ONLINE TEACHER EDUCATION AND TEACHER PROFESSIONAL LEARNING: REFLECTIONS AND NOTES

Abstract

This paper brings reflections and notes on the professional development of teacher educators (elementary education and higher education) by means of distance education; more specifically, via online education, considering that distance education, in conjunction with Information and Communication Technology (ICT), constitutes a promising path to new school-centered opportunities for teacher professional development. To this end, it first expounds concepts concerning professional development approaches, teacher educators, and distance education, by relating them to different epistemological conceptions of knowledge. Then, it presents – from the angle of professional development – an online teacher education course taken by sixteen practicing elementary school teachers and two researchers from a public university in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. It concludes with notes on the professional learning collectively and collaboratively constructed by the participating teachers in a virtual learning environment, which indicates that professional development factors relating to online teacher education programs are closely linked to the educational and pedagogical basis on which these programs stand. Besides identifying different moments experienced by the teacher educators throughout this process, this paper points to their construction of trust relationships by means of which the doubts, anxieties, fears, certainties, and beliefs that guide their actions are shared among the participants, providing them with opportunities to reflect “in” and “on” practice from a collective perspective. This process allowed teachers to bring forth incoherent or deficient knowledge and promoted their ability to negotiate and construct shared meanings about how to be a schoolteacher.

Keywords: distance education; online education; professional development; teacher educators.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14244/19827199755