In this paper the focus is on professional development through informal learning. People learn a lot while performing tasks and doing their jobs, but they are not always aware of these processes. Encouraging the awareness for informal learning is a first step towards acknowledgement of informal learning activities as forms of professional development by teacher educators and their managers. In this paper, we describe a procedure to encourage awareness of informal learning. The procedure consists of keeping a logbook on learning experiences during three weeks. At the end of the period the participants discussed their experiences in a meeting and analysed their own logbooks using an analysis tool. Both keeping a logbook and analysing this logbook led to a raise in the awareness of informal learning, at least, during and shortly after the intervention. The participants got to know their own learning processes, found the logbook-keeping an interesting thing to do and sometimes were surprised by the ways they learned.
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Abstract Many innovations in education are not completed, even if they are well thought out in advance. One of the main causes is the organization's lack of learning ability, combined with a shortage of teachers' and students' ownership with respect to the renewal of ideas and design. In communities of learners, teachers and students collaborate and learn together in order to shape innovations in their daily practice. Their ability to learn collectively is a key factor in developing a learning organization. So far, insights into how processes of collective learning can be designed effectively, and which critical factors play a role, have been based on limited empirical research. This article's goal is to contribute to the development of these insights, using the results of a study based on 48 cases of collective learning in communities of learners in primary schools and teacher education institutes. The results suggest that although collective learning rarely takes place in most cases many outcomes are created that affect all community members. This leads to the conclusion that some participants create outcomes, not only on behalf of themselves, but also on behalf of others.
DOCUMENT
Teacher education is in a state of change. There is a new focus on professional competence, including the competence for further development and learning, conceived of as workplace learning. Teacher shortages put pressure on the development of alternative routes to teaching. The arrival of prospective teachers with experience and qualifications in other areas than education requires adaptive programs, with a greater emphasis on professional learning in school. It is argued that promoting professional workplace learning asks for a conceptual clarification, based on new theory of learning and concepts of professionalism. A definition of professional learning is proposed. Some examples of new practice in teacher education are discussed.
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Teachers have a crucial role in bringing about the extensive social changes that are needed in the building of a sustainable future. In the EduSTA project, we focus on sustainability competences of teachers. We strengthen the European dimension of teacher education via Digital Open Badges as means of performing, acknowledging, documenting, and transferring the competencies as micro-credentials. EduSTA starts by mapping the contextual possibilities and restrictions for transformative learning on sustainability and by operationalising skills. The development of competence-based learning modules and open digital badge-driven pathways will proceed hand in hand and will be realised as learning modules in the partnering Higher Education Institutes and badge applications open for all teachers in Europe.Societal Issue: Teachers’ capabilities to act as active facilitators of change in the ecological transition and to educate citizens and workforce to meet the future challenges is key to a profound transformation in the green transition.Teachers’ sustainability competences have been researched widely, but a gap remains between research and the teachers’ practise. There is a need to operationalise sustainability competences: to describe direct links with everyday tasks, such as curriculum development, pedagogical design, and assessment. This need calls for an urgent operationalisation of educators’ sustainability competences – to support the goals with sustainability actions and to transfer this understanding to their students.Benefit to society: EduSTA builds a community, “Academy of Educators for Sustainable Future”, and creates open digital badge-driven learning pathways for teachers’ sustainability competences supported by multimodal learning modules. The aim is to achieve close cooperation with training schools to actively engage in-service teachers.Our consortium is a catalyst for leading and empowering profound change in the present and for the future to educate teachers ready to meet the challenges and act as active change agents for sustainable future. Emphasizing teachers’ essential role as a part of the green transition also adds to the attractiveness of teachers’ work.
CRYPTOPOLIS is a project supported by EU which focuses on the financial management knowledge of teachers and the emerging field of risk management and risk analysis of cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrency has shown to be a vital and rapidly growing component in today’s digital economy therefore there is a need to include not just financial but also crypto literacy into the schools. Beside multiple investors and traders the market is attracting an increasing number of young individuals, viewing it as an easy way to make money. A large pool of teenagers and young adults want to hop on this train, but a lack of cryptocurrency literacy, as well as financial literacy in general amongst youth, together with their inexperience with investing makes them even more vulnerable to an already high-risk investment.Therefore, we aim to increase the capacity and readiness of secondary schools and higher educational institutions to manage an effective shift towards digital education in the field of crypto and financial literacy. The project will develop the purposeful use of digital technologies in financial and crypto education for teaching, learning, assessment and engagement.
The growing use of digital media has led to a society with plenty of new opportunities for knowledge exchange, communication and entertainment, but also less desirable effects like fake news or cybercrime. Several studies, however, have shown that children are less digital literate than expected. Digital literacy has consequently become a key part within the new national educational policy plans titled Curriculum.nu and the Dutch research and policy agendas. This research project is focused on the role the game sector can play in the development of digital literacy skills of children. In concrete, we want to understand the value of the use of digital literacy related educational games in the context of primary education. Taking into consideration that the childhood process of learning takes place through playing, several studies claim that the introduction of the use of technology at a young age should be done through play. Digital games seem a good fit but are themselves also part of digital media we want young people to be literate about. Furthermore, it needs to be taken into account that digital literacy of teachers can be limited as well. The interactive, structured nature of digital games offers potential here as they are less dependent on the support and guidance of an adult, but at the same time this puts even more emphasis on sensible game design to ensure the desired outcome. The question is, then, if and how digital games are best designed to foster the development of digital literacy skills. By harnessing the potential of educational games, a consortium of knowledge and practice partners aim to show how creating theoretical and practical insights about digital literacy and game design can aid the serious games industry to contribute to the societal challenges concerning contemporary literacy demands.
