces promote children’s and adolescents’ physical as well as psychological well-being. He is the project leader of Active City Innovation within the international Sports-Innovation-Network (SINN-i). He is the founding member of the Play, Learn and Teach Outdoors Network (PLaTO-Net).

See Christophs’ Twitter, Researchgate and ORCID profiles.

Jan Ellinger

2nd Year PhD Student, Technical University of Munich (TUM).

Jan is a sports scientist and works at the Associate Professorship of Didactics in Sport and Health, Department of Sport and Health Sciences at TUM. His doctoral research focuses on health promotion and prevention in the population of children and adolescents. Jan’s research focuses on the school setting, but also considers other living environments, such as the community.

Leslie Bernhardt

Student Assistant, Technical University of Munich (TUM)

Leslie studies Health Science in the 5^th semester at TUM and works as a student assistant at the Associate Professorship of Didactics in Sport and Health at TUM. She is involved in the project Education Outside the Classroom which investigates the effects of regular school lessons outside the classroom on the behavior and health of pupils. She will graduate in 2021.

Posthumanism and Education

by Anna Kokko | Emerging Researchers' Group

The rapidly changing world and new challenges have led many of us to wonder if the current ways of understanding and organizing education are adequate. One emerging perspective in the field of education is posthumanism. Although posthumanism is often considered in a coherent-sounding way in many contexts, it is not a single, unified theory and it has been used in many areas of education. Its multiple voices can be interpreted in many ways – ways that cannot all be introduced in this short text.

In general, however, the common goal of the posthuman is to shake dualistic thinking and the dominant position of the humanism. This means that in posthuman thinking humans are not seen as privileged, and the focus is not on how something is but rather how and in what kind of socio-material relations it emerges.

What is the posthumanist approach?

Posthuman questions could be posed when discussing issues related to the relationships between human and non-human. This would include topics such as, for example, animal-human relationships or climate change.

Importantly, instead of thinking simply how humans use nature, the focus could be on what emerges when human and nature inter-act and intra-act (become) together. One of its most interesting perspectives of this time, in my opinion, is the becoming of physical space.

This approach stems, in this case in particular, from the concept of becoming as discussed by Karen Barad which has made visible the school social practices in time-space relationships. The concept functions as a so-called relational concept, in which human and non-human, such as matter and discourse, or social and material, are not separated, but rather focus on how through entanglement they become something new.

Not only what is but how it is becoming

In our study, we examined the social and material becomings in two schools which operated in open and flexible learning spaces. An examination of everyday events and processes concretely opened up how space (matter), discourse and social practice were shaped together. This was seen in situations where, for example, teachers and students negotiated new meaning for physical space and how it could be used. In these situations, space was not seen as fixed or given according to someone’s pre-determined (often political) agenda but actively shaped by its users. An active approach to space allowed for experiences of agency and ownership of one’s own learning, for both teachers and heterogeneous groups of students.

Examining the becoming of physical space also brought out broader perspectives. By recognizing of becoming rather than the static perception of space, we realized that changes over time should also be taken into account at the school level and more broadly in decision-making. From the point of view of using the space, it is as important to continue investing in the stages of rebuilding the space as it was to invest in the new school building as a one-time purchase. Investment can mean, for example, re-building the physical space, but also time for teachers co-planning or a sufficient number of teachers. Therefore, in order to understand the often messy everyday life of education, space cannot be confined to a static, already predetermined perspective, but must be viewed as situational, in relation to other situational and existing components (Massey, 1994; Barad, 2007).

From familiar to strange

As illustrated by the above example, posthumanist thinking can be used to explore the processes that are often left out, perhaps precisely because of their mundane and routine nature, hidden and excluded from research. Therefore, studying becoming can offer an opportunity to make the familiar strange. This familiar alienation, in turn, can open up new perspectives on extensively studied phenomena.

On the other hand, even the possibilities of posthumanism are often discussed I think it is important to understand also its incompleteness. Emphasizing the becoming of certain combinations automatically excludes others. Although in our study we found some answers, the study also left a number of questions. In other words, instead of being able to give comprehensive answers to phenomena, posthumanism draws its strength from illuminating phenomena from a particular alternative perspective, while inviting new perspectives to the debate.

Nor was the purpose of our research to present posthumanist thinking exhaustively, but rather to promote a discussion to what questions posthumanist thinking can find an answer. Although the posthumanist becoming has been associated with educational discussions, it is still in the margins of educational research. Is posthumanism thus something more than just a new post? Although posthuman thinking has its own challenges that would require its own writing, turning attention away from how something is at the moment to what human and non-human together become, offers an opportunity to understand more complex and messy worlds of education.

References and Further Reading

Barad, K. (2003). Posthuman performativity: Towards an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter. Signs. Spring, 801–831.

Barad, K. 2007. Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham: Duke University Press.

Kokko, A.K., Hirsto, L. From physical spaces to learning environments: processes in which physical spaces are transformed into learning environments. Learning Environ Res (2020).

Massey, D. (2005). For space. London: Sage.

Anna Kokko

Second-year doctoral student in the University of Eastern Finland

Anna Kristiina Kokko works as a younger researcher at the University of Eastern Finland. Her research interests related to the issues of posthumanist and new materialist theories. In her dissertation, she studies the becoming of agencies in comprehensive school settings.

How Design Thinking in Education can Help During COVID-19

by Dr Fiona Chambers | NW 18 Research in Sport Pedagogy

In April 2020, Dr Fiona Chambers, a Senior Lecturer in PE and Sport Pedagogy at University College Cork in Ireland, drew an idea on the back of an envelope. She envisioned a plan to kickstart sport and physical activity during and beyond the pandemic, using the principle of Design Thinking in Education.

This idea has become the first Global Design Challenge for Sport and Physical Activity. Here she tells us the reason behind this challenge and how she went about organising it. But first, we wanted to know – what is Design Thinking and how does it work in the field of Education?

Design Thinking in Education

Design thinking is universally used in innovation to solve intractable human-centred problems (Buchanan 1992) in any field, including education. It can be used to innovate processes, products, or services. In so doing, it engages creative multi-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder teams to use a systematic and collaborative approach to identifying and creatively solving problem (Luchs, Swann and Griffin, 2016, p. 2).

Design thinking brings ‘designers’ principles, approaches, methods, and tools to problem-solving’ (Brown, 2008, p.1). Lockwood (2016) asserts that the design thinking process ‘emphasises observation, collaboration, fast learning, visualization of ideas, rapid concept prototyping, and concurrent business analysis’ (n.p.). The defining pillars of design thinking (Brown, 2008) are problem centeredness, nonlinearity, optionality, and the presence of uncertainty and ambiguity (Liedtka, 2015).

Design challenges are wicked (complex) as they are ‘not stable but continually evolving and mutating and had many causal levels’ (Blackman et al, 2006, p.70) and adding to this complexity, there are intergenerational, multisectoral, and multicultural stakeholders associated with the challenge that hold a range of philosophical views. Design thinkers use empathy to understand the end-user and spend 80% of their time defining the problem before moving into the solution space.

Design thinkers have a particular mindset (open, optimistic, comfortable with ambiguity), follow a process (six stages), and use space as a tool for optimising creativity. Design Thinking can be used to develop educational strategy, innovate curricula, assessment, and develop new ways of researching the experiences of young people and all stakeholders in the field of education.

Design Thinking, Education and COVID-19

We are seeing empty football stadiums, matches taking place behind closed doors, and sports clubs of all kinds restricting access. Social distancing restrictions are making training different and changing the nature of participation in sport. At the same time, people are more conscious than ever of the need to stay physically active. The ‘free to enter’ global challenge we set was designed to ask the question:

How might we sustainably redesign sport and physical activity for children and families, the young and the not-so-young, for participants, spectators, fans, and community groups, so that it is inclusive, accessible, attainable – and fun! – during the pandemic and afterwards?

We drew together some of Ireland’s leading sporting organisations, and a range of world organisations, to launch this global design challenge aimed at reimagining what sport and physical activity might look like during and after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Sport Ireland, the Federation of Irish Sport, the Irish National Centre for Outdoor Education and Training, University College Cork Sport, Cork Local Sports Partnership, ISCA, TAFISA, TACTHUB, Deporte para la Educación y la Salud, and Sport for Life Canada looked for the best ideas on how sport and physical activity could survive and thrive in a world remarkably different from what has gone before.

Global Design Challenge for Sport and Physical Activity

The Global Design Challenge for Sport and Physical Activity took place over the weekend of the 26 – 28 June 2020, with teams asked to submit ideas online. In all, 189 teams took part.

When coming up with ideas, participants considered some of the following dimensions:

What is the potential of sport and physical activity to help moderate the impact of Covid-19?
Can you evaluate the current methods for managing the safe use of sport and physical activity locations during and after the Covid-19 pandemic?
How can we improve the clinical care of people with Covid-19 infections through sport and physical activity?
How can we reduce disparities in sport and physical activity opportunities during crises and post-crisis?

The registered teams were provided with free support in the form of a preliminary one-hour Workshop on Design, with Judie Russell of the Vidacademy providing video-making resources to help participants prepare their pitch.

Having completed the judging in July, there are now 37 finalist teams from across 40 countries and 12 time zones. These teams are now entering the eight-month incubation phase (September 2020 to April 2021) where Partners/Incubators will help teams to test their ideas and to seek funding. Successful teams are also being mentored by experts from across all sectors.

The Global Design Challenge for Sport and Physical Activity is being observed by UNESCO, Commonwealth Secretariat, and the World Health Organisation.

Many research organisations are supporting the Challenge, including AIESEP, and PHE Canada and EERA, in particular, NW18 Research in Sport Pedagogy i.e. Dr Rachel Sandford and her team of convenors.

You can find the other participant videos here.

“We are using the principles of Design Thinking to reimagine a world of sport and physical activity and we invite the best ideas from around the globe”.

If you want to know more:

Here is our website: https://www.tacthub.com/sportinnovation

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/globaldesignchallengesport/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GlobalDesignChallenge/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/GlobalDesignCh1

Global Design Challenge 2.0 will be launched in May 2021

References

Buchanan 1992 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1511637?origin=JSTOR-pdf&seq=1
Luchs, Swann and Griffin, 2016, p. 2 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781119154273
Brown, 2008, p.1 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18605031/
Liedtka, 2015 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jpim.12163

Dr Fiona Chambers

Head of the School of Education, University College Cork in Ireland

I am the Head of the School of Education, a Senior Lecturer in PE and Sport Pedagogy at University College Cork in Ireland. I am also a Hasso-Plattner Institute-certified Design Thinking Coach and the Programme Director for the new PGDip in Innovation through Design Thinking at my university.

My teaching, research and civic engagement focuses particularly on the areas of (a) Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, (b) Mentoring, and (c) Social Innovation. Since 2009, I have been a reviewer on 12 international high impact peer review journals and a reviewer for Routledge books. Since 2009, I have published 4 edited books, 14 books, 27 book chapters, 18 peer reviewed articles and 115 conference papers. I am (i) an Invited Member of UNESCO Scientific Committee for Physical Activity; (ii) Secretary General, Association Internationale des Écoles Superiéure d’Éducation Physique (AIESEP); (iii) Co-founder and Convenor of European Educational Research Association (EERA) Network on Research in Sport Pedagogy (iv) founder of the Global Design Challenge for Sport and Physical Activity.

http://publish.ucc.ie/researchprofiles/A013/fchambers