Building Lifelong Learning Networks of Teachers for the Development of Competence in Teaching in Small Rural Schools

This paper reports on ongoing research efforts and discussions about how to enable, through new technologies, the building of lifelong learning networks and the development of competences of teachers who work in small rural schools. Teachers of such schools are confronted with significant challenges, needing to develop personal competences falling beyond the established initial and in-service teacher training curricula. The notion of communities of practice (Wenger, 1998) is proposed as a conceptual tool in the endeavour to better understand the issues emerging. 1 Multigrade schools: The ‘Borderers’ of the Education System In many primary schools of the Greek provinces there is not one teacher available for each of the six grades: the low number of students statutorily justifies the employment of less than six teachers –even of one or two–, who nevertheless are expected to cover the needs of a full school. These schools, known internationally as multigrade schools [1], fulfil a function of national importance, as they provide the children of remote and less accessible areas with the access to education which all children of Greece are entitled to. 1.1 Teachers in Multigrade Schools: Need for, and Obstacles to, Continuous Professional Training and Competence Development Teachers of multigrade schools are confronted with significant challenges, as they have to teach simultaneously two or more age groups and possibly more than one curriculum subject in the same class. Teachers’ initial professional training does not suffice and the need for competence development is evident – especially in the light of the fact that typically inexperienced, newly-appointed teachers are posted to remote schools for a relatively short term service. Thus the average teacher working in a small rural school needs to acquire new knowledge and skills and continually improve their expertise in teaching in the demanding context of the multigrade classroom. They need to develop personal competences falling beyond the established initial and in-service teacher training curricula, which are oriented towards conventional monograde teaching, in order to develop and maintain the ability to respond to the challenging circumstances of their professional position. E. Tomadaki and P. Scott (Eds.): Innovative Approaches for Learning and Knowledge Sharing, EC-TEL 2006 Workshops Proceedings, ISSN 1613-0073, p. 138-147, 2006. However, there exist a number challenges in connection to remote rural teachers’ need for competence development. On one hand, offering teachers from remote areas conventional professional development provision, such as in-service training seminars, is not easy. A teacher’s round trips between their remote school and an urban training centre tend to be costly, if not virtually impracticable, given that there may not be a colleague available to replace them during their absence. On the other hand, the very concept of competence in the context of multigrade teaching may not be as straightforward as it appears. In the field of Human Resources Management competence is usually defined as a standardized requirement for an individual to properly perform a specific job, encompassing a combination of knowledge, skills and behaviour utilised to improve performance. However, whether a teacher is adequately or well qualified so as to have the ability to perform successfully in the multigrade classroom is a question with no official, standardised answer. The educational system –in Greece at least–, through its choices for the preparation of teachers-to-be, does not clearly define what good multigrade teaching is. Teachers are more or less left alone to explore and learn multigrade teaching on their own, through their solitary experiences in remote rural schools. What is worse, teachers at remote schools also suffer the consequences of a widening socioeconomic and digital divide which separates the rural from the urban areas in most parts of the world. 2 Greece: A Case Reflecting International Trends The above described difficulties of multigrade teachers working in remote areas are not unique to Greece. Internationally, the shortage of teachers in rural and remote areas, and the weaknesses of the education systems in the provision of training and professional support to these teachers, have been well-documented in the literature [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8]. However, these problems appear to be in sharp contrast with a growing recognition of multigrade schools as not only a necessary, but indeed a good-quality option for education systems, believed even to have some advantages over single-level classes [9], [10], [11].