How do the principles and resources interact?

Figure 2 shows the principles that guide effective ISTE learning and practice and the resources that enable ISTEs to achieve their goals. The red arrows represent the interactions that occur with the principles and resources during ISTEs’ learning and within the moment-by-moment decision-making of their everyday practice.

ISTEs are active agents in their learning. They use their knowledge of the principles to make the best use of the resources available to them, and they use these resources to enact the principles within their practice. This involves ISTEs, both collectively and individually, continually making sense of and building coherence between the principles and resources. It also involves self-regulation, as ISTEs monitor the impact of their learning and practice on teachers and students and adjust their practice accordingly. As a result of this sense-making and self-regulation, ISTEs may adapt or reframe the principles and resources.

Figure 2 also reminds us of the “black box” – the cognitive interpretations and utilisation by ISTEs that we cannot see – between learning opportunities for ISTEs and the resulting impact on their practice. The complete middle column of the diagram represents the chain of influence discussed earlier (page 15). It shows, in a generic sense, that the desired outcome for ISTE learning and practice must always be that of improving student outcomes.

Figure 2: A proposed theory of improvement for ISTEs

Figure 2 text version

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