Pedagogical Transformation and Teacher Learning for Knowledge Building: Turning COVID-19 Challenges into Opportunities

Abstract

This paper reports on the continual effort of the Knowledge Building Community (KBC) connecting teachers within and across schools for knowledge creation and community building during the COVID-19 disruptions. During this crisis, schools around the world are challenged with the issues of implementing online learning. Three areas of misalignment were identified: disjoint in learning with home-school separation, piecemeal technologies to mimic physical teaching, and disconnect between teacher professional development and classroom practices and we discussed emerging realignment efforts for transformative learning. Through analyzing the three case examples of how teachers responded to COVID-19 challenges in inter-related areas of curriculum, pedagogy, technology and community, we identified several themes on emerging alignments conducive for transformative pedagogy and technology through community advancement. These themes include: innovating practice around the centrality of ideas; perceiving knowledge building as pervasive; transformative use of technology, and symmetrical advancement of knowledge. These case examples show that in these disruptive times, the teachers were more actively building new practices supported by community dynamics and systemic processes of the KBC. Consequently, the interactions between stakeholders shifted from disjointed relations in different hierarchical levels to a networked community of people, ideas, and resources, and teachers continually advancing their knowledge-building practice in these challenging times.

Reconfiguring the service system for resilience: lessons learned in the higher education context

“…The disruption caused by the pandemic and the consequent move to full time distance learning has shaken the whole ecosystem of learning. Teachers must reconfigure their skills and redefine how they prepare for the education activity, including and improving online teaching competencies (Akram et al , 2021), and turning this pedagogical transformation challenge into real innovative opportunities for the future of the education services (Teo et al , 2021). We align the analysis to the framework described in the map of pedagogical knowledge (Saphier et al , 2008), that connects the required actions/skills to the following important concepts related to the teachers’ professional development: adjusting their curriculum planning, design and matching, which denotes the capability to choose an appropriate strategy from their repertoire; developing their instructional strategies repertoire, defined by the variety of strategies teachers have at their disposal to deal with different teaching situations; honing their classroom management skills – areas of performance and awareness of the skills needed to run a successful classroom; and motivating the students in the classroom. …”

“…The disruption caused by the pandemic and the consequent move to full time distance learning has shaken the whole ecosystem of learning. Teachers must reconfigure their skills and redefine how they prepare for the education activity, including and improving online teaching competencies (Akram et al, 2021), and turning this pedagogical transformation challenge into real innovative opportunities for the future of the education services (Teo et al, 2021). We align the analysis to the framework described in the map of pedagogical knowledge (Saphier et al, 2008), that connects the required actions/skills to the following important concepts related to the teachers' professional development:…”

Formación del profesorado durante la pandemia por Covid-19. Una revisión de literatura

“…En los trabajos analizados predominaron dos tipos de objetivos: a) caracterizar las experiencias, retos y/o saberes del profesorado en formación (53%, n=9), (ej: Gür et al, 2021;Larson & Farnsworth, 2020;Teo et al, 2021), y b) caracterizar las transformaciones que sufrieron los proyectos y programas formativos como consecuencia del confinamiento (47%, n=8), (ej: Birch & Lewis, 2020;Kirtman et al, 2021;Lichtenstein & Phillips, 2021).…”

“…Reflejan también el entendimiento de las situaciones como realidades únicas y posiblemente irrepetibles, que ameritan comprensión más que generalización. En este sentido, el enfoque cualitativo permitió recuperar reflexiones sobre experiencias personales y colectivas (ej: Beltramo et al, 2021;Miller, 2021) derivadas de las intervenciones realizadas, así como analizar las evidencias fotográficas, relatos, diarios de campo y otros artefactos no estructurados (ej: Bergdahl, 2022;Teo et al, 2021) producto de tales experiencias.…”

Designing Knowledge Dissemination in a Digital Era – Analysing TED Talk’s Multimodal Orchestration

“…Advancement in digital technology and the prevalence of new media have led to a fundamental change in the education sector, with online learning and teaching now considered at the forefront of 21 st century pedagogy (Ali, 2020;Miller et al, 2020). The outbreak of COVID-19 has propelled a massive transition from face-to-face classrooms to online learning systems around the world and has made online learning a new normal (Martin, 2021;Teo et al, 2021). However, the effectiveness of online learning in the pandemic is debatable (Adedoyin & Soykan, 2020;Hamid et al, 2020).…”