Learning Environments of Secondary School Teachers in a Cartography-Building Research in Spain

• In Event: 43.011 - Designing and Supporting Innovative Learning Environments Across Contexts and Disciplines: International Perspectives

Abstract

Objectives
This paper presents results of an ongoing research project "How teachers learn: Educational implications and challenges to address social change" (EDU2015-70912-C2-1-R) whose main goal is to inquire into what, how and where secondary school teachers learn and the consequences of such learning in creating innovative learning environments. Our study is focused on mapping out the scenarios in and outside schools where teachers learn and finding sources of knowledge and experience.

Perspectives
Our research departs from a narrative perspective on teacher learning to use cartographies as an arts-based research method that allows the exploration of interstices, displacements, instable journeys, ways of knowing, assemblages and entanglement through which teachers perform their learning paths (Paulston, & Liebman, 1994; Ruitenberg, 2007; Ulmer & Koro-Ljungberg, 2015). We assumed that there were nomadic learning displacements (Braidotti, 2006, 2014) that could be explored through cartographies.

Modes of inquiry
The research was conducted in three secondary schools from the area of Barcelona, with 29 secondary school teachers who accepted the invitation to build cartographies that would represent their learning trajectories and spaces in and out of school. Organized into groups of 8 to 12 teachers, they were asked to think of and relate three issues: a) the learning places b) their moves between the inside and the outside of the institution, and c) the sense they made of the very act of learning. The researchers took field notes and accompanied one or two teachers, asking questions about the cartography building process. Upon finishing their cartographies, the teachers were video recorded explaining them. The researchers met the teachers six months later to share with them what the cartographies and their narratives had made us think about learning, innovative learning environments and our encounter with them.

Data sources
We analyzed 29 cartographies, the field notes of all researchers and the transcriptions of the video recordings (3 to 8 minutes each). Besides analyzing the teachers’ learning environments and their elements, we created categories for the learning interactions in each environment.

Results
The findings show that the participants were able to locate their learning experiences in different formal and informal learning environments such as libraries, gyms, study groups, their families, universities and schools. Although the cartographies mainly established relations among different learning environments, people and objects, the participants’ narratives established teleological relations between their previous learning experiences and their current teaching. The participants established what worked in each of the many learning environments highlighting the affective relationships established in each one.

Scholarly significance
The study of teachers’ learning environments beyond formal teacher training is highly relevant to designing innovative learning environments since it helps teachers realize what, where and how they effectively learn and thus design better learning environments. It also gives us information on the elements and relationships of effective learning environments.

Author

• Paulo Padilla Petry, University of Barcelona