Rural teachers as innovative co-creators: an intentional teacher professional development strategy

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into how rural teachers were empowered to become co-creators of innovative practices in their classrooms. The co-creation was operationalised as a merging of teachers existing knowledge of their subject, context and new knowledge of using mobile tablets towards enhancing their teaching practices in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa over a period of 3 years. The intentional situating of teachers as co-creators was implementation through a Teacher Professional Development (TPD) course. The course consisted of 10 modules presented and completed over a one year period. The TPD course was developed as an artifact using Design Science as a methodology with three iterations of implementation to refine it. The development of the course and its iterative implementation and refinement was grounded in the Living Lab open innovation approach with elements of gamification and various stakeholders were incorporated. Technology endowments were integrated as part of the gamification and were dependant on predefined co-creation events. Each event was linked to a badge and teachers had to provide practice based evidence of how new knowledge, proficiencies and skills gained during the TPD sessions was adapted to their own subject and context knowledge and practically implemented in their classrooms. This presents an innovative way to introduce and use tablets in teaching and learning as teachers are acknowledged as domain and subject experts and through exposure to technology and pedagogical strategies in using the technology, they become co-creators of their own new enhanced classroom practice.