Exploring how a digitally skilled teacher’s self-understanding influences his professional learning strategies. A research cooperation between a teacher and a researcher

ABSTRACT

The call for digitalisation in compulsory and upper secondary schools implies the need for teachers to pursue professional development. Here, teachers’ self-understanding may influence how they use, relate to and learn about digital technologies. The purpose of this article is to explore how a teacher’s self-understanding influences his professional development activities and, in turn, is influenced by his learning. The case study focuses on one upper secondary school teacher’s endeavour to enact digital technologies and find suitable strategies for professional learning. This teacher and a researcher formed a reflective research partnership to explore how, and whether, the teacher’s self-understanding and professional learning strategies influenced each other. The findings show how his task perception changed over time from an emphasis on teaching to a greater emphasis on improvement, supporting colleagues in their learning and contributing to the professionalisation of the teaching community. This influenced his adoption of a self-directed learning strategy.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital technologies
• professional development
• informal learning
• self-understanding
• teacher

Introduction and purpose

Teachers’ professional development is of key importance in order to better handle challenges and new circumstances, refine teaching methods, become more knowledgeable about subjects etc. When it comes to new technologies, continuous professional development is necessary if teachers are to keep up with new and changing technologies and the possibilities, opportunities and advantages – as well as disadvantages – they can have for teaching, learning and administration.

Teachers’ efforts to integrate digital technologies in education can be supported by formal professional development and informal professional learning (Player-Koro 2012). It has been claimed that professional development based on collaboration and collaborative approaches has the most impact (OECD 2019). Here, informal and self-initiated and self-directed learning has been highlighted as very important (Van den Beemt and Diepstraten 2016) and claimed to be relevant and meaningful (Levinsen 2011; Tour 2017), also in terms of digital literacy (Levinsen 2011). Being digitally literate facilitates the use of social media in informal and self-initiated learning. For instance, Prestridge, Tondeur, and Ottenbreit-Leftwich (2019) show how social media – such as Facebook, Twitter or other communities – informs digitally skilled teachers’ design activities and becomes the starting point for approaching new technologies and exploring pedagogical potentials and eventual added value. Here, teachers’ self-understanding may influence how they use, relate to and learn via digital technologies to become professional and digitally competent teachers (Helleve, Grov Almås, and Bjørkelo 2020).

Moreover, deeply held values and beliefs about the purpose of education and accurate ways of promoting teaching and learning also influence the use of digital technologies (Prestridge 2017; Tondeur et al. 2008). For instance, Tondeur et al. (2008) found that teachers’ educational beliefs influenced the extent to which and how teachers used digital technologies. The teachers categorised as having relatively strong constructivist beliefs and strong traditional beliefs were more likely to report a high frequency of computer use. Thus, deeply held values and beliefs seem to be linked to teachers’ self-understanding, professional learning strategies and the enactment of digital technologies. This will be examined more closely in this article.

Thus, the purpose of this case study is to explore how one teacher’s self-understanding influences his professional development activities and, in turn, is influenced by his learning and its outcomes. The focus is on one teacher – Ash – and the following research questions are posed:

• How does the teacher’s self-understanding influence his professional development activities?

• Do the professional development activities influence his self-understanding and, if so, how?

• Which professional learning strategies are used?

Addressing these questions in a theory-led explorative case study (Denscombe 2014) is expected to give valuable insight in how these aspects operate and influence each other. This way new knowledge and a theoretical contribution to the field of teachers’ professional development are expected. The idea for this study emerged when author one met author two and found him to be showing exceptional commitment and agency in enacting digital technologies. During a longitudinal research project focusing on the use of digital technologies in three Swedish upper secondary schools (2015–20), author one met Ash (author two) and his colleagues. At the time Ash was teaching English as a foreign language and was found to be a digitally competent teacher in that he used digital technologies extensively, explored new technologies and elaborated on how to use them for teaching and learning. He was also regarded as an early adopter who sought different ways of becoming an even more digitally skilled teacher. It also became evident that Ash’s self-understanding seemed to have considerable influence on these processes. However, it is important to understand Ash’s self-understanding and strategies for professional development activities, his educational context and the arrangements for professional development activities in which he manoeuvres as well as the different aspects of his professional development activities. All these aspects are elaborated on in the following sections.

Educational context and perspectives on professional learning

The Swedish educational context of professional development

Although professional development for teachers in Sweden is regulated by agreements, it is something that the teachers themselves are expected to take responsibility for. In Sweden, national agreements between the teachers’ unions and national representatives for local employers in the municipality stipulate that on average teachers should have 104 hours of professional development included in their 1360 hours per year of regulated working time in the workplace, to which 407 hours of time in confidence are added for teachers’ self-regulation. This means that Swedish teachers are employed to work 45 hours a week, of which 35 are to be carried out at the workplace (teaching, planning, assessing, grading, meetings and so on). The remaining 10 hours are self-regulated, thereby allowing for a liberal organisation of how they are used. However, in reality, the time that is allocated for professional development may differ between schools, school years and teacher category.

In Sweden, teachers are also expected to take responsibility for their professional development and for ensuring that they are fully competent in their subjects. This professional responsibility is a key component of the governing system and is emphasised in policy documents and in ethical codes for teachers. Here, school-based collaborative initiatives combined with teachers’ own initiatives are expected.

However, it should be noted that the expectation that teachers will take responsibility for their professional learning is a rhetoric addressed to an educational system that is largely influenced by neo-liberalism and its steering mode and bureaucratic consequences, often named New Public Management, which emphasise control, inspections and accountability (Dyrdal Solbrekke and Englund 2011; Nordin 2016). Thus, it has been questioned whether teachers have the actual prerequisites to meet these expressed expectations (Nordin 2016). It has instead been argued that the reform agenda in a wider sense has led to ‘signs of mistrust’ (Nordin 2014), rather than any kind of ‘intelligent accountability’ (Sahlberg 2010). For instance, many national initiatives for professional development have been initiated that reduce the space for teachers’ own initiatives for informal learning. As an early adopter and explorer of digital technologies, Ash has to manoeuvre in this educational context to find strategies, sources and content for his own professional learning. Some of the perspectives related to professional learning in educational contexts are outlined below.

Professional learning activities – acknowledging the informal

Traditionally, professional development activities for teachers have been viewed as courses or formally organised activities. However, Keay, Carse, and Jess (2019) acknowledge the ‘complex, non-linear and messy nature of the professional learning process’ (128) and emphasise the need for research to better understand teachers’ professional learning as it is actually played out. In this context, Evans (2018) highlights the importance of acknowledging ‘informal’ or ‘implicit’ learning and the micro-level professional development processes that are part of teachers’ everyday work, where unintended incidental learning may be of importance. Evans calls for more research on informal and implicit professional learning and does this by arguing that most research in the field of professional development has focused on the ‘explicit’ end of the learning continuum, i.e., on programmes and content.

Trust has been found to be important for teachers’ professional learning (Bullough and Smith 2016). Teachers’ trust in colleagues and sources out of school is important for their professional learning, in that teachers simply do not have time to properly evaluate every available improvement or actor offering ‘improvements’ (Wermke 2012). According to Wermke, German teachers trust school-external sources for knowledge much more than their Swedish counterparts, and also to a higher extent prefer other teachers as sources.

When it comes to professional learning and digital technologies, clear theoretical directions and goals for this pedagogical change have been identified as supporting teachers’ professional learning and integration of digital technologies (Somekh 2007). This is most easily achieved when the teachers themselves have control over the learning process and its expected outcome. For instance, Koh, Chai, and Lim (2017) report that teachers’ ownership of and decisions about the changes and innovations are important for a successful integration of technologies in education. Thus, linking professional learning to teachers’ own teaching practices is a powerful way for committed, informed and context-bound learning (Koh, Chai, and Lim 2017; Longhurst, Jones, and Campbell 2017). Here, Appova and Arbaugh (2018) found that teachers are motivated to learn when they care about their students’ learning and are dissatisfied with their own teaching, often with internalised images of ‘the ideal teacher’ as a goal to strive for. Caring for their pupils, student feedback and internal motivation to improve their teaching are powerful driving forces for professional learning (Manca et al. 2016; Wright 2015). However, it has been found that early adopters of digital technologies often have to experiment on their own (Bennett 2012).

This close linkage to teachers’ practices and motives for professional learning calls for an exploration of teachers’ self-understanding and how this relates to professional learning. More explicitly, what kind of image of ‘the ideal teacher’ do teachers have and how do they understand themselves in relation to these images? What do they think they should do to be a proper teacher and what do they accordingly find important to learn? What are the deeply held values and beliefs about teaching that form their perceptions of their tasks and obligations and what core competencies do they then need? Thus, teachers’ task perceptions are manifested in these kinds of questions (Kelchtermans 2009).

Here, a framework that includes teachers’ self-understanding and acknowledging deeply held beliefs about purposes, accurate ways of teaching, task perception and professional learning reflects the ‘personal interpretative framework’ formulated by Kelchtermans (1993, 2009). The framework was originally developed in order to understand teachers’ professional development and is well suited to the purpose of this article.

Theoretical perspective – professional self-understanding

This article draws on teachers’ personal interpretative framework as it is described by Kelchtermans (1993, 2009). The framework was originally developed in case studies in order to understand teachers’ professional development. The framework is based on the concept of subjective educational theory and the professional self (self-understanding). For the purpose of this article, we especially focus on the professional self and teachers’ self-understanding. The concepts of ‘a professional self’ and ‘self-understanding’ are to be understood as being much more dynamic than the concept of ‘teacher identity’, which could be understood as something ‘you have’ and consequently should be recognised as a rather stable entity (Kelchtermans 2009). The concept of ‘self-understanding’ in Kelchtermans’ framework is used to acknowledge the dynamic and changeable nature of the phenomenon. The concept of professional self focuses on how teachers perceive themselves, which can be understood as an interplay between their self-image, self-esteem, task perception, job motivation and views of future perspectives (Kelchtermans 1993, 2009; Vanassche and Kelchtermans 2014).

In short, a teacher’s self-image is based on their own self-perception as a teacher and a person, which in turn is strongly influenced by what others mirror back to them in comments, actions, body language etc. Closely linked to self-image is self-esteem, which refers to how a teacher evaluates and appreciates himself or herself as a teacher. Self-esteem is highly emotional and is also influenced by feedback from others, of which some is more significant than others.

Intertwined with the evaluative component of self-esteem is the more normative component of task perception. According to Kelchtermans (2009), task perception is a teacher’s personal ideas about what their main tasks, duties and responsibilities are in order to do a good job. This is based on interpretations of curricula, syllabuses and perceived expectations, as well as deeply held values and beliefs about education, teaching and learning and what constitutes ‘good education’. The task perception is reflected in a teacher’s personal stance to questions such as: What must I do to be a good teacher? What are the essential tasks I have to perform in order to justify feeling that I am doing the right thing? What do I consider as legitimate duties to perform, and what do I not accept as part of ‘my job’? (Kelchtermans 2009, 262). Thus, task performance guides teachers in their everyday work; in actions or when comes to feelings, motivations, relating to work or what they want to focus on in their professional development. It is reasonable to suppose that what aligns with a teacher’s task perception has greater potential to be subject to ‘extra efforts’ than that which is not regarded as important. For instance, if the use of digital technologies and school improvements are core aspects of a teacher’s task perception, they may be prioritised in professional development. Finally, the component of job motivation indicates why people become teachers, what they find stimulating and valuable in their everyday work and what influences their decisions to stay in or leave the teaching profession. Here, some professional development content or formats for professional development, e.g. formal or informal learning, may be found to be more motivating and stimulating than others.

The issue of job motivation also highlights the importance of future perspective. This time element draws attention to the dynamic nature of self-understanding as an ongoing interactive and changeable process of sense making, construction and re-construction. Here, Kelchtermans (2009) emphasises the temporal dimension of past experiences and future expectations influencing present actions, such as ideas about the future and the competences that teachers need to influence decisions about what to focus on in their professional development and how. Thus, the future perspective is an important component of the personal interpretative framework.

Exploring how teachers’ self-understanding influences their professional development activities, and vice versa, can be done by analytically distinguishing each of the components described above. Each component may operate differently and in relation to the others in various ways. However, it is important to acknowledge them as intertwined and interdependent. When it comes to issues of professional development and informal learning, it is reasonable to suggest that each component should contribute to highlighting different aspects of the interplay so that, when taken together, a comprehensive understanding may be possible. Thus, the framework emphasises both private and contextual dimensions of teachers’ professional development (cf. Bullough and Smith 2016).

Method

The formation of a collaborative research partnership

In this article, we have been inspired by the narrative-biographical approach suggested as a powerful tool for analysing teachers’ self-understanding (Kelchtermans 2009, 2014). However, the process of generating data and the nature of the analysis have been slightly different given that the teacher involved in the study – Ash – was deeply involved in the processes of generating and interpreting the data, in the analysis and in the writing up of the results and discussions. However, some additional data exists as a frame of reference for interpretations and validation for author one.

First, Ash was involved in a design-based research project from August 2015 to June 2016 that focused on the enactment of digital technologies in education. Ash’s participation in the project resulted in 20 semi-structured interviews or ‘design conversations’, which yielded just over 18 hours of recorded conversations (Holmberg 2019). In these design conversations, Ash’s earlier experiences, his views of teaching and learning, his work as a teacher and the school context, were also discussed. Second, ‘small talk’ conversations between author one and Ash took place on seven occasions from 2016–17 when data was collected in a further longitudinal research project (2015–20) conducted at the school at which Ash worked (Olofsson, Lindberg, and Fransson 2017).

The data from these two projects informed author one about Ash’s experiences and perspectives. The educational context was later used as data for the analysis, critical reflection and validation of the process of generating and interpreting data – and formulating the results and conclusions – for this article.

In the longitudinal research project, Ash was also involved in a study in that he was identified as a digitally knowledgeable teacher who had benefited from digitalisation (Fransson et al. 2018). In that study, it seemed that Ash’s self-understanding greatly influenced the way he developed his own professional learning and that this in turn influenced his self-understanding. These hypotheses led to a collaborative reflective research partnership (April 2017–September 2018) between Ash (author two) and the researcher (author one) in order to explore how teachers’ – or more precisely one teacher, Ash’s – self-understanding could inform strategies for professional learning and especially informal learning related to digital technologies.

This collaborative reflective research partnership turned the research reported on into a research endeavour with a teacher, rather than research on a teacher (cf. Runesson Kempe 2019). This was because we shared a joint research focus, formed a research partnership, chose methods that enabled this reflective approach and acknowledged that many perspectives were better than one (cf. Kidd and Edwards 2016). Emphasising the reflections means acknowledging the joint process of iterative reflections that characterised our research. Research partnerships have been found to evolve over time and be fruitful, but they are also vulnerable, especially in terms of trust and frankness (Schuck 2013). Thus, a research partnership is based on different perspectives but strives to remain on equal terms. From Ash’s perspective, his participation in the research could be characterised as practitioner research (Ebbutt, Worrall, and Robson 2000), in that he was highly involved with an academic researcher to ‘actively construct useful knowledge’ (Elliot 2004, 266).

In this article, Ash – whose self-understanding is analysed and deconstructed – is therefore also acknowledged as an author, given that the analysis and deconstruction process was highly cooperative and reflective and included reflective conversations and writings and reading literature about teachers’ self-understanding, primarily articles by Kelchtermans (1993, 2009), but also others.

Procedure

Author one introduced the articles and the theoretical framework of the teachers' interpretative framework and the components of teachers’ self-understanding. Both authors read and discussed the framework (already known by author one) and explored how to understand Ash’s professional learning strategies, especially regarding digital technologies. In this process, author one had the data given above as a backdrop for understanding and facilitating these reflective conversations. These discussions and reflective conversations were held via Skype on six occasions between April 2017 and June 2018, recorded and lasted for a total of four hours and 35 minutes.

In this process both authors, Ash and author one, wrote the text in ‘Google Docs’, the final version of which is presented in the findings section. The text emanated from the reflective conversations that evolved when exploring how to understand the educational context at Ash’s school, his professional learning strategies and his self-understanding. Here, the theoretical framework forced Ash to analyse his experiences, thinking and actions in a new light and to partly reframe his experiences and thinking about himself and his context.

During the reflective conversations, some text was elaborated on and formulated together, while some discussions resulted in notes and key phrases on how to elaborate the text further in between the joint reflective conversations. This also led to a validation of content as it was discussed and explored further. In this author one operated as facilitator, curious researcher, critical friend and critical reviewer of the text sections written by Ash and as the writer of the other text sections. Both authors asked challenging questions, listened, tested hypotheses, suggested interpretations and formulations, reframed situations, related to theories and research etc. This was thus an explorative and joint endeavour.

For the validation process, author one was able to let the earlier collected data, described above, inform his process of interpretation, facilitation and critical view. As the text was written in Google Docs, it was possible to identify different versions of the text and review who had written or changed what and when this had happened.

The risk that author one’s critical view would be downsized due to the close reflective conversations of the authors (Podsakoff et al. 2003) was also taken into consideration by author one. Thus, it was intentionally foregrounded in processes of self-reflexivity (Denzin and Norman 1997; Pillow 2003), for instance with regard to self-awareness of what was in focus, how the knowledge was produced and how the participants in the research operated, interpreted and construed this knowledge.

The risk of ‘impression management’ from Ash’s side was taken into account by author one, although no signs of this were observed. On his part, Ash was open to shortcomings and new insights and in the reflective conversations also re-construed his understanding if necessary. This was interpreted by author one as a way of elaborating on an as yet unconscious and incoherent understanding of self and practice, rather than on any internal inconsistencies in Ash’s understanding. Here, the so-called consistency motive, when individuals try to maintain consistency in their cognitions, attitudes and behaviour in front of others (Podsakoff et al. 2003), did not seem to be in the foreground in Ash’s elaborations. On a few occasions, author one felt that the process of elaborating and negotiating written formulations was inadequate, which led to him either rewriting sentences or drawing attention to an issue in the next round of reflective conversations. Author two acted in a similar way to draw attention to incomplete interpretations proposed by author one. Here, it should be acknowledged that the reflective conversations and the writing process were joint elaborations to consensus and not a process of negotiations with give-and-takes.

Author one took the lead in writing the introduction, research overview, and theoretical and method sections as he had access to the research databases and as a researcher was experienced in this kind of analytical and review work. Here, author two acted as a ‘critical discussant’ and helped to focus, nuance and critically review the content and partly rewrite the text. In the method section Ash added his own perspective. The result section and the discussion section were meticulously worked on by both authors as described above. Both authors agreed on the content, findings and conclusions as equal co-authors.

Results

Background and context

Ash is a teacher at an upper secondary school and has a master’s degree in education and the psychology of religion. During his studies he occasionally worked as an ancillary teacher, which exposed him to different teaching methods. Ash still values these experiences, especially as comparisons of teaching strategies and self-development have always been important to him.

Ash started his teaching career in 2011 at a small private school, where he taught for three years, primarily in vocational programmes. He began teaching using analogue textbooks and assessment methods because the school had limited digital resources. In 2011 a new curriculum for the upper secondary school was introduced, and when addressing these changes Ash developed an interest in improving his teaching skills, primarily creating digital material and using digital technologies and new methods. Initially, Ash struggled to find his role as a teacher, and other teachers at his school and teachers on YouTube became his role models. He spent many hours outside work learning and digitising his education using gamification, for example by using Nintendo Gameboys units.

In 2014 Ash was offered a job at a secondary school in which the municipality provided each student with their own laptop. Digital technologies in education were thus made accessible, and Ash expanded his teaching repertoire using collaborative platforms such as Office 365. Cloud services allowed Ash’s students to collaborate and experiment with Microsoft Word and video editing, and Ash also spent large amounts of time on the internet searching for educational technology, such as mind map creators, voice recorders, time-line tools, website technologies and interactive language acquisition. Even though the municipality became known for its early and long-term investments in digital infrastructures and in projects and professional development for teachers and school leaders regarding the use of digital technologies, the actual effects on the teaching and learning in the majority of the classrooms can be questioned (cf. Olofsson, Lindberg, and Fransson 2017). However, these investments and infrastructure supported Ash’s endeavours.

The ICT-strategist who was responsible for supporting schools in strategical matters related to digital technologies introduced Microsoft’s cloud storage and held ‘short courses’ in digital test programmes as part of a digital technologies professional development programme at Ash’s school. Digital quality management tools were also introduced but were short-lived. This helped Ash to migrate from an analogue to a digital platform. Smartboards and recording equipment existed, but they were mainly used by individual teachers. Teacher collaboration using digital technologies was mainly instigated by a few individuals. Ash primarily worked with the school librarians to develop student literacy using digital platforms. Due to the lack of adequate courses or other organised professional learning activities, Ash organised informal pedagogical ‘coffee shops’ to discuss methods, share knowledge about tools and collaboratively evaluate students’ examples. These contextual circumstances led to Ash becoming an early adopter of digital technologies and adopting the strategy of self-initiated and self-directed informal learning. Eventually, Ash decided to start blogging as a way of reflecting on and sharing his experiences of teaching. Like his self-directed learning, the blog is self-evaluative and relates to his own practice. The blog grew with time and today (August 2019) has some 5000 followers.

In 2016, Ash was promoted to a lead teacher position due to his merits as a role model enacting digital technologies, promoting student motivation and participation. This acknowledgement is central to Ash’s self-image and became a professional turning point in his career.

Self-image

Ash’s self-image is defined by his willingness to learn and by the success stories of senior colleagues. Ash describes himself as a rather new teacher in an ‘induction period’ and as a seeker who continuously looks for new materials and methods. A desire to improve and perform well are keys to his self-image, but also his choice of professional learning. Ash dedicates his working hours to keeping up to date with digital technologies, which is connected to his self-image as a teacher but also his position as a lead teacher. He focuses on finding, mastering and using digital technologies to improve students’ learning.

Ash believes that his self-image as a teacher is related to the skills of other teachers who are avid users of digital technologies. Ash explains that he became aware of teaching qualities through blogs and the enactment of digital technologies for teaching and teachers presented in the media. Ash’s promotion to lead teacher is a key factor in his own success story, in that it defines his own position and skills as a competent teacher. Popularity is not central to Ash’s self-image, but he is affected by the increase in popularity polls in the Swedish educational context. The introduction of different ‘teacher awards’ (where students can nominate their favourite teachers) and television shows such as ‘The Super Teachers’ (skilled teachers placed in problematic schools to deal with troublesome issues) means that teaching is now receiving increased media coverage. Ash positions his own self-image in relation to ‘super teachers’ and wonders whether he would also qualify, especially as he has been nominated by his own pupils for an award. His self-image is a mix of both his own choice and other people’s expectations.

Ash dealt with self-actualisation when older colleagues assumed that, due to his age and digital literacy skills, he was better than them. Ash often felt that he had to take on more technically responsible tasks because of this. Although Ash’s professional learning is self-initiated, these assumptions affected his self-image in that he was acknowledged as ‘the ICT teacher’ (expert on using information and communication technologies, ICT), which influenced him in his ability to carry out the expected tasks. He wants to achieve a level of skill that compares with ‘super teachers’ and what is expected of him. Thus, Ash’s self-image has been formed in relation to his own driving forces, elaborations, implementation of digital technologies and the stories of successful peers.

Self-esteem

Teaching is, according to Ash, defined by others, given that a teacher requires a student. How would they otherwise know whether or not they have been successful? Ash therefore uses digital technologies and digital surveys to collect and analyse student opinions in order to improve his teaching practice and support students. Ash wants the data to support both himself and his students and has therefore moved away from paper surveys that are only meant to give teachers feedback. He instead uses Mentimeter, an interactive presentations software for the students’ value questions, to see others’ thoughts and to write feedback. The reactions from students and teachers have mostly been positive about digital polls, game-like apps and visualisation tools. These reactions resonate with Ash’s self-image as ‘the ICT teacher’, thereby creating a chain reaction and increasing self-esteem. These skills were also beneficial when Ash was promoted to lead teacher, and it became apparent to him that he was seen as a role model for other teachers, which further raised his self-esteem.

Ash’s self-esteem is stimulated by his own decision to use evaluation digital technologies during classes and by the fact that his work turns him into a role model. These factors chime with his self-image as an early adopter and also give him increased self-esteem as someone to whom other teachers can turn. As a result, he dares to enter into self-initiated and self-directed learning that in turn bolsters his motivation to continue in that mode. Ash’s self-esteem connects with his job motivation, in that amassing competence and skill also motivates him to continue using digital technologies. Thus, Ash’s self-esteem is nurtured by his digital skills and the ability to self-design and direct his own professional learning activities, both as a teacher and while teaching.

Job motivation

Ash sees himself as a motivated teacher who develops lessons and teaching techniques and uses appropriate tools in order to get results. The greatest motivational factor in his work is to improve students’ learning. When asked which is most important – his performance of tasks or students’ results – he underlines that he is primarily driven by his own goals and ambitions with the students. However, Ash argues that teaching includes intrinsic and extrinsic stimuli and, even though he aims foremost at intrinsic values, the students play a significant role in his motivation to develop suitable strategies for a professional learning that is primarily informal, self-initiated and self-directed.

Learning about digital technologies is connected to Ash’s internal motivation, and he successfully makes use of these tools for teaching, learning and administration. Ash has succeeded in digitising his classes and uses the appropriate technologies and methods to support his students. Ash has adjusted his teaching in accordance with the feedback he has received from his students in terms of meeting their needs. This has motivated him to undertake a professional learning that is informal, self-initiated and self-directed. Thus, Ash’s job motivation is linked to both intrinsic and extrinsic stimuli that help to motivate him and give him direction for his professional learning and work. Ash’s job motivation also leads him to clarify his task perception.

Task perception

Ash sees the design, teaching and assessment of goal-based education as the core of teacher professionalism. Many other tasks, such as administration, fill an important auxiliary role, but are not foregrounded in Ash’s task perception and teaching practice. He thinks the use of digital technologies makes his education more authentic, interesting and attainable and argues that it helps to close the gap between ‘school knowledge’ and ‘real-life knowledge’.

Ash believes that a teacher’s main task is to make content understandable by using appropriate technologies and methods. According to Ash, the use of digital technologies contributes in an effective way to authenticity and brings added value to teaching, learning and administration. Finding appropriate technologies and elaborating adequate teaching methods and assignments are key components of Ash’s task perception. Taking responsibility for his own professional learning is also part of his task perception and has become more foregrounded over time. This makes him invest time and effort in, for instance, searching for and learning about new digital technologies and using them for teaching, learning, evaluation etc. This way, he tries to compensate for the limited opportunities for formal professional learning about digital technology, its use at the school and in the municipality. However, Ash argues that he does not necessarily see his informal learning as professional development, given that in his task perception he conceptualises ‘professional development’ and informal, self-initiated and self-regulated learning as ‘natural’.

Being active in school improvements and innovation and experimenting with digital technologies in teaching, learning, administration and for professional learning have, over time, become more important to him and are now more foregrounded elements of his task perception.

Future perspective

Regarding the future perspective of self-understanding, Ash sees himself as a teacher who will continue to develop his teaching and learning practices and continue to seek new ways of teaching, learning and using digital resources. His involvement in the professionalisation of the teachers’ community will probably increase, and a future career outside the upper secondary classroom is not excluded, but rather something that he finds exciting and desirable. A future career as a principal, teacher educator, PhD student or educational consultant are all possible options. All these positions imply continuous professional learning that to a great extent is informal and self-directed.

Discussion and conclusions

This study has shown how one teacher’s self-understanding (Kelchtermans 1993, 2009) and strategies for professional learning influence each other. This is elaborated on further in the following discussion.

Firstly, Ash’s self-image has changed and manifested itself throughout his career as a teacher, particularly with regard to the use of digital technologies. Ash’s self-image as ‘the ICT-teacher’ came into being at his present school, where he was given the opportunity to work in a focused way with digital technologies and was also promoted due to his technological skills. A key factor during this period was his own willingness to search for better digital technologies. Another impact on Ash’s self-image and direction of informal learning was the change in the Swedish educational discourse, where examples of publicly acknowledged skilled teachers increased. Ash felt that he belonged to this group when he was promoted to the position of lead teacher for his enactment of digital technologies and his positive influences on his colleagues. This improved self-image created a loop of new initiatives of informal learning that led to further improved self-image. That images of ‘ideal teaching’ or ‘ideal teachers’ motivate teachers to learn is also shown in other research (Appova and Arbaugh 2018).

His promotion and self-initiated professional learning led to the strengthening of his image as a progressive, skilled teacher. As a result, his self-image became not only that of a teacher who uses digital technologies in a good way, but also of one who actively searches for new educational technology to improve his own education. This image of the ‘elaborator’ became a central aspect of Ash’s self-image and set the direction for his informal learning as an early adopter of digital technology for teaching, learning and administration.

Secondly, Ash’s basic self-esteem enables him to elaborate on digital technologies, test new technologies and teaching methods and to navigate alone in his informal learning. However, being nominated for a ‘super teacher’ prize by his students, promotion to a lead teacher position and being seen as a role model by students and the school management team improved his self-esteem. This has strengthened his job motivation and encouraged him to develop further and also confirms that his direction of informal learning is fruitful and rewarding. It has been suggested that increased self-esteem and motivation, operationalised as self-efficacy, could result in higher commitment and the elaboration of new learning strategies (Schunk, Pintrich, and Meece 2008). Ash’s story underlines these suggestions and also that a positive attitude and high level of self-efficacy strongly influence the implementation of digital technologies, as found in research by, for instance, Van Acker et al. (2013).

Thirdly, it is evident from Ash’s narrative that his task perception has changed over time, from an emphasis on teaching to a greater emphasis on improvement and his own responsibility for his professional learning as necessary components of being a ‘good teacher’, as well as an emphasis on his possibilities and willingness to support colleagues in their learning and contribute to the professionalisation of the teachers’ community. This has over time become a central aspect of his task perception and has made him take greater responsibility for his own professional learning in an informal way, especially as he is an early adopter of new digital affordances and does not rely on courses or colleagues. In this, he has to test the relevance of new material and technologies and thus allow some of his time to be spent on experimentation, which has also contributed to his changing task perception. Thus, the time he spends learning as an early adopter is nurtured by his task perception and justified in terms of boosting his job motivation and aligning with his partly changed task perception. Indications of teachers changing their task perceptions in relation to digital technologies exist in research, although this is usually expressed in terms of changed beliefs systems affecting teachers’ practices and their pedagogical orientations (Prestridge 2017).

Fourth, as Ash was an early adopter and explorer of digital technologies to integrate into teaching, learning and administration, he has had very few opportunities for adequate, contextualised, formal, professional learning. Specially designed courses that fulfilled his specific needs did not exist in the municipality or at university. For Ash, his strategies of self-initiated and self-directed informal learning became a necessary choice for his professional learning activities. That early adopters to a great extent have to experiment on their own is known and documented (Bennett 2012). His learning has been influenced by the technologies he found on the internet, read about in blogs etc. Thus, in the school context he has had very little useful support and networking in his technological and pedagogical experimentation.

The exchange of ideas and receiving feedback from colleagues have been limited, although his students have been more helpful in this respect. The importance of students’ voices and feedback for teachers implementing digital technologies has been shown in previous research (Manca et al. 2016; Wright 2015). The driving force to experiment and develop his teaching is found in the school context – for the sake of the pupils and his own ideas of reaching ‘ideal teaching’.

In this, structural conditions and conceptual frames, as external ideas, have informed Ash about ‘ideal teaching’ and what constitutes ‘a good teacher’. These are mediated by activities such as the national awards for teachers and the implemented lead teacher position. Other structural conditions are the national curriculum and the expectation that teachers will take responsibility for their own professional development. Further, being updated in subject matter, pedagogical issues and technological skills is a central ethical matter for teachers and in this digitalisation implies additional layers of dilemmas and ethical issues (Fransson 2017). Ash seems to have incorporated these aspects into his task perception. For instance, he argues that he does not necessarily see his informal learning as professional development, but as it develops his practice, it is ultimately his active decision to try to become more skilled.

Fifth, the study shows the powerful way of learning and developing professionally when doing it in direct connection to a teaching practice. Ash maintains control over his ambitions and which technologies, methods and content he wishes to develop, while the quality of his learning is not monitored by any formal institution. Ash’s narrative reveals that immediate application is a key feature of the tools that he chooses. In particular, feedback and metacognitive applications, such as his blog, seem to have been important in his professional learning. Here, Ash’s conditions for learning appear to be in line with the arguments of Mishra and Koehler (2006) – the importance of having the integration closely tied to one’s professional work in order to gain an integrated, deep and nuanced understanding of what they call Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK). For those who mentor or guide teachers’ professional development in formal professional educational situations, one conclusion of this study is to also acknowledge and create opportunities and arenas for informal learning. We have shown, for instance, that teachers can become highly motivated by self-directed and collaborative learning. Thus, in formal learning situations, informal and self-directed learning can be encouraged. This study also brings knowledge about these processes for those who mentor or guide professional development.

To conclude, in this study we have explored how a teacher’s self-understanding and the components of self-image, self-esteem, job motivation, task perception and future perspectives have influenced a teacher’s professional learning activities and, in turn, how these activities have influenced those components. Related to the first research question, it has been shown how these components have facilitated the initiation of informal, self-directed professional learning activities. Related to the second research question, it has been shown how the learning activities have led to an output and success that have strengthened his self-image, self-esteem and job motivation and transformed his task perception to put the enactment of digital technologies more in the foreground as his ‘responsibility’ to support colleagues in their professional learning. The professional learning activities have also expanded his thinking about possible future perspectives, both regarding the advantages and disadvantages of digital technologies and his possible professional job alternatives. Thus, it can be concluded that Ash displays agency and has the capacity to find strategies for his professional learning in the educational context. Related to the third research question, Ash’s dominant professional learning strategies are dominated by informal, self-initiated and self-regulated learning strategies.

Finally, even though this is a small-scale study, which is a limitation, it gives valuable insights into this reciprocal influence. However, more research is needed as this study is related to a specific national context.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council [grant no. 721-2014-1762].

Notes on contributors

Göran Fransson

Göran Fransson is a Professor in Curriculum Studies and an Associate Professor of Education at the Faculty of Education and Business Studies, University of Gävle, Sweden. His research centres on digital technologies in educational contexts, teacher commitment, teachers’ professional development, and induction and mentoring in different professions, with a primary focus on teachers. He has published in different journals, books and anthologies.

Fredrik Norman

Fredrik Norman is a teacher at an upper secondary school and has a Master’s degree in Education and the Psychology of Religion. In 2016 he was promoted to a lead teacher position due to his merits in enacting digital technologies. Since 2019 he is also part of the school management team being responsible for quality control and school development.