Over the last two decades, institutions for higher education such as universities and colleges have rapidly expanded and as a result have experienced profound changes in processes of research and organization. However, the rapid expansion and change has fuelled concerns about issues such as educators' technology professional development. Despite the educational value of emerging technologies in schools, the introduction has not yet enjoyed much success. Effective use of information and communication technologies requires a substantial change in pedagogical practice. Traditional training and learning approaches cannot cope with the rising demand on educators to make use of innovative technologies in their teaching. As a result, educational institutions as well as the public are more and more aware of the need for adequate technology professional development. The focus of this paper is to look at action research as a qualitative research methodology for studying technology professional development in HE in order to improve teaching and learning with ICTs at the tertiary level. The data discussed in this paper have been drawn from a cross institutional setting at Fontys University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands. The data were collected and analysed according to a qualitative approach.
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The knowledge-based economy, advances in information and communication technologies as well as new pedagogical perspectives all influence the needs to improve the population skills and competencies in the 21st century. Emerging technologies bring opportunities to reconsider teaching and learning in higher education. Innovative educational ideas and concepts transform the roles of teacher educators and their students. To accomplish the new roles, teacher educators need to learn to work with a new set of information and communications skills and knowledge. In other words, adequate technology training is a prerequisite for the 21st century teacher educator to develop prospective teachers who are able to use new technologies so as to support and improve their own students' achievement gains. In order to deal with the new challenges, teacher education institutions are designing, developing and facilitating teacher educators' technology professional development programs. However, the majority of these efforts fail, since they are for most part based on a formal, institutional delivery of instrumental knowledge and skills. Adequate technology training is a major factor that can help teacher educators to integrate emerging technologies into the curriculum, which is in turn, beneficial to their students. The technology learning preferences instrument designed, implemented and evaluated in this research is intended to make a link between teacher educators' technology learning needs in the workplace and the way in which professional development programs should be designed, developed and evaluated.
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Advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs) as well as modern pedagogical perspectives have created new possibilities to facilitate and support learning in higher education (HE). Emerging technologies bring opportunities to reconsider teaching and learning. New ideas and concepts about the educational use of new technologies transform the roles of teachers. In this context the key question of this study is: whether learning as part of a (virtual) community of practice supports teachers' technology professional development. Different learning alternatives such as distance learning, workplace learning as well as blended forms of learning will enhance lifelong learning which forces a rethinking of traditional forms of education. However, most institutions for education foster just-in-case learning while new technologies foster just-in-time learning. As a result of new learning perspectives and the potential pedagogical benefits of ICTs in educational contexts, teachers have to learn how to integrate new technologies in teaching and learning. It is recommended that teacher professional development should be situated in multiple learning settings in which learning is teacher-centred. Next to classroom settings and cross-institutional learning communities, virtual learning communities (VCoPs) are a significant source for learning. There is an overlap between the educational values of interned-based learning and social theories of learning such as Lave & Wenger's situated learning theory and Wenger's theory of communities of practice. Drawing upon these theories, offers a perspective on social learning that emphasizes social processes within (V)CoPs where community participants engage in collective learning and knowledge creation. The data discussed in this paper have been drawn from a cross institutional setting at Fontys University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands. The data were collected and analysed according to a qualitative approach. The paper concludes that VCoPs are learning environments since these network-based learning communities push learners to take more control of their learning and provide tasks which are more contextualised and meaningful.
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