Abstract:

New York City, Wagner College Education Faculty is exploring real-time facilitator-led reflection online for new teachers in practice. We are designing a robust learning environment supporting traditional on-site class sessions and including online learning. This fosters daily reflection especially during the period of time when the participating teachers were not in their New Educators at Wagner (NEW) graduate class.
As researchers, educators and NEW advisory board members, we present in this proposal examples of how transformative learning is experienced by the NEW professor and NEW beginning teachers in two modalities: online and live. Our report narrates the teachers’, as learners, and the faculty mentor’s insights into these critical factors.
Our goals for this study are threefold: 1) determine if the process of engaging new teachers actively in discussion encourages them to critically reflect and grow as teachers; 2) improve and enhance the application of first year teachers’ learnings by incorporating online and live pedagogies as well as one-to-one mentoring; 3) ascertain if the combination of live and online experiences is transformative.
The instrument used for this study is Dr. Stephen Brookfield’s (1999) Critical Incident Questionnaire (CIQ). The CIQ is used to stimulate discussion and reflection in three uniquely different learning environments, onsite, online and live classroom.
This proposal tells a story of how an adult educator is an agent of transformative learning. The proposal addresses assumptions about fixed truths (Mezirow, 1990). For example, is a faculty mentor presence in the classroom the most effective way of improving teaching and learning?
This proposal discusses how the process of transformative learning is enhanced by e-learning. This is accomplished through using the new teachers’ collective feedback from their class CIQ and posting it online after each class session. The teachers are encouraged to reflect on the posted feedback and to generate further discussion on MOODLE (Wagner’s secure online platform). Teachers’ enter their responses on MOODLE, including their reflections to classroom experiences, responses to other teacher’s reflections and to their college classroom experiences.
According to Brookfield and Preskill (2005), “asynchronous exchange permits learners a relatively leisure review of everything that has been said. This makes it easier for them to look for recurring themes, essential questions and emerging understanding.” (p.241)
Proposal questions for participating teachers include: What aspects of NEW mean the most to you? How do feel your teaching and learning has changed? What piece of the NEW learning experience online and in the classroom was most significant and/or least significant to your development as a new teacher?
School leaders report that by their formal and informal observations of NEW teachers throughout the academic year and into the next academic year, positive and transformative learning occurs. Citing e-learning and teacher mentoring as a stimulus for this growth, these leaders observe more growth in NEW teachers in comparison to those beginning teachers who have not participated in the NEW experience.

References:
[1] Brookfield, S.D. (1995). Becoming a critically reflective teacher. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, Inc.
[2] Brookfield, S. D. Preskill, S. (2005). Discussion as a way of teaching. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, Inc.

Keywords:

e-learning, transformative learning, critical reflection, new teachers, teacher retention, MOODLE.