Collaborative Learning in Teacher Training

Abstract

Comunicación centrada en el aprendizaje cooperativo entre profesores. Presentación de un programa combinando observaciones entre pares, comunidades de prácticas y aprendizaje entre pares.

In the course of the Bologna process, collaborative learning has become a key methodology within higher education institutions and teachers have been trained to apply it in their classrooms. At the Language Center (LC) at Universidad Europea, collaborative learning strategies have been applied to in-house language teacher training. This presentation will showcase several examples of good practice: 1.Buzz and peer observations: In the first trimester of each academic year, LC teachers participate in a buzz week, dropping in on each others classes for 10 minutes, as often as they like. Teachers are then asked to post a moodle forum comment, in which they outline one good practice they have seen and plan to replicate in their own classes. In trimester 2, more structured peer observations, including pre- and post-observation meetings are carried out on predefined areas of development. 2.Communities of practice: In the current academic year, 3 communities of practice (CoP) have been implemented. A CoP on flipping the classroom shares articles, good practice, class materials and feedback on a moodle platform; another CoP is working on educational podcasting, interviewing teachers and students on topics related to language learning and teaching and making these interviews available on the university radio. In 2015-2016, a CoP on tertiary CLIL will be offered to EMI teachers, to acquaint them with CLIL methodologies such as scaffolding or multimodality. 3.Peer-to-peer training: This summer training consists of teachers offering workshops on their area of expertise to other interested colleagues, such as: Advanced Spanish for language teachers who are non-native speakers of Spanish, classroom English, error correction, pronunciation training. In conclusion, satisfaction data on this collaborative learning experience has been positive and the literature suggests that learning outcomes in collaborative environments tend to be better than in conditions of autonomous or individual learning.