DITES
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New approaches to Teacher Professional Development have highlighted the need to focus on a set of key components to provide effective TPD at scale, such as professional learning support, collaboration and reflection with peers, a variety of formats and platforms to make content available for different contexts, peer evaluation or a career-oriented strategy for professional learning (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017, TPD@Coalition for the Global South, 2021). This literature allows us to understand the key factors to improve professional learning. Still, it needs to pay more attention to the dimension of teacher agency in responding to, adapting to, and transforming their practices to address the need to deliver quality teaching.
New education sources are a solution and a challenge for students and schools. Online learning is an important tool for the future, especially for the digital transformation produced by the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, a positive and well-organized experience related to online learning should influence digital maturity today, a demanded core competence in today’s job market.
Educational Institutions must review teaching paradigms, organization, management, evaluation processes, relations systems and competencies framework for managing and teaching. Online delivery challenges school institutions and policy-making (Horizon Report 2016).
Every project’s partner underlines that the pandemic has demonstrated that having an education and training system fit for the digital age is essential. In 2020, the European Commission launched an open public consultation on the impact of COVID-19 on education and training, the related switch to distance and online learning and the vision for the future of digital education in Europe. highlighted that:
- almost 60% of respondents had not used distance and online learning before the crisis;
- 95% consider that the COVID-19 pandemic marks a turning point for how technology is used in education and training;
- respondents expressed that online learning resources and content need to be more relevant, interactive and easy to use;
- over 60% felt that they had improved their digital skills during the crisis, with more than 50% of respondents wanting to build upon them;
To respond these needs, the project organized 3 close correlated actions aimed to:
- promote the exchange and sharing of good practices between different European partners, favouring the cooperation and the experience exchange among teachers and trainers;
- sharing best practices and dissemination of educational resources and methodology inspired by the logic of gamification in education and professional training to favour a teaching student’s centred approach;
- disseminate digital culture and competencies for improving teaching methodologies in the digital era and active participation;
- facilitate a transformation of teachers’ perspectives by bottom-up initiatives, such as communities of practice, among other examples of teacher network initiatives on the use of technology to access the technology and training but also to ensure it will be integrated as part of their regular practice over time;
- contribute to the dissemination of best practices among different partners in the European Community, favouring the inclusion of marginalized regions by the newcomer;
- increase capacity and professionalism to work at the EU/international level and establish cooperation networks and partnerships among different educational institutions (universities, research centres, training institutions, digital developers);
- contribute to pushing new way of teaching in the education sector towards increasing a digital environment and a teaching approach based on digital solutions;
- support active European citizenship by sharing educational paths for active citizenship for teachers, trainers and students
- promote paths through the enhancement of digital resources in teaching practices, valorizing the use of digital tools during the project.
