A pedagogical model for effective online teacher professional development—findings from the Teacher Academy initiative of the European Commission

Abstract

During their careers, teachers experience change in education policy, societal trends, and cultural shifts in pedagogical thought, requiring continual adaptation and innovation of their practices. Coupled with this is an assumed intrinsic desire to progress, whether as part of their own subject expertise, or with a view to taking on a role as leader in school management or a specialist area. Effective support and opportunities for teachers to develop and apply their competences is crucial for maintaining both motivation and high standards in the profession. However, many teachers across Europe claim to struggle to have access to effective forms of continued professional development coupled with the numerous demands already made on their work. On‐site courses with opportunities for peer learning remain popular but demand time and are not financially cost‐effective in reaching a large number of teachers, nor are they viable during pandemic restrictions. By exploring the pedagogical model of the online courses of the European Commission's Teacher Academy in the context of these challenges, this article discusses how an effective, collaborative approach to online continued professional development can be developed as a way of addressing both teacher and education system needs.

Integrating cognitive presence strategies: A professional development training for K-12 teachers

“…Professional development programs lacking such bases may not promote higher levels of learning (i.e., content transmission mode where teachers simply copy and paste some activities and/or strategies without carefully examining the needs and requirements), resulting in lack of transfer to the performance context (Rivera et al, 2017;William & Leahy, 2014). Furthermore, research studies on PD highlight the lack of facilitation, lacking follow up across the stages of PD and insufficient scaffolding, the incoherence between theory and practice, lack of resources and guidance (Hertz et al, 2022). Attempting to alleviate such issues, several PD studies highlight that professional development programs should be designed to incorporate interactive experiences (Parsons et al, 2019), integrating authentic tasks and content that can easily be transferred to classrooms (Reeves & Pedulla, 2013), peer review (Gamage et al, 2017), construction of knowledge through interaction, incorporating active learning (Desimone et al, 2002), reflection and feedback, supporting teacher collaboration (Darling-Hammond et al, 2017;Kabilan & Veratharaju, 2013;Kuusisaari, 2014;Turudu, 2020).…”

“Instructional design” as a system-forming category: approaches and definitions

“…В ходе исследования были проанализированы (таблица 1) трактовки понятия «педагогический дизайн» зарубежных ученых [9,12,21,10,18,25]. Они определяют данное понятие как методику преподавания, целостную систему, опирающуюся на запросы ученика и процесс анализа информации.…”

Development of advanced digital ecosystems at universities: A study comparing experiences from Ukraine, Poland and Slovakia

“…A recent study explored previous experiences of online continued professional development; specifically, by examining the pedagogical model of the online courses offered by the European Commission Teacher Academy (Hertz et al., 2022). The results of other studies underline the fact that students' knowledge and self‐efficacy in using e‐learning tools do not directly equate to being digitally literate learners equipped with the necessary digital skills, such as self‐regulation, to fully benefit from online learning.…”