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construct their beliefs based on their experiences which are situated in a context, as described by Hoyles (1992). Thus, beliefs are contextual in nature and not isolated units (Pajares, 1992).
Beswick (2005a) insisted that the connection nature of beliefs and practice is complex and subject to controversy. So the context in which teachers are practising shapes their beliefs, therefore changing one variable such as the site that is moving towards online professional development will change teachers’ beliefs about professional development programmes.
Cobb et al. (1990) contended changed practice leads to changed beliefs.
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Teachers’ beliefs are considered to be even more significant than teachers’ knowledge (Pajares, 1992). Rosenfeld and Rosenfeld (2008) found in their study on a teacher PD programme that mediated PD activities produced a rise in teacher beliefs about student learning. This may occur in future OPD programmes if the activities are mediated. To differentiate between effective and ineffective PD, Timperley and Alton-Lee (2008) stressed two main factors which are the content and teachers’ engagement with the learning process.
To be more effective, models of professional development must comprise skills development, understanding instructional practices (Dall’ Alba & Sandberg, 2006; Jetton & Alexander, 1997), assessment of students and considering the environment in which the instruction and learning are taking place (Guskey, 2003a). Teachers’ engagement is directly related to teachers’ beliefs. In an OPD environment lack of internet access and/or computer skills will hinder teachers’ engagement.
2.6.1 Impact of school culture
Sirotnik (1989) has stated that the “ultimate power to change is and always has been in the heads, hands, and hearts of the educators who work in our schools” (p. 109). Therefore, to enhance or to upgrade teachers’ knowledge and capabilities professional development must go where the action is, that is in the school. Sirotnik’s statement is still relevant in our educational system where teachers remain the key components in education reform. Despite this statement, most professional development programmes are still offered outside the schools; hence, the school context is not taken into account. Ignoring organisational culture was the main ground why PD or training has failed to improve teachers’ knowledge (Bunch, 2007). In our context, although the MIE has been providing professional development for teachers for a long period of time, the outcome is still disappointing as the pass rate is not increasing, as discussed in section 1.2.2. Although one objective of professional development is to improve students’ achievement as stated by the National Foundation for the Improvement of Education (1996), “the goal of professional development for teachers is to increase student learning” (p. xiii). Since a recent paradigm of professional development has developed, the one-day off-site “one-size fits all” training is being gradually substituted by PD that lasts over a long duration (Garet et al., 2001) and integrates research on what is
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known about how people learn (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000), and is situated within the teacher’s workplace, that is the school (McLaughlin & Talbert, 2006).
Traditional professional development programmes do not recognise teachers’
diversity (Lieberman & Wood, 2001; Siskin, 1994), what teachers know about practice is not taken into consideration (Lampert & Ball, 1999), are not often developmental (Ball &
Cohen, 1999), are content free and not related to the context as stated earlier. These programmes ignore teacher’s individual needs and their contribution in their individual professional growth. The programmes focus on knowledge transmission rather than enable teachers to construct new knowledge. In the US the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 too has failed to define what it calls “high-quality professional development” (Borko, p. 3).
Hawley and Valli (1999) have listed some factors that contribute for an effective professional development. These factors are engaging teachers in solving problems together; supported, continuously, uninterrupted, rich information; helping teachers to construct understanding with regard to theories about the elements concerned by change and reform. They added that professional development must be linked to teachers’ context and learner centred. The school must encourage teachers to come together with the materials from their classrooms and students’ work and discuss in a practice community. Researchers have warned that professional development would remain ineffective as long as it is not related to the context and not grounded in learning practices. Brown and Duguid (1991), among others, called this as “community of practice”, as very often teachers meet informally and ask questions, provide solutions, construct answers together and discuss changes in their work. Today with technology these informal meetings can happen online. Valuable training can be offered for new members through these communities of practice (Klein, 2007). But informal professional development activities must be aligned and balanced with school-based formal professional development. There must be a converging shared vision for professional development which is “career-long, context-specific, continuous effort that is guided by standards, grounded in the teacher’s own work, focused on student learning, and tailored to the teacher’s stage of career development” (Schlager & Fusco, 2004, p. 5). The school-based professional development can be a way to resolve the problem of ineffective professional development programmes which are disconnected from practice, fragmented and misaligned.
One common barrier to effective school-based professional development is teachers’
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reluctance to engage in inquiry or dialogue that evaluates the practice of their peers (Grossman, Wineburg, & Woolworth, 2000). Furthermore, teaching may have basically developed a culture of privacy; therefore, teachers have difficulties in reflecting on their own practices (Little, 1990), according to Ball and Cohen (1999), this because certain professional dispositions of are absent or because their personal identities are closely tied to their classroom practices.
The school culture must promote professionalism and offer opportunities for sharing, risk taking, and reflection among teachers about pedagogy and student learning (Blumenfeld, Fishman, Krajcik, Marx & Soloway, 2000). Therefore, to promote this sharing among teachers the transactional distance must be reduced to facilitate social interaction, which becomes more difficult when transactional distance increases (Boelens, De Wever & Voet, 2017). The psychological and communication space in terms of time and space is called transactional distance (Moore, 1993). An effective method to facilitate interaction is to use the blended learning approach in the school context (Ausburn, 2004; Rovai, 2003), as it can reduce the aspect of time and space in the learning environment.
2.6.2 Impact of technological beliefs
Teachers fear being replaced by technology; therefore, they continue to teach their students through the traditional approach. But technology will never transform education on its own. Stakeholders in education such as teachers need to find solution and apply them to transform education (Aesaert et al., 2013) as this transformation will not happen overnight (Peters, 2017). Teachers are the key for the effective and proper use of technology; thus technology will never replace teachers. They are needed to integrate technology in their curriculum so as to improve knowledge acquisition as well as skills development of their students. In the 21st century, teachers need TPCK (Mishra & Koehler, 2006; Niess, 2005).
Teachers need technology to create online resources to be used in their classroom (TPCK).
But even though PCs have been introduced in classrooms during the past 20 years, the impact on teaching and learning is minimal (Reilly & Sandholtz, 2004). So teachers need professional development to help them in integrating technology in their teaching. Online professional development can be a powerful way for teachers to work collaboratively so that they can improve their practices at a greater rate (Ronfeldt et al., 2015) as well as their
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technological skills. However, such programmes need to be constantly innovated, evaluated and, more importantly, share positive and negative experiences of the online PD programmes.
The online learning can be in blended mode whose design environment must be able to cater for these important challenges: (1) helping students’ learning processes; (2) encouraging interaction; (3) incorporating flexibility; and (4) nurturing an effective learning environment (Boelens, De Wever, & Voet, 2017). Blended learning provides several new opportunities to boost teaching and learning (Spanjers et al., 2015). As far as blended learning implementation is concerned, practitioners and researchers are still struggling (Moskal, Dziuban & Hartman, 2013). The reason that is often used to combine face-to-face with online learning is that it increases learners’ flexibility (Bonk, Kim & Zeng, 2006;
Graham, 2006; Graham, Allen & Ure, 2005), but it is more than that, as blended learning is referred as a more effective pedagogy (Graham, 2006; Joosten, Barth, Harness & Weber, 2014), or improved cost-effective (Graham, 2006). The learners control their learning in terms of time, place, path, or pace more effectively as flexibility increases (Horn & Staker, 2014), as blended learning can be asynchronous instead of synchronous, the learners can study anywhere and do not need to be with their peers at the same time in a classroom (Osguthorpe & Graham, 2003). Additionally, the learners can determine the order of accessing the content provided online (Van Laer & Elen, 2016) and also learn at their own pace (Horn & Staker, 2014). The learners can select topics that interest them. Finally, the learners have the possibility to select the most appropriate mode of learning, which can be face-to-face and/or online learning (Owston et al., 2013). But some learners need the flexibility of blended learning and at the same time they feel that human touch and the social interaction present in face-to-face is still important (Graham, 2006). However, with the rapid growth of open learning resources, blended learning can be a transition before shifting to online learning completely. Because through online learning, the transfer of information and cognitive learning can be accomplished better and faster than in traditional modes (Draves, 2001).
However, online learning is not for everyone even though education institutions offering online courses are increasing rapidly. The major pitfall of online learning is incompletion. There are many factors which can disrupt learners’ intention to complete the
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course such as work, family among others. Therefore, learners need a high degree of self- discipline.
2.6.3 Teachers’ beliefs and OPD
Although some studies have indicated that OPD offers opportunities to update skill and knowledge (Smith, Clark, & Blomeyer, 2005) and Pajares (1992) mentioned that beliefs are the best indicators for decision making, and as teachers choose online learning according to their convenience in terms of time, place and availability (Clary & Wandersee, 2009), there is definitely a need to go further into teachers’ beliefs about OPD. Attack (2003) found that the convenience and flexibility offered in OPD depend on the ability of the participant to develop self-learning habits. In a qualitative study, Korhonen and Lammintakanen (2005) further added that learning in an online environment in terms of flexibility and convenience was related to participants’ adequate access to a computer both at home and at work. This can be understood to be their knowledge about online learning, which in this study will be considered as conscious beliefs. They tend to feel that as online learning can happen at any time and anywhere using ubiquitous devices such as mobile phones, so their learning experiences will be easier, as Schommer (1998) stated, adults’ working and learning are affected by their beliefs and are related.
A change in teachers’ beliefs is required (Hixon & Buckenmeyer, 2009) for them to follow OPD programmes and benefit from these programmes. Education reform will only be possible when teachers are ready to alter their traditional practices and develop new constructivist teaching strategies (Borko, 2004). Their readiness is related to their beliefs about their actual traditional practices and teaching strategies. Therefore, it is important to understand how teachers’ beliefs are shaped and transformed if they are to engage in OPD.
More and more teachers, especially those mid-way through their careers, have become aware of their deficiencies in coping with ICT and have expressed the need for professional development programmes which are effective. These programmes will enable them to explore and discover the digital pedagogies. Pajares (1992) mentioned that “beliefs are the best indicators of the decisions individuals make throughout their lives” (p. 307), and highlighted that teachers’ beliefs are related to their planning, instructional decisions and classroom practices. Teachers’ beliefs are considered to be even more significant than
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teachers’ knowledge (Pajares, 1992). Teachers hold beliefs about their work, their subject matter, their students, and their roles and responsibilities (Kuzborska, 2011). So, teachers must be made aware in peer and group discussions as these beliefs occur consciously and unconsciously.
Using the UTAUT model and teacher learning model, this study places itself in the area where there are no extensive studies and where there is still a need for exploration. This study also adds another dimension to studies which used UTAUT, as applied to the Mauritian culture. It has a cultural diversity composed of descendants of European, mostly French, British, African slaves, Indian labourers and Chinese traders. The most spoken language is the Mauritian Creole; government and administrative work is in English and the press uses French. At school most of the subjects are taught in English, except French and Asian languages. Mauritius being a developing country, technology has to be imported compared to developed countries which produce their own. Also, there is no distinction between rural or urban schools in the local context. Students with different economic backgrounds can attend the same school. Teachers living in rural areas can work in schools found in urban area and vice versa. In this study, UTAUT will be associated to Fishman’s teacher learning model to explore teachers’ beliefs about online professional development.