Personalized workplace learning: An exploratory study on digital badging within a teacher professional development program

To provide customized workplace learning opportunities, a digital badge system was designed by a university, governmental agency and national professional association to support teachers' implementation of professional development ( PD). Teacher Learning Journeys ( TLJ) is an approach that allows for teachers to customize their PD experience to their workplace and make decisions about what PD they need based on their expertise and interests. The digital badging provided and assessed experiences in online PD. Using a theoretical framework that focused on decision making and customization as part of personalization, researchers conducted a theory-driven thematic analysis on teachers' TLJ artifacts (goal statements, interviews and reflective activity logs). Data came from 36 teachers who completed 154 PD activities over a 3-month period. A JOUR study was developed from an in-depth analysis of eight teachers' artifacts and interviews. Using TLJ as a PD tool, teachers made decisions when selecting learning goals they identified as personally relevant. Teachers customized the level of assessment and the specific content depth to personalize the PD training for workplace constraints. This project informs future research aiming to understand how personalized learning activities support teachers and other professional learners in a variety of workplaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[1]  T. Guskey.  Staff Development and the Process of Teacher Change , 1986 .

[2]  Robert E. Slavin,et al.  Best-Evidence Synthesis: An Alternative to Meta-Analytic and Traditional Reviews , 1986 .

[3]  H. Borko.  Professional Development and Teacher Learning: Mapping the Terrain , 2004 .

[4]  M. Wallace,et al.  Professional Learning Communities: A Review of the Literature , 2006 .

[5]  Laura M. Desimone,et al.  What Makes Professional Development Effective? Results From a National Sample of Teachers , 2001 .

[6]  Raghu Raman,et al.  A new approach to personalization: integrating e-learning and m-learning , 2012 .

[7]  J. Bransford,et al.  Preparing Teachers for a Changing World: What Teachers Should Learn and Be Able to Do. , 2005 .

[8]  Yanjie Song,et al.  Fostering personalized learning in science inquiry supported by mobile technologies , 2012 .

[9]  Lawrence P. Gallagher,et al.  What Makes Professional Development Effective? Strategies That Foster Curriculum Implementation , 2007 .

[10]  Päivi Häkkinen,et al.  E‐learning at work: theoretical underpinnings and pedagogical challenges , 2005 .

[11]  Heather Lotherington,et al.  Factors contributing to teachers' successful implementation of IT , 2002, J. Comput. Assist. Learn..

[12]  Kinshuk,et al.  Adaptivity and Personalization in Mobile Learning. , 2010 .

[13]  Shian-Shyong Tseng,et al.  A personalized learning content adaptation mechanism to meet diverse user needs in mobile learning environments , 2011, User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction.

[14]  Ross M. Higashi,et al.  Are badges useful in education?: it depends upon the type of badge and expertise of learner , 2013 .

[15]  R. Stake.  The art of case study research , 1995 .

[16]  Thomas A. Brush,et al.  Integrating technology into K-12 teaching and learning: current knowledge gaps and recommendations for future research , 2007 .

[17]  Alexander Halavais.  A GENEALOGY OF BADGES , 2012 .

[18]  Barney Dalgarno,et al.  Making science real: photo-sharing in biology and chemistry , 2012 .

[19]  C. Dede,et al.  A Research Agenda for Online Teacher Professional Development , 2009 .

[20]  Daniel T. Hickey,et al.  Wikifolios, reflections, and exams for online engagement, understanding, and achievement , 2012 .

[21]  Alison Fuller,et al.  Developing pedagogies for the contemporary workplace , 2002 .

[22]  Corrine Glesne,et al.  Becoming Qualitative Researchers: An Introduction , 1991 .

[23]  Kevin Burden,et al.  Viewing Mobile Learning from a Pedagogical Perspective , 2012 .

[24]  Mark J. W. Lee,et al.  The Three P's of Pedagogy for the Networked Society: Personalization, Participation, and Productivity. , 2008 .

[25]  Anthony W. Hursh,et al.  Peer modeling and innovation adoption among teachers in online professional development , 2014, Comput. Educ..

[26]  Päivi Häkkinen,et al.  TEL@work: Toward integration of theory and practice , 2014, Br. J. Educ. Technol..

[27]  Ralph T. Putnam,et al.  Teacher Learning: Implications of New Views of Cognition , 1997 .

[28]  Ismail Sahin,et al.  Training teachers to use new technologies impacts multiple ecologies: Evidence from a national initiative , 2009, Br. J. Educ. Technol..

[29]  Laura M. Desimone,et al.  Improving Impact Studies of Teachers’ Professional Development: Toward Better Conceptualizations and Measures , 2009 .

[30]  Etienne Wenger,et al.  Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation , 1991 .

[31]  P. Hodkinson,et al.  Learning as peripheral participation in communities of practice: a reassessment of key concepts in workplace learning , 2005 .