Creating virtual learning communities of rural school teachers

Mario Barajas ٭, Mónica Martínez ٭, Sara Silvestre ٭, Roser Boix†

University of Barcelona, Faculty of Pedagogy٭, Faculty of Education†

ABSTRACT

This paper is based on the analysis of the experience obtained in thedevelopment of rural teacher communities under the umbrella of the project NEtwork Multigrade Education (NEMED) in Spain. The article briefly shows the current situation of the rural school in Spainand highlights the links that have been created through the creation of a virtual learning community of teachers spread in several isolated areas, the so-called VirtualRuralSchool. This in fact acts as a virtual community of practice (VCoP)

First, a brief analysis of the educational policies and the current situation of the rural school in Spain is presented. Secondly, adetailed description of the settings and training process in which theschool teachers were involved: a profile of the networked schools, of the learning management platform and resources used in the VirtualRuralSchool and a brief analysis of the uses of the platform. The training took place during four months in 2007, with nine schools and 15 primary school teachers spread along different Spanish regions. The training and communication activities were based in the use of a Learning Management System platform (Moodle).

There is a trend to think that rural school teachers, and particularly rural school teachers, have prejudices against ICT in general, because they have more urgent priorities, or have a low level of digital literacy. However, although this can be certain, the need for communication and fight isolation, makes that they learn and apply faster what they learn. It is important not to guide ourselves for preconceptions, even when the very teachers show an initial mistrust on ICT.

Throughout the project, it was surprisingthe fact that the community of teachers, when following the calendar of the training, were able to create their own communication dynamics and their own learning initiatives, beyond what was initially planned. One example is that, whereas the learning activities were initially planned to be made at design level, the teachers were applying immediately what they learnt in the classroom: teachers, together with their children were preparing digital resources to exchange among peers of the different participating schools. It was obvious that, beyond training, teachers needed to communicate with other colleagues, even more than learning new things and tools. This dynamics favoured also that teachers designed collaborative activities for and with the children, so the students benefited from the teachers’ training right away.

This is a symptom of the need for exchange among teachers of rural areas alienated from the regular professional training circuits, but also a good example of the added value of the telecommunication and collaboration tools for facilitating the networking and the motivation of teachers.

Rural school teachers need to be active in their rural environment, and are used to solve many and different type of problems in close collaboration with the local community. This has been an advantage for the project more than an issue. On the other hand, the experience shows that it is necessary to keep an eye on changing needs and conditions of the participating teachers throughout the training, circumstances related to the socio-cultural reality of the rural environment: we cannot expect to implementa formal training course without respecting the time limitations of teachers, the specific calendar of the school, the local events, the attention to other needs that came up on the spot, and other situations that are different from metropolitan primary schools.

As a way to build sustainable rural communities of practice that last and expand, we hopethat this work will contribute to the improvement of the RuralSchool teacher profession in Spain, since thispilot experience could be applied to a larger number of schools and rural populations, and, to some extent, to school teachers in metropolitan areas.

  1. Background

This paper is based on the analysis of the experience obtained in the development of rural teacher communities under the umbrella of the project NEtwork Multigrade Education (NEMED) in Spain. During the past three years, a groups of Spanish rural schools spread throughout different regions and isolated areas have been participating in the European network, together with the University of Barcelona.

Now that the experience comes to an end (although the continuation of the network activities is assured for the following years), we make an account of the key aspects and lessons learnt from the activities undertaken, aiming at depicting how a community of practice (in this case rural school teachers, university researchers) has been growing and evolving based on the initiatives and events that happened during the lifespan of the project.

NEMED[1] is a network of dozens of rural schools from nine different European countries. It started in 2004, continuing operations until 2007. It intends to stimulatean effortto bring multi-grade education to the policy front, and thus contribute to the upgrading of multi-grade teaching and learning.Despite the fact that multigrade teaching schemes representa usual means for providing "education for all" in remote and rural areasin Europe and the rest of the World, multigrade education remains at the educational systems' margins. The network focuses attentionon the phenomenon of multigrade schooling. Under the umbrella of a new European project, RURAL WINGS, it will continue working at the international level until 2009. However it is certain that the networks of schools at national level will continue working after that date, and we envision that the international cooperation will also continue without the support of the EU, given the success of the experience.

1.2NEMED as a Virtual community of practice for rural school teachers

Communities of practice and activity theory are good frameworks to explain the characteristics of scenario set, a group of teachers participating and building a virtual learning community. Wenger (2001) points out three dimensions of the relation throughout which practice becomes the source of coherence of a community: a) a mutual commitment; b) a common enterprise, and c) a shared repertoire. For this author, practice does not exist in abstract terms. It exists because participants negotiate the meaning of their actions. Teachers in this case share their knowledge and work together, negotiate what they know and what they don’t with the others.

At the same time the common enterprise has been the result of a collective negotiation which reflects the complexity of the mutual commitment. It is not to achieve a goal, but that participants build a mutual responsibility which is an integral part of the practice. Furthermore, the community of practice eventually creates a shared repertoire of resources which acquire a meaning in the practice of this community. Under the umbrella of the project NEMED, the network of teachers is in fact a virtual community of practice (VCoP) in the sense of Zarb (2006)[2], which very occasionally has physical meetings; the connecting threads are their participation in NEMED,whereas the virtual learning classroom is the virtual space in which people negotiate meanings. They learn from each other as a result of doing tasks and solving problems, so knowledge is a product of a situated activity (Lewis, 2002).

2.Rural education and NEMED in Spain

The diversity of geographical and political contexts in which the rural school in Spainrequired two extended models of schooling in the rural spaces:

a) Non-grouped rural school, whose operation is self-governing, although the general tendency is sharing activities, and even masterful travelling specialists, with other schools nearby.

b) Grouped rural school, which constitutes what it is known as groupings. These clusters of rural schools are born in Spain with the following purposes:

-To break the professional isolation of the rural teacher.

-To open cultural horizons to rural boys and girls.

-To strengthen cooperation and team work.

-To share human, structural, administrative and managing resources, materials and economics to be used by all the schools of the group.

-To develop unique models of participation for the education community in the daily tasks of the rural school.

-To collaborate in territorial balance and to dignify the rural population.

In the SpanishState there are groupings of schools that receive different names: CRA (Grouping Rural Schools) in Castile Leon, Castile La Mancha, Asturias, Galicia and Madrid; CER (Rural Educational Centres) in the Valencian Community; CER (Collective of Rural Schools) in the Canary Islands, CPRA (Public Grouped Rural Centres) in Andalusia, and ZER (Rural School Zone) in Catalonia.

2.1Key issues in rural schools in Spain

During the last 20 years the quality of rural education in Spain has improved considerably. The political and administrative decentralisation of the educational system has brought the development of public policies closer to the needs of the rural territories; however, it is certain that the pace of development of these policies, as well as the legislative deployment, has been diverse. In any case each autonomous regional government has created school structures, educational and support services forthe rural school adapted to the needs of each region. Taking into account the diversity of the rural contexts in Spain (there are rich rural areas as well as poor and isolated ones), we can point to the fact that, despite the improvement of the educational structures and resources in the rural contexts, there are still clear needs to be tackled:

  • There is a lack of specific initial training of rural school teachers; this does not mean asking only for specific training, but also training to be delivered in the rural school, as is the case of urban schools.
  • There is a lack of continuous training for rural school teachers aiming to keep pace with new didactical approaches, with dealing with diversity (growing immigrant rural population), and with use of ICT in the classroom and for professional development.
  • Although the creation of certain organisational structures for coordinating resources and specialist teachers for clusters of rural schools based on proximity has contributed to having more shared resources, these continue to be scarce, especially in territories in which immigrants have populated rural areas, with the corresponding increase of a number of children in the villages.
  • There is a lack of ICT infrastructures; although the situation has improved dramatically during the last three years given some State programmes for deploying Internet access, it is certain, that there is still much to do in this respect. As a consequence, there is a smaller number of Internet users in rural areas compared to urban areas.
  • The infrastructures and school buildings, either new or renovated, need continuous maintenance.
  • There is a lack of basic services for maintaining the rural schools: transportation, soup kitchens for children, and kindergartens.
  • Very few regions in Spain have developed adequate legislation for supporting and promoting rural education.

2.2The current telecommunications situation in the Spanish rural areas

One of the key priorities of the Ministry ofEducation and of the Ministry of Industry is to provide broadband connection to all rural areas, including the isolated ones. The plan is implemented by the regional governments. The areas of application are 14,560 towns, villages and isolated spots in 3,770 municipalities with about 6.5 million inhabitants.

Currently, there are several regions in Spain in which 100% of the population can access Internet broadband connection. The objective is that by the end of 2007, 100% of the Spanish population will have access to broadband connection. In March 2007, 5,659 towns and villages had broadband access, so 5.5 million of the 6.5 million rural population were covered by the plan. However, access does not mean use, and we can see that the number of users in rural areas is still low.

The Ministry has also financed the creation of 270 new “Telecenters”, which are community public centres in towns and villages financed by both the Ministry and the regional authorities, who provide broadband services and training. The isolated areas and places with no broadband connection are prioritised. The program started in 2005 and will end in 2008.

With respect to the schools, only isolated rural schools do not have access to broadband Internet connection. This is the target group of Rural Wings. ICT resources are scarce, but the multi-grade schools do have a few computers in the classroom. The plan for providing broadband connection covers also the schools, which means that in a couple of years all isolated schools will have broadband ADSL-type access.

3.The Spanish NEMED network of rural schools

The participation of Spanish schools in NEMED is distributed along 6 regions. The list of the Rural Schools active in the NEMED Local Network in Spainincludes 15 schools and more than 30 primary school teachers.

Fig 1. NEMEDMultigradeSchoolin Teo (Galicia, North WestSpain).

The network is growing constantly and recently several schools in the Canary Islands and in Southern Spain have joined the network. The NEMED activities will continue under the umbrella of the project RURAL WINGS (European Commission, VI Framework Programme).

Fig. 2. Computer classroom in the NEMEDRuralSchoolof Sant Serni (Pyrenees Mountains, Catalonia, Spain)

Within NEMED, an Educational Platform called VirtualRuralSchool has been created ( in both Spanish and English versions. In this space we have placed the training activities designed for the module, as well as some spaces designed for exchanging opinions and ideas among the students (multigrade teachers), the teachers and the tutors. These spaces are discussion forums, chats, distribution lists, spaces to share documents, etc. The method used is e-learning, understood as distance learning based on the use of computer and telecommunications and within a Virtual Learning Environment.

The VirtualRuralSchool has been designed using the free, Open Source software package Moodle. This software is a Learning Management System designed to help educators manage effective online learning communities. This system allows an easy interaction between teachers and students, as well as among students. The design and the development of Moodle are based on a "social constructionist pedagogy", which asserts that learning occurs particularly well in a collaborative environment that everyone builds together. This Virtual Learning Environment includes characteristics that support role sharing, such as permission-based options that allow each participant to be a teacher as well as a learner. Furthermore, the role of the 'teacher' can change from being 'the source of knowledge' to being an influence, connecting with students in a personal way that addresses their own learning needs, and moderating discussions and activities in a way that collectively leads students towards the learning goals of the class.

Besides this space, a project website has been created with the theoretical contents visually organized and shown in three languages (Spanish, Catalan and English) ( This websitefacilitates the implementation and development of the activities suggested in the Virtual Rural School.

Fig 3. The local VirtualRuralSchool platform in Spain (Moodle environment)

Other communication tools have been used on a daily basis; among them,Skype was always available in the classroom, so children from different regions could communicate at any time, especially during the recess period. Productivity software and video, produced by the teachers and the children, were also part of the resources used. This has allowed the teachers of the VirtualRuralSchool to exchange audiovisual materials among the multigrade schools. The exchange of the material has been carried out through the Moodle platform.

We designed a training module for the VirtualRuralSchool, with the intention that the teachers participating in NEMED learn to design a collaborative telematic project for subsequent creation and application among the schools. The activities that configured the training module were created to be carried out individually; however, the teachers were asked, specifically, to upload their exercises and resources in the educational platform with the aim of sharing them with their colleagues.

Telematic project "Sharing Traditions"

The purpose of the project is to share the traditions that we celebrate at schools. The ways of sharing them can be different, such as we noted in the meeting via Skype and which Miquel commented on in the Moodle forum.

Two ways of getting in touch will be needed:

Synchronous Contacts (online) to explain to each other what we are doing to prepare activities and to solve problems. We will do the synchronous contacts via Skype.

Asynchronous contacts (offline) to send to each other those activities to carry out and those already carried out. We will do the asynchronous contacts via electronic mail and within the educational platform.

Human resources: The teaching staff and the student body of the participant schools.

Material resources: The traditional resources used at schools.

Technological resources: The ways of sharing them are different, all involving the use of ICT: Internet, Skype, e-mail (teachers’ or class’ e-mail), Office (Word and PowerPoint mainly), image processing, digital camera, sound processor application), microphone with speakers and earphones with micro, digital video camera, and also possible specific programs as Click, Hot Potatoes, spreadsheets, etc.

Following our e-tutor’s instructions, we can keep comparing our listings in this forum and address the needs in a synchronized meeting (Skype).

Fig. 4. Tasks carried out together by the teachers of VirtualRuralSchool during the design of the telematic project "Sharing Traditions" (designed by the teachers)

We considered a collective work for the second part of the module, in which there were different activities to carry out together among the teachers of the rural schools.Fortunately, to our surprise, the teachers of the VirtualRuralSchool decided to overturn the activities scheduled in the educational platform, converting them into collective activities; by doing this they managed to jump forward to what was scheduled for the third training phase.Therefore, the modules had to be quickly restructured in order to answer the need expressed by the teachers active in NEMED. This shows a great involvement and the taking over of the teachers reorganising the programme according to their views and needs.