Abstract:

The flipped classroom is a way of teaching completely different from the traditional in-class lecture as all the elements of the traditional class are reversed. This approach is characterized by the fact that is the student who is in control of his/her learning. It is also characterized by the inversion of expectations concerning the traditional lecture. This paradigm change implies a shift in roles and how time and space are used in education. As a matter of fact, it requires a cultural shift from academics being the facilitators of knowledge to the curators of knowledge. Moreover, this means a student-centred approach that values and supports a diversity of learning styles. And finally, an approach where students will be required to take a more active role and be accountable for their learning. The flipped classroom seems to be a tendency in the future education.

But are teachers prepared for it?
Many teachers teach in a similar way they learned, and their references are more related to the traditional classroom.
In order to understand if teachers are prepared for flipped classroom as a student, we offered a flipped teacher small course about Flipped Classroom.

This training course was target to a group of higher education teachers in the 2017/2018 academic year.
In this teacher training course, we used a flipped learning strategy. We made all resources available online before the face-to-face session and we intended to use the face-to-face session to practice their knowledge and for discussions. The course presented in this paper occurred in the second semester of the 2017/18 academic. In this course we had 43 teachers from higher education. This course took 6h (2h online + and 4h face-to-face).

We started the training by making available 3 videos and one document about flipped classroom (concept and practices). We asked trainees to prepare the face-to-face session by watching the 2 videos, reading the document and watching the last video.
In the face-to-face session we helped the participants in planning their own flipped classroom lesson.

In this article we describe the process of collecting teacher’s opinion and practices and present the results obtained.
We attest that teachers are yet not prepared for this kind of learning methods. The majority of teachers did not prepare the session and did not watch de videos before the class. Nevertheless, all teachers said that they believed in the advantage of flipped classroom and intended to use it in their classroom.

Keywords:

Flipped Classroom, Teacher Training, Higher Education.