Pedagogical transformation and teacher learning for knowledge building: Turning COVID-19 challenges into opportunities

Abstract

This paper reports on a Knowledge-Building Community (KBC) continual effort connecting teachers within and across schools for knowledge creation and community building during the COVID-19 disruptions. During this crisis, schools around the world are being challenged with the issues of implementing online learning. We identified three areas of misalignments: disjoint in learning with home-school separation, piecemeal technologies to mimic physical teaching, and disconnect between teacher professional development and classroom practices, and we discussed emerging realignment efforts for transformative learning. Through analyzing the three cases of how teachers responded to COVID-19 challenges in inter-related areas of curriculum, pedagogy, technology, and community, several themes on emerging alignments conducive for transformative pedagogy and technology through community advancement were identified. These themes include innovating practice around the centrality of ideas, perceiving knowledge building as pervasive, transformative use of technology, and symmetrical advancement of knowledge where expertise is distributed within and between communities. These case examples show that in these disruptive times, the teachers were more actively building new practices supported by the community dynamics and systemic processes of the KBC. Consequently, the interactions between stakeholders shifted from disjointed relations in different hierarchical levels to a network community of people, ideas, and resources, and teachers continually advancing their knowledge-building practice in these challenging times.