Understanding teachers’ professional learning lives in a changing digital world

Professional learning has long been acknowledged as an important process which helps to maintain, develop and improve the practices and understanding of educators. As a result, there are requirements for their professional learning for continuing accreditation. But, the difficulty of doing this must be recognised in the changing world where more is asked of our teachers in the same amount of time. So, how do we keep learning and improving practice in the face of exponentially increasing changes, expectations and technologies? A project titled ‘Investigating professional learning lives in the digital evolution of work’ [ARC DP210100164] aims to understand ways that learning practices are enabled and constrained within workplaces, and to develop frameworks around contemporary professional learning practices that account for the evolving work landscape. To guide this investigation, the Theory of Practice Architectures (Kemmis et al., 2014) is used to understand the way practice is maintained and shaped by arrangements, personal actions and interactions within certain structures, as well as the semantic, physical and social contexts involved that mediate the way individuals engage with their professional practice. The findings to be discussed here represent work from the first two phases of this project. Phase 1 employed a survey design to map the changing landscape of professional learning across a range of Australian workplace contexts, while Phase 2 involved extended case studies to more deeply investigate the way professionals were adapting to these changes and continuing to learn. Phase 1 findings indicated that educators leverage digital tools for self-learning (e.g., web searches, online PD) and collaboration (e.g., sharing, online communities). There was also an underlying negative sentiment to the way technologies were changing the way we work and learn, particularly in relation to considerations of time and costs. Phase 2 found technology increased accessibility (e.g. to materials, self-paced learning) but lacked the incidental collaboration (e.g. break-room conversations) teachers valued. The preliminary findings suggest that technology has enabled a new flexibility in approaches to professional learning, however there is a need for arrangements that allow teachers to come together to authentically collaborate and reflect. It also may require a rethinking around compliance frameworks that put reflection on practice at the core of professional learning, to consider how this could contribute to more impactful, sustainable development throughout a career.