First post: Open networked learning and scholarship of teaching

So, I'm making my debut as a blogger! Being a language teacher educator, I encourage my students to use various interactive resources in their teaching and I have also included blog posts, or rather reflective log entries, as a way for the students to engage with the course content. But I myself have never blogged.

In 2017 I have the honour and privilege of being one of eight pedagogical ambassadors at Stockholm University. My project within this endeavour deals with mobile learning as a means of enhancing professional development in language teacher education, and to try to find ways of bridging the gap between the theory and practice of teaching. As part of this I'm taking the course Open Networked Learning (ONL). The course has only just started, but already fascinating paths of enquiry are opening up, and I'm very excited. The next few months will be intense and challenging and, most likely, very rewarding.

The first theme that we tackled in the group of ambassadors was scholarship of teaching. To what extent can work related to pedagogical development be understood in terms similar to research in our academic disciplines? In addition to being an excellent and expert teacher, that is knowing your field and being able to reflect on and develop your teaching practices in a systematic way, it also "extends to the integration, application, and transmission of knowledge" (Kreber, 2002). Taking part in the ONL is an excellent way of achieving this.

Reference:
Kreber, Caroline (2002). Teaching Excellence, Teaching Expertise, and the Scholarship of Teaching. Innovative Higher Education, 27(1): 5-23.