OU blog

Personal Blogs

Act. 36.1 Seale Chapter 13

Visible to anyone in the world

Read Seale Chapter 13 Community responses to accessibility: enterprises, boundary practices and brokers. Make notes in response to the following questions:

  1. What artefacts inside and outside your organisation have created (or could create) points of focus for you and your colleagues when it comes to developing accessible learning resources?

Two examples of an internal artifact that captured our attention as a school were policy and in the past, a student that had a difficulty in accessing a learning resource as the student had a concentration disability that did not at all help the student to focus on that particular activity.

Examples of an external artifact are websites that I have just met in this course concerning accessibility guidelines.  These have helped me understand how difficult is to maintain accessibility in an online course etc.  At the same time, it influenced me and colleagues at school to think about the matter.  But most of them seem not to be interested saying that this is far from them.

Are there any artefacts that you think you and your colleagues have over-relied on or misused to the point that they are now negatively influencing your practice? If so, why do you think this is?

They are not interested in these aspects yet as they consider that policy is policy and is not yet applied in our context as it should have been.  The law is not so strict at this point that is one reason that teachers are so indifferent and those who are not indifferent do not have too much to say to support their ideas and arguments thus they quit trying.

  1. Is there any evidence for mutual engagement, joint enterprise or shared repertoire in the community (or communities) you belong to?

There is no evidence for mutual engagement, joint enterprise or shared repertoire towards accessibility.  First of all, due to the lack of dynamic law of accessibility implementation in the school area and secondly, due to the fact that each and every teacher has a different opinion on the matter and this leads to conflicts.  There are teachers who do not pay attention to such accessibility matters, just to do their job and that's it.  There are also teachers who are just not interested as they will get more jobs and they will need training, seminars etc in order to get into the matter and this is extra time and extra effort.  The other category is the one who are interested but they do not find the right door to knock in order to get the proper attention!

  1. Seale discusses the development of accessibility within an organisation as the creation of a constellation of practice rather than a community of practice. How helpful do you think this approach is?

A constellation of practice is more preferable than a community of practice because there are some communities of practice that may form constellations.  According to Wenger, these include related enterprises, facing similar conditions, having members in common and sharing artefacts.  Thus, it can be formed a coherent community and connections might be forged and strengthened between constellations of practices.

Do you think that the model shown in Figure 13.1 on page 182 would be useful as a trigger for discussion within your organisation?

If a constellation of practices is evident in the school I am working then the model shown in Figure 13.1 on page 182 is useful and definitely a model that is tempting for discussion among the members of the constellation.

Would it enable you and your colleagues to identify what changes or developments are needed and why they are needed?

The only thing that it enables us to do the model is to identify the certain communities that exist in the specified context and then to change the necessary communities in order to fit to the existing context so that the result of the accessible learning environment would be the one that is required.

Would the labels on the figure be different for your organisation? If so, how and why?

The labels on the figure would be exactly the same for the school I am working in.

 

 

Permalink 2 comments (latest comment by Elena Kondyli, Thursday, 13 Jan 2011, 09:39)
Share post

This blog might contain posts that are only visible to logged-in users, or where only logged-in users can comment. If you have an account on the system, please log in for full access.

Total visits to this blog: 268929