FRAMEWORK FOR COMPULSORY TEACHER TRAINING IN BLENDED LEARNING – MATCHING BLENDED LEARNING WITH TEACHING CONTEXT AND TEACHER MOTIVATION

This paper presents a framework for approaching the design of compulsory teacher training in blended learning. Rather than being prescriptive with regards to blended learning usage and impact, the design is adjustable to various teacher approaches to teaching, resistance to change, teaching contexts, prior experiences and levels of motivation.

Local university policies involving compulsory teacher training, commonly disregard local rationales for change and illustrate the assumption that teachers across a variety of disciplines are motivated to change or to develop their teaching practice. Aspects of the existing teaching practice will often be portrayed as in need of development, and this implicitly states that there is a better way to teach. We are not taking sides against or in favour of such policies resulting in compulsory teacher training. Instead, the issue that concerns us is how to design for quality changes in teaching practice if university teaching is hard to change (Roxå & Mårtensson, 2009, p. 210) and if professional development programmes per se is perceived by participants to be detached from the discipline and their teaching context.

The framework presented in this paper is used successfully in a one-year long teacher training programme in blended learning developed at Aarhus University in Denmark. Aarhus University (AU) adopted a 'Educational IT’ policy in 2011 with the purpose of strengthening teaching and learning through use of online interactions. The policy prescribes that 60 percent of all teachers at AU must be offered competence development regarding e-learning and teaching with digital media within 3 years. In 2012 the Dean’s Office at Aarhus University, School of Business and Social Sciences (Aarhus BSS), one of the four faculties at the university, decided that a one-year long training programme focusing on blended learning should be mandatory for associate and full professors at Aarhus BSS. By now, approximately 100 teachers have completed the training programme. The framework applied in the specific training programme includes among others a strong focus on teacher autonomy and usage of a design methodology which focuses on constructive alignment by matching learning tasks with learning technologies (Biggs & Tang, 2008; Bower, 2008).

The results of the teacher training programme suggest that the framework is successful with regards to improving teacher motivation and teacher application of blended learning to a variety of teaching contexts. Nevertheless, institutional factors are likely to overshadow the perceived benefits of blended learning.