The participatory dimension of teachers’ self-regulated professional learning about learning design: beliefs versus behaviours

ABSTRACT

This study reports the outcomes of a survey investigating the beliefs and self-reported behaviours of a sample of 238 in-service school teachers in Italy and Spain concerning their self-regulated professional learning about the design of learning interventions, an activity generally referred to as Learning Design (LD). The study adopts the lens of the 4C Framework for Self-Regulated Professional Learning, which distinguishes between Consume, Create, Connect and Contribute behaviours. The results indicate that all four Cs are deemed important by respondents, but there are statistically significant differences between perceived importance and behaviours, especially for the two Cs that can be termed ‘altruistic’ (Connect and Contribute). As for the ‘individualistic’ behaviours (Consume and Create), the gap between perceived importance and practice is narrower, especially for Create. The main conclusion is that, at least in the teaching populations of the two countries involved, the participatory culture of LD is far from being a reality, despite being strongly advocated in the literature. To this end, the authors believe that to achieve truly collaborative professionalism, responsive actions should be directed especially towards removing motivational and emotional barriers hindering ‘altruistic’ behaviours.

KEYWORDS:

• Teachers’ professional development (TPD)
• Learning Design (LD)
• professional learning networks (PLNs)
• learning ecologies
• self-regulated professional learning (SRPL)

Acknowledgments

This study was carried out thanks to a Short-Term Mobility grant awarded to the first author by the National Research Council of Italy, for a visit to the University of Santiago de Compostela in 2018 (Prot.0063527/2018).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Council of Italy [Short Term Mobility Grant Prot.0063527/2018].