Pedagogical innovation in teacher teams: An organisational learning design model for continuous competence development

This paper presents findings from a longitudinal design-based research project examining how to enable reflection and pedagogical innovation in teacher teams. The article identifies and analyses the teachers’ learning trajectories and innovative strategies when working together in the IT-pedagogical Think Tank for Teacher Teams (after this: ITP4T) (Weitze, 2014a), a competence development model, which was developed in an earlier phase of the research project. By using theoretical lenses from innovative knowledge development frameworks to examine the teachers’ utterances, interactions and new learning designs, the research aims to clarify what kind of knowledge is being developed and shared in the teacher teams, and how this contributes to the organisational learning process. The context is Global Classroom, an innovative synchronous hybrid videoconference concept, where adult students can choose between participating in class on campus or from home via videoconference on a daily basis. The ITP4T model is a response to the needs and challenges the teachers and the organisation at VUC Storstrøms´ Global Classroom have been experiencing in this new teaching environment. The teachers find that they need to be pedagogically innovative when teaching in this learning environment, particularly when aiming to create equal learning conditions for the students in class and at home; in other words, they need to reframe their learning designs. The ITP4T model thus aims at creating a continuous practise for the teachers to be able to create their own competence development in teams in which the manager participates. The use of this new practice inside the school empowered the teachers in the organisation and created a new organisational learning design, which can innovate, help unravel complex questions, create new organisational knowledge and anchor new knowledge and practises. The teachers became both their own and the organisation’s continuous competence developers when working in this learning design/innovative model. They experienced this as an efficient way of working which made them feel empowered.