Self-initiated online communities of teachers as an expanded meso space

After the Pandemic: Teacher Professional Development for the Digital Educational Innovation

“…Consequently, the main focus of this paper is digital pedagogies and TPD; more concretely, with what support and agency teachers have acted during the reorganization attempts, the use of networked and peer-learning approaches, and what lessons can we learn from lived experiences of the teachers that can have an impact on the TPD approaches employed in future. This research is a continuation of a previous ethnographic case study on three self-initiated teacher communities (in Italy) and the reorganization of teaching and learning during the COVID [2]. In the previous study, we have provided evidence that the pandemic has expanded what we call the meso level of the reorganization through peer communities of teachers while it has also served as an authentic experiment to explore the potential of educational technologies, and their connection to reorganizing teaching and learning process [1].…”

“…Whereas during the post-lockdown period (the new normal), it related more toward supporting their TPD (seeking pedagogical advice) and creating their educational content and materials. Another example of using social networks during pandemic times and beyond (new normal) is the proliferation of Facebook pages of groups of teachers that create a common space online to serve TPD's immediate needs and create support during the needed reorganization of teaching and learning activities [2,25,26].…”

“…It is true, that teacher agency can be fundamental but is necessary a caveat: within the most modern frameworks reinforcement of teacher agency could be able to support TPD with networked learning approaches [2]. This ecological and contextual vision of teacher agency is linked to the engagement: so, it's evident for the development of teacher agency a sort of peer learning and the communities of practice are needed as fundamental "spaces" in the complex and delicate ecology of the agency [33].…”

“…As a continuation of this argument on the agency and networked learning of horizontal relationships between tools, people and learning practices, we refer to the already explored topic on the transformative potential of digital technologies that should be situated in a specific organizational layer referred to as the Meso level [38][39][40], which have expanded during the ERT [2], acting as a magnifying glass to examine its significance [1]. According to this view, the Macro level is where patterns of collaboration, structures, and frames, are formalized and enforced.…”

“…It has been argued that the pandemic-related emergency has constituted an opportunity to better understand what technology can do in and for education [1,2] and brought educational change opportunities to the "stalled school system" [3]. The forced transition to the emergency remote teaching (ERT) [4] has led many researchers to a quest to understand its impact and underlying factors for success or failure [5].…”