Digital learning spaces: realities, reflections, responses and reimaginings

Whilst there I welcomed the chance to reconnect with members of an Erasmus+ RAPIDE project which is led by my colleague Professor Mhairi Beaton. 

RAPIDE stands for Reimagining a Positive Direction for Education and brings together educators working in Slovenia, The Netherlands, Belgium, Hungary, England, Portugal, England and Germany.  The project is working to strengthen the profiles of the teaching profession through the provision of open, innovative and inclusive digital practices. We are supporting individuals from the wide range of key stakeholder groups in education including learners and their families, school leaders, policy makers and educators at all stages of their career to develop skills and competences in the provision of flexible digital learning to enhance learning for all.

As the project team continue to explore the implications of the pandemic on educational practices across Europe and to develop learning opportunities and outputs from the RAPIDE project we took time in Riga to focus on the vignettes that we have collected. These vignettes relate the experiences of teachers, leaders and lecturers who rapidly re-imagined and made real necessary adaptations to sustain education access during the pandemic, largely through digital media. Most of the vignettes open with the dilemmas the pandemic created and as such they speak to the realities of the situation. 

The vignettes being collated for the project also illustrate educators’ reflections as the pandemic realities unfolded and as they made sense of how learning was enabled through new platforms and practices. These educational responses related to pedagogy, social and emotional aspects of remote and digital learning, altered forms of participation, new technologies and evolving professional and learner identities.

In these altered times the future of education remains uncertain. The world has been changed by what was both challenging and what was possible during the pandemic. The vignettes thus also offer insights into how educators are reimagining the future of teaching and learning. 

These 4Rs, the realities, the reflections, the responses and reimaginings are illustrated through a vignette which is very close to home. As Director of CollectivED The Centre for Coaching, Mentoring and Professional Learning I found myself faced with my own dilemmas in need of a response. 

Prior to the lockdowns the research and practice centre CollectivED had developed a series of face-to-face professional development opportunities for educators with a common interest in coaching, mentoring and professional learning. We were a relatively new centre and were in the first phases of building momentum and engagement with the sector. 

With a focus on professional conversations at the heart of our centre we felt strongly that providing opportunities for practitioners to meet, talk, model and experience coaching and mentoring type conversations was vital. We had no experience of doing so online. The lockdowns interrupted the planned schedule of events. 

A significant dilemma we faced was that practitioners contributing to and engaging with our work did so on a discretionary basis. As their own school and college contexts and the demands on their skills and time changed dramatically during lockdown (including changed family commitments) they were likely to experience additional workload pressures. As such we were anxious not to add an additional burden, but equally anxious to offer genuine support.

We took some time to respond to this dilemma, although our first action was to cancel or postpone planned events. We assumed that this would be until the end of the school year, and then normality would return. Just prior to the pandemic being formally announced we had begun a development conversation about establishing a network of Fellows associated with the research and practice centre. It seemed viable to make progress with this while other activity stalled. Application criteria for Fellows were established and the people who were eligible for it were invited to apply. Our commitment to them was that we would create opportunities for them to network, forge new partnerships and learn from each other. As we slowly became familiar with online conferencing platforms, we decided to host our first Fellows network evening online. 

Creating and sustaining a Fellows network over the last two and half years has become a significant part of my professional and academic identity as a teacher educator. Doing so online has been a learning curve but one that has given me some additional facilitation skills alongside the necessary technical know-how. As a teacher educator and researcher I have learned that there is immense value in creating and sustaining informal learning opportunities within a cross-phase, cross-sectoral, international and cross-role community. 

The Fellows network has become a critical mass allowing practice, research and innovation to be shared and co-constructed. This has spun off into new CPD initiatives which have been open to educators beyond the Fellows network. Going digital has made this a natural development and given it momentum.

Personally, I have gained confidence in new facilitation approaches (such as use of The Thinking Environment) and have helped others to take ideas into their own contexts. Most importantly I have lost my anxiety about attendance numbers. If one meeting has nine people present and another has 90 I see them as equally valuable and adapt formats as necessary. My mantra has become that we can always learn with and from others who are present, while respecting what we already have learned and will learn in the future from those not currently in the ‘room’. 

I have recognised that educators who have discretion about their attendance and participation in opportunities for professional learning are making deliberate decisions that they recognise as having value for them. Digital pedagogies have enabled adult participants to engage as, when and how they can – not everyone is able to take the same roles in online spaces and I encourage flexibility and choice. The welcome we offer is always a warm one. 

Finally, as the online space we have created enables lots of conversation around themes of common interest we are learning a lot about each other, finding out what expertise people have, what motivates and frustrates them and how they contribute to educational practice and development. Engaging from home often means we are more aware of the participants in 3D. We see glimpses of domestic life, bookshelves, artwork, family members, pets and coffee cups. This may even have encouraged new working relationships and friendships between educators to become established and new opportunities have certainly emerged. 

There is a rhizomatic, organic quality to this work. It is neither linear or simply objective-led. This is a welcome change to much of the current education practice and policy in initial teacher training and CPD in England, and it is liberating.

It is re-assuring to know that there should be more opportunities for in person teaching and other learning events in 2020-23. As another school year recommences there is a sense of the ‘new normal’ emerging from the pandemic and the rapid developments in digital educational practice is one aspect of this. However, there is also a pull back to the pre-pandemic practices, a perceived urge from some policy-makers and practitioners to resist the new opportunities.  The reality is that the future of our work as educators, including those in the CollectivED network, has been changed forever, and no doubt will continue to create exciting opportunities for discretionary professional participation and learning. 

The RAPIDE project will conclude in 2023. Amongst other features the project website will provide an archive of vignettes holding the professional memories and representing the legacies of educators who worked through the pandemic. But of course, the legacies live on in the new educational realities and opportunities, and as educators we will continue to explore and inhabit these through our ongoing research and practice. 

For me one significant legacy is the ever-evolving CollectivED Fellows network, and I look forward to continuing to be part of this community.