Digital kompetenceudvikling gennem udviklingslaboratorier

Abstract

The article describes and analyzes how a laboratory format has been used in lecturers’ professional development in a nationwide project on technological literacy and computational thinking (in Danish “teknologiforståelse”) in teacher training programs. In terms of content, the professional development activity needs to embrace both a technological, a subject-related and a teaching-and-learning dimension. In the project, the point of departure was the idea of the laboratory as a place demarcated from the ordinary world, where participants can ask new types of questions through practical work with investigations and experiments, and where the format is potentially transformative for teaching practice, as the format offers a framework which is open for experimentation. The article studies how participants implement (enact) the laboratory format in practice. The initial thesis is that the development laboratory is a loosely defined format that, to a large degree, is shaped by both coordinators and participants. The article analyses these processes as articulation work, i.e., coordination and structuring work that is performed to make practice work. Different actor perspectives related to the development laboratories are examined based on observations and interview data. Through this, a diversity of perspectives and experiences are illustrated. Based on the analyses, it is concluded that it is possible to realize the laboratory format according to its intentions, but also that the implementation of the format in a more routinised form entails greater challenges.