Abstract:

Digital platforms are increasingly used for teacher training and professional development, yet there is still limited understanding of why some teachers engage more successfully with these environments and which learner characteristics may support the transfer of training content into practice. This study examined teacher learning in an online professional development platform through a combination of cognitive tasks and a transfer-of-learning questionnaire. The rationale for this approach was that transfer, although often studied through self-report and contextual variables, also relies on cognitive operations that can be assessed with established experimental paradigms.

Participants were 61 in-service Lithuanian Informatics teachers enrolled in a nationwide online professional development platform. The platform provided structured training units, including assignments and products intended for classroom use, such as lesson designs and other classroom-ready materials. During the professional development period, participants completed the Learning Transfer System Inventory (LTSI) and three cognitive tasks: Forward Digit Span, Paired Associates Learning task, and an Acquired Equivalence task. The LTSI was used as a subjective indicator of conditions that may facilitate or inhibit transfer, while the cognitive tasks provided performance-based indicators of working memory, visuospatial associative learning, feedback-based learning, and generalization.

Analyses focused on relationships between cognitive task performance and LTSI dimensions, while also considering background variables such as teaching experience and grade level. Preliminary results showed that stronger cognitive performance was not associated with uniformly higher LTSI scores, but rather with variation across individual LTSI dimensions. The findings will be discussed in light of their possible implications for the design of online professional development, particularly with regard to how training environments can better support different learner profiles and transfer conditions.

Acknowledgment:
This research No P-EDU-23-21 is co-funded by the European Union (the project "Breakthrough in Educational Research" No 10-044-P-0001) under the 1st April 2025 Agreement with the Research Council of Lithuania RCOL) and the 15th April 2025 Joint Activity Agreement with Vilnius University

Keywords:

Learning transfer, cognitive factors, Informatics teachers, professional development.