Digitally Engaged Teacher Professional Development & Learning: Role of Curation for Professional Learning Communities and Personal Learning Environments.
Abstract: Teachers who are given the time, resources, and opportunity to develop on a professional level, Teacher Professional Development and Learning (TPDL), can become better educators with a more engaged practice on the K-12 educational system as a whole. The in-service teachers individually curated and organized information/resources within a digital repository representing their own Personal Learning Environment (PLE) for 10 weeks and shared these resources with their collaborative Professional Learning Community (PLC). This qualitative study examines the overall influence that a self-directed and collaborative TPDL experience has with a group of elementary school teachers. Through a theoretical framework based on the principles of two adult learning theories (Andragogy and Self-Directed Learning), this study examines how teachers can individually and collaboratively develop their professional capital by curating, communicating, creating, and contributing to the overall knowledge of a community of learners. Results indicate that developing and curating a digital repository supports TPDL consistently.
Presider: Sharonda Lipscomb, University of North Texas