Teachers' communities for improving learning and digipedagogical skills

Teachers with a university degree are internationally acknowledged to be the strength of the Finnish school system. However, teacher training universities, as well as in-service teachers today, face the challenge of reforming and updating their skills and practices to meet the needs of the present days' society. Research-based development and collaboration between educational stakeholders are seen as the key factors in improving the quality of the Finnish education.

The OpenDigi-project brings together the expertise of five Finnish universities' educational research and teacher training to develop new model for teacher education. In the core of the model are teacher developers’ communities, where teachers' professional reflection, particularly in terms of their digital pedagogy skills are enhanced in scripted collaborative learning process. The project is grounded on the results of PREP21 –project (2014-2017, Academy of Finland).
OpenDigi aims to create developers' communities, where teacher trainers, teacher students and in-service teachers work with shared curriculum based challenges. The starting point for collaboration is the identification of common challenges faced by teachers related to implementation of the new curriculum. In the developer community, the participants' diverse knowledge and background are used as a resource of collaboration and active learning while looking for practical pedagogical solutions. Simultaneously, the pedagogical expertise associated with the teachers' and teacher students' digital competences, and the development of their teaching and learning skills, are enriched.

OpenDigi in Lapland:
Research-based teaching experiments are carried out in the participating schools in Lapland, with a particular focus on media literacy, multiliteracy and critical thinking. As a key principle in these school experiments is, the holistic pedagogical support offered for studying and working, consisting of different tools, software and experts.
At the University of Lapland, the project is led by Päivi Rasi, and the project team members are researcher Satu-Maarit Frangou and junior researcher Janne Väätäjä. In the local implementation, OpenDigi- project cooperates also with DigiGo and Arktop projects.

Further information:
Associate Professor Päivi Rasi, [email protected]
Researcher Satu-Maarit Frangou, [email protected]
Junior Researcher Janne Väätäjä, [email protected]