Abstract
Educators are increasingly encouraged to practice life-long learning. Learning to cope with emerging technologies for educational purposes is, for most educators, a complex process. Consequently, educators engage in critical reflective processes, and consider new views as they learn new knowledge and skills so as how to best apply information and communication technologies to teaching and learning. For educators this process can be intimidating and frustrating. The use of new technologies in education requires educators to reconceptualise traditional educational concepts which means that educators need compelling reasons to dramatically change their teaching and learning practice. This paper highlights the significance of Mezirowâ??s transformative learning theory for teachersâ?? technology professional development and provides insight in teachersâ?? learning processes as they learn emerging technologies for educational purposes. The data discussed in this paper have been drawn from a study at Fontys University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands. The data were collected and analyzed according to a qualitative approach.
Highlights
Many universities, colleges and other educational institutions are continually striving to improve and provide first class educational opportunities to their students
The main aim of this paper is to look at Mezirow’s transformative learning theory [9] in educational technology professional development (TPD) in order to come to grips with the discrepancy between traditional approaches to professional development and TPD that are identified in literature
Teaching with information and communication technologies (ICTs) is not classroom-bound but takes on a new dimension that challenges their prior restricted views, beliefs and perspectives. These observations are parallel to Mezirow[24] and Cranton’s [15] transformative learning theory: We resist learning anything that does not comfortably fit our meaning structures, but we have a strong urgent need to understand themeaning of our experience so that, given the limitations of our meaning structures, we strive toward viewpoints which are morefunctional: more inclusive, discriminating andintegrative of our experience. [24, p.223]
Summary
Colleges and other educational institutions are continually striving to improve and provide first class educational opportunities to their students. Over the last decades many of these institutions have experienced profound changes in their primary and secondary processes of education, research and organization One result of these changes is that issues of teacher professionalism are contested at both the level of “policy and of practices” [1]. Numerous publications on the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in teaching and learning provide educators with meaningful and useful ideas, concepts and guidelines [5, 6, 7]. Most of these publications promote the professional development of educators but fall short of addressing the issues concerning how to best conduct TPD. The key question in this paper is: whether transformative learning can foster educators’ TPD
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callMore From: International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET)
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
