Professional Learning (PL) is the learning an educator undertakes to improve their professional practice and their effectiveness as a teacher.
The Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) (n.d.) considers effective professional learning to be “most effective when it is relevant, collaborative and future focused“.
It’s clear from the AITSL guidelines that PL should be relevant to those receiving it as well as collaborative to magnify the benefits of PL, connecting teachers to their colleagues and experts. Being future focused it should develop teachers who are adaptable and able to integrate new learning and technology within their teaching practices in order to prepare students for the 21st century. Focusing on improving current practices, PL should expose teachers to new and emerging practises and technologies. Professional learning should be purposeful and align with your personal goals.
Will developing a personal learning network meet these needs?
Is face-to-face professional learning still relevant?
Face-to-face professional learning, while still holding value for teachers, is no longer sufficient to keep educators on the cutting edge of future focused learning. As Chattopadhyway points out, the fast pace of our digital information environment is such that any face-to-face PL is essentially past or at best, present focused. Traditional PL are often discrete events, disconnected from daily practice or immediate learning needs. Consequently traditional PL has limited impact.
The downfalls of traditional PL are often the benefits of a digital PLN. Rucker (2018) elegantly highlights the downsides to traditional learning –
Stevensen, Herbert, O’Sullivan and Howe point out that not only is the continuous PL that teachers are expected to undertake is difficult to implement, but the ‘chalk and talk’ model does little to support the tools of twenty-first century in the classroom. This model supports the ‘passing on’ of information during training, with little opportunity to question and investigate its value and rigour.
Barriers also exist within the teaching fraternity itself, there is reluctance to move to this new model with some of the reasons for reluctance highlighted here.
Drawbacks of social media based PLN
AITSL remind us that it is critical to remember when engaging via social media you are in the public domain and anything that you write or share can directly effect your reputation. As a responsible digital citizen you should always consider where the learning material has come from, is it a reliable source? Are the people sharing it trustworthy? Before you share anything with your network you should verify the links and the data.
