The value of the "ADOPT" framework for helping schools implement learning platforms is well recognised. Now the people who developed ADOPT have written a practical guide to their approach - reviewed here by Gerald Haigh.
The ADOPT Framework - supporting schools to transform using the learning platform
By Wolverhampton City Council and Learning Possibilities: Sarah Armstrong, Gavin Hawkins and David Whyley
Publisher: Learning Possibilities
Format: Softback, A4, 64 pages
Published: January 2010
ISBN 978 0 9564564 0 3
Price: £25
In 2008, I visited a highly successful primary school that had been given, unbidden, a learning platform by its local authority. Was the head about to tamper with everything she’d done for the school’s curriculum and organisation in order to accommodate a learning platform that she hadn’t asked for and didn’t properly understand? She certainly was not, and so her school became one of what was then considered a disappointingly large proportion of primary non-implementers.
That’s the challenge for those who believe in the transformational possibilities of the learning platform. It’s nothing to do with lack of vision, or resistance to change. It’s all about, “Convince me it’s worth trying to fix what is demonstrably not broken.”
The answer comes when schools realise that they can reap some early wins from their learning platform without really changing their ways at all. They can put up notices on it, and calendars, and share their familiar planning documents. Let them do that for a while and the penny will start to drop. “Maybe we can put resources on there, and link them to the planning!”
By that point, some staff members will be off and running, having realised that what they have here is a powerful tool that serves, very cleverly, both personalisation and collaboration. There are moves to start class blogs, to involve parents, to publish children’s work. The sky’s the limit.
But hold on. It’s running away a bit now. The enthusiasts are ahead of the game. There are still bewildered people and doubters around. School policies, the way data is kept and handled, the lines of communication and management are all creaking under the strain. What’s needed is structure, some guidelines to the process of implementation. And that, precisely, is what the ADOPT Framework provides.
Derived from direct observation of practice, and based on the 1995 research into ICT implementation by Hooper and Rieber, the Framework leads through five stages – Awareness, Development, Optimisation, Pioneering, and Transformation. Each is dealt with in detail, with examples of what it looks like in school, in terms of outcomes and processes. So, at the ‘Awareness’ stage we see staff logging on to the calendar and reading notices. Then, at the end, in ‘Transformation’ we envisage staff who are "active members of regional and global network communities…”.
And learners who can collaborate, handle information in multiple media and "experiment and model in a virtual environment…".
There are, too, clearly described "pathways" leading from each stage to the next, as part of which the expectations for classroom practice, leadership and the ‘enablers’ that need to be in place for each step along the way.
This is not, though, a one-size-fits-all policy document. It’s designed to work for individuals bringing themselves up to speed, for whole-school implementation, and for all the levels in between. For that reason it calls for careful study, for the teasing out of what’s appropriate, and organising it into a tailored CPD programme, with constant reference back to the short, medium and long-term needs of the school and the community. Valuable tools to help with this are found in the apendices which set out Action Plans and suggested infrastructure requirements.
This is a document that has the capability to make things happen, especially in those schools that are not sure what to do next – whether that’s a matter of which learning platform they need, or how to take to the next level the one they already have. In his foreword, Professor Stephen Heppell puts it like this: "The ADOPT framework is the bit that is currently missing in guidance to schools – and school leaders in particular – around implementing a learning platform; the bit which bridges technologies, transformation and people."
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