Learning ecologies: Informal professional development opportunities for teachers

Abstract

The last ten years or more have been a period of intense change, both on a structural and general level. We live in a time of confusion, common to moments in time where there is a historical transition between different types of society. This situation has led to a substantial change in the professional needs, competencies and skills required by individuals in order to progress in the Net society. It is imperative for individuals to re-examine their professional development and the acquisition of new knowledge via processes which are different from those we have been familiar with up to now. This is especially important for teachers' professional development. Faced with this situation, training is seen as the `best way' to guarantee the development of highly productive work environments. The updating of traditional training models is a topic currently undergoing much debate. In the current ever-changing context based on the use of ICTs, the importance of integrating elements of formal, informal and non-formal education is crucial. Another key aspect of the updating of professional training and development is personalization: adapting policies to the specific needs of each individual, according to their style of learning. In this context, it is clear that the use of ICT in education extends the potential learning space for professional development and updating of skills, thereby generating life-long, life-wide, and life-deep learning opportunities. These concepts imply that potential learning spaces are neither developed in a linear fashion nor linked to a specific geographical setting. Each teacher is therefore presented with a wider and more varied range of possibilities from which to create a complex structure of interlinked relations and components which form his own learning ecology: his personal strategy for professional development and relations. The concept of ecology moves beyond Communities of Practice, Personal Learning Environments or Learning Communities and further even than social networks, given that these only exist as selected components of each individual's learning ecology. What is still unanswered is: can learning ecologies really improve those formal systems of life-long learning which have been in use up to now? Is the concept of learning ecologies a valid way to explain and increase levels of personalisation in life-long learning, particularly in teachers' professional development? How can each individual use his/her own learning ecology in order to improve his/her professional activity? Which success factors or strategies need to be identified? What role does ICT play in the setting up of these ecologies? The aim of the research we are going to present is to analyze and understand the ways in which learning ecologies contribute to the professional development of school teachers throughout their lives. In this paper we present the design to conduct this investigation, the mixed methodology we are using and the preliminary results we are getting.