Teachers' Training in the Era of Access – Content, Metadata, and Recognition of Self-learning Activities to Shape an Open Training of Trainers Model

Information Society dynamisms represent a challenge to traditional pedagogical practices: complex forces impact on teaching and learning conditions, as much as institution relationships, completely reshaping the basis of conventional teacher status and function. Indeed, the Web has become one of the most important places in which learning occurs, and informal learning across social networks is becoming increasingly important no matter what teachers actually do (Carneiro, 2007). Even when teachers’ have been recognized as main players in renewing education systems, they are frequently accused of lack of competencies to face the above depicted complexity (OCDE, 2009; Margiotta, 1997). Therefore, strong efforts are being made about the role of teachers in managing new organizational contexts, improving ICT and linguistic/intercultural competencies, to become reflective/research practitioners with an active participation in instructional innovations and increase educational quality. This requires in time, rethinking teachers’ training models, where more emphasis is needed in self-learning strategies and use of Web resources (Hargreaves, 2003). This article introduces a teachers' training approach (learning hypothesis and design, educational technologies adopted and specifications) that founds on the efficacy of Open Educational Resources (UNESCO, 2004), interweaving them with flexible learning environments -from low to high levels of interaction with content and with communities of users- regarding learners' interest in the use and re-use of resources. The model founds on an initial, participatory process of metadata, where several trainers work in a classification of educational resources, considering pedagogical practices and knowledge the resources promote. It hence allow trainers to use resources in several levels of interaction, attempting to generate a progressive development of contents from the initial resource. The learning processes enacted by this activity would in time be recognized in several levels of University certification. The leading hypothesis is that this approach promotes an active engagement in processes of reshaping knowledge with impact on a) trainers' digital literacy; b) cognitive and metacognitive shift on the role of technologies in pedagogical practices; c) trainers' perception of participation in innovation and shaping of educational agenda, where learning about and through open contents helps trainers to use effectively the same in educational projects they are engaged as professionals. Furthermore, our argumentation leads us to think about the efficacy of training systems based on Open Educational Resources, searching for empirical evidence on the main concepts that define open education