Blended Teacher Training Program: Rethinking Learning Spaces and Evaluating Active Learning in Basic Education Schools

Introduction

Today's society has been suffering significant changes in social, political, economic and cultural contexts, which cause changes in personal values and beliefs. Colossi et al. (2001) identify these global changes as a sense of the “new millennium”, marked by information, globalization and the knowledge society, characterizing, thus, the modern world. All of these changes cause a technological expansion which leads to a new generation considered to be digital native. These people are used to receive information very quickly. This transformation of the communicative process is largely due to digital networks (Prensky, 2001; Castells, 2007).

All the technological evolution, which has already been used, has arrived at educational institutions and has also changed the format of the old teaching model to new teaching models face-to-face (F2F), distance and/or blended learning (DL /BL). Taking in consideration that some authors defend the distinction between DL and Distance Education (DE) (King, Young, Drivere-Richmond & Schrader, 2004), a view not aligned with other authors (Sherry, 1995), for disambiguation purposes, it should be noted this chapter will use the terms interchangeably. The DL in the basic education, for example, assumes that the student will be able to learn at any time regardless of where he/she is. For Jackiw (2019),

On the other hand, it is possible to identify many school initiatives which have started to challenge themselves to promote new learning experiences for their students. They include in their program classes of robotics, critical thinking, programming, socio-emotional skills and among other competences which are necessary for citizens to live in society today.

In the Brazilian schools there is a lack of new studies to support teachers in the planning of their classes which can help in the construction of this teaching and learning process. This fact is corroborated by the studies of Gemignani (2013), under the statement that there is a growing search for innovative methodologies which enable a pedagogical practice capable of overcoming the limits of purely technical and traditional training, to effectively achieve the formation of the individual as an ethical, historical, critical, reflective, transformative and humanized being.

The use of computers, the Internet and other digital devices in Brazilian schools are becoming more and more common. Despite of this, its pedagogical use is still not as efficient as it could be. Many teachers find it difficult to deal with technology, while students are not intimidated by digital devices. Education professionals should be aware that the use of digital tools does not bring the innovation which is expected if it is not accompanied by new teaching-learning methodologies and, especially, by a new attitude of the teacher (Gemignani, 2013 ; Bates, 2016; Iannone et al., 2016). In addition, it seems that investments on infrastructure (learning spaces, technologies, the Internet) and on teacher training programs are reserved for private educational institutions.

Connected to this scenario, the impact of digital transformation reaches education, promoting countless institutional changes, in particular, pedagogical models to meet the demands coming from the student’s profile and the application of projects which can give greater visibility to the participation of parents in understanding the proposals of combined classes between studying at home (online) and at school (in person). An illustration of this is the rupture of the conventional model of teaching with the exploration and experiment of Active Methods. For Silberman (1996), the research shows that active learning is a very effective teaching strategy; students assimilate a greater volume of content, retain information for longer and enjoy classes with more satisfaction and pleasure.