Teachers’ formal and non-formal learning strategies for their professional development: Design and validation of an instrument

Abstract

The quality of an education system depends on the quality of its teachers. Teachers are professionals who must be constantly updating and improving their competence. International reports show us that the strategies by which teachers learn are varied but largely focused on workshop approaches, courses or seminars. We aim to promote the study of how teachers currently learn in a connected society through the design and validation of an instrument that addresses different learning situations for teachers: activities at the school, learning from others, teaching collaboration with colleagues, sharing ideas and problems, consulting online sources of information, expansion, doing/experimenting, interacting with others and reflecting. The results show that the instrument produced has validity and can be used as a tool to analyze teacher-learning processes. The instrument can be useful for use in different situations or training contexts, as well as being used as evidence in the process of verifying changes in teachers' preferences as a result of their participation in certain training actions.