Bridging the gap between practitioners and researchers: Critical factors in teachers’ professional learning in the era of mobile learning

Abstract

I n an ever-changing society, the school is slow to adapt to a world in which learning is ubiquitous, with technology available to empower it. There is a new student profile, with a way of thinking, acting, communicating and learning. However, when we talk about teacher profiles, we will have to analyse them in the light of their positioning regarding a process of transformation of pedagogical practices. This is the scope in which this research fits. We intend with this study to understand how teachers develop and transform their pedagogy in the context of a professional development situation incident on strategies of mobile learning, flipped learning and gamification. We present the qualitative data analysis in which teachers express their opinion about this experience. The results suggest the existence of four critical dimensions in professional learning: Teacher Attitudes, Learning Contents, Learning Context and Learning Processes. The analysis shows more specific levels in each of these four dimensions, however showing that the two great types of teacher attitudes: transformative or resistant, arise as enhancer or else hindering in the processes of transformation. The main implications of these results are equable and discussed.