INFORMAL COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE AND CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF SPANISH TEACHERS IN A PANDEMIC CONTEXT: A CASE STUDY

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic required a rapid reorganisation of teaching practices and increased the need for teachers’ digital professional development. This study analysed how participation in an informal community of Spanish teachers was related to the pedagogical integration of digital technologies, professional collaboration and participants’ perceived usefulness of the experience. A case study with a mixed-methods approach was conducted, focusing on 17 online meetings held between April and July 2020. The initiative involved 184 individual teachers, corresponding to 833 accumulated participations. Data were collected through digital questionnaires with closed and open-ended questions and were analysed using descriptive statistics and content analysis. The findings indicate strong willingness to continue professional development, contact with a wide range of digital tools and positive perceptions of sharing, collaboration, learning, community belonging and digital competence development. The community functioned as a peer-based, discipline-specific professional development space, perceived as useful for teaching practice during emergency remote teaching.