Quite an uninspiring heading and yet – SO MUCH EXCITEMENT!
Well, a little bit at least. So, let’s flesh this out .
- Do some awesome PD
- Head back to your classroom and do stuff
- Get caught up in all the hoopla of the huff and puff of life and the PD suffers fatal transmogrify.
- Forget you ever did the PD
So imagine if you could accumulate your PD into credentials that add value to your offering as a teacher.
Think about the Primary Years Program (PYP). You do heaps of training. That qualifies you to teach in certain contexts. Imagine if you had a transcript of your courses that was always connected to you.
In my school we have a proto ‘Teacher Profile’. It captures what it means to be a teacher in our setting. This is defined by our values, habits and skills. These are represented by tokens that are awarded as a micro-credential.
Just like scouts, you collect badges / tokens. You don’t have to collect all of them. The catalogue of tokens is curated by the school / network/ specialist body. As a teacher you demonstrate skills in our signature pedagogies (we use Walkthru’s) and gain recognition for your area of expertise.
We all know who the ‘Arty Person’ or the ‘Tech Person’ is in our schools. They may not even be the people formally in the role. (Who is it at your school who knows how to make the photocopier unjam just because…)
As an act of authentic teacher agency, we can curate micro-credential opportunities that cluster around a theme or subject. The ‘enviro teacher’ can then do all this PD, and be seen to have become the ‘goto’ person in our learning community. Hmmm….. This could work equally as well for kids.
So – from a Theory of Learner Agency perspective:
- The learning ecology (for adults) has artefacts embedded – a catalogue of possible micro credentials available.
- The learner (adult) is attuned to the affordances of a micro credential (using Orthography to teach spelling for example).
- The learner takes action / uses agency to complete the professional development and use it in their school context.
- They become the owner of a new artefact – an Non Fungible Token (Non Transferable) in the form of a Micro-Credential.
These MicroCredentials accumulate over time and are visible on LinkedIn or other platforms. This is how teachers support and develop a reputation for being a leader in their field.
Teachers / Support / Admin Staff will need to have a ‘wallet’ and access to the marketplace through which these NFTs are created, bought and sold. The blockchain technology means that the owner of the micro-credential NFT is secure and can’t be sold off.
Over time, organisations like ALEA or MAV will or school networks or universities will award these tokens and have a robust process for evaluation in place.
The affordances of the token are more than recognition for the credential. For example, if I own a Foundation for Learning and Literacy Non Fungible Token (NFT)