Postdoc position

From: Don Cunningham (cunningh@indiana.edu)
Date: Fri Dec 10 1999 - 05:53:56 PST


- POSTDOC NEEDED -
for NSF funded research at Indiana University

We are looking for an energetic and talented postdoc to work in a
collaborative environment as a member of our research team (Sasha Barab,
Cathy Brown, Don Cunningham, Tom Duffy, Rob Kling). The Bloomington
campus, with its limestone buildings and winding streams, has been
consistently rated as one of the top 10 most beautiful campuses in the
world. IU is an R1 institution, with the School of Education having a
diverse set of resources and colleagues, including the recently
established Center for Research on Learning and Technology.

Project Overview
This NSF funded project involves the design and evaluation of the
salient features of an electronic knowledge network, the Internet
Learning Forum (ILF), to support a virtual community of in-service and
pre-service mathematics and science teachers sharing, improving, and
creating inquiry based pedagogical practices. Founded in our previous
research and consistent with our pedagogical commitment, we are
designing the ILF around a "visiting the classroom" metaphor, with the
belief that teachers need to be full participants in and owners of their
professional development. The hallmark of this environment is that
teachers with a broad range of experience and expertise will come
together in a virtual space to observe, discuss, and reflect upon
pedagogical theory and practice anchored to streamed videos of actual
teaching vignettes.
Our focus is to provide a means for teachers to improve their practice
while situated in the real world of their current or future classroom.
We envision a community in which teachers can virtually visit each
other's classrooms to observe and discuss approaches to teaching
mathematics and science topics and to share artifacts. The ILF is a
resource to support continuous professional development. We seek to
support a sharing among community members at all stages of skill
development — from master teachers to teachers in training. Even in the
case of the more experienced teachers sharing their practice, the goal
is not to present a practice to emulate, but rather to provide a vehicle
for discussing the practice and advancing the community as well as
individual understanding. Through observation, discussion, and
reflection, each participant can find his or her own path to continuous
professional growth and development.

Research Agenda
The research goal of this project is to understand the principles for
fostering, sustaining, and scaling communities of practice in which the
value to participants of sharing their practice and entering in the
dialogue outweighs the "costs" of participation (e.g., time, technology
access; the concerns of letting others view one's teaching). While the
effective use of technology in supporting a community of practice is a
focus of this research, it is clear that technological environments are
only one component of an overall community strategy. Thus, the research
looks at the variety of variables that impact the dynamics of the social
networks through which teachers seek to improve and share their
pedagogical practices. The intent of this research is not to produce
abstract measures or scores, but to build a rich story of the historical
development of knowledge, resource use, practices, and ILF communities.
The research issues, converging at the intersection of pedagogy,
technology, social informatics, and learning theory, have important
implications for each. An interdisciplinary approach, reflecting this
intersection, will characterize the research carried out to address the
following research questions.
    (1) How can networking and electronic technologies be used to
represent and facilitate the sharing and evolution of teaching
practices?
    (2) What are the taken-as-shared meanings that emerge in the ILF
communities and how do those meanings evolve and diffuse into classroom
practices?
    (3) How do the ILF members structure themselves into communities and
how do we promote boundary crossing?

Contact
This 1-2 1/2 year position offers competitive pay and includes full
benefits. Applicants should be finished with their dissertation or be
ABD with a scheduled defense and an interest in distributed learning
with background in science or math preferred. Send vita, 3 references,
and research sample to Sasha A. Barab, School of Education, IU, Room
2232, 201 N. Rose Ave, Bloomington, IN, 47405. sbarab who-is-at indiana.edu. We
are looking for a start date as soon as possible. Please send me an
email if you have any questions.

__________________
Don Cunningham
School of Education
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47405

PH: 812-856-8316
Fax: 812-856-8333

Email: cunningh@indiana.edu
WWW: http://php.ucs.indiana.edu/~cunningh/



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