Personalized workplace learning: An exploratory study on digital badging within a teacher professional development program

To provide customized workplace learning opportunities, a digital badge system was designed by a university, governmental agency and national professional association to support teachers’ implementation of professional development (PD). Teacher Learning Journeys (TLJ) is an approach that allows for teachers to customize their PD experience to their workplace and make decisions about what PD they need based on their expertise and interests. The digital badging provided and assessed experiences in online PD. Using a theoretical framework that focused on decision making and customization as part of personalization, researchers conducted a theory-driven thematic analysis on teachers’ TLJ artifacts (goal statements, interviews and reflective activity logs). Data came from 36 teachers who completed 154 PD activities over a 3-month period. A case study was developed from an in-depth analysis of eight teachers’ artifacts and interviews. Using TLJ as a PD tool, teachers made decisions when selecting learning goals they identified as personally relevant. Teachers customized the level of assessment and the specific content depth to personalize the PD training for workplace constraints. This project informs future research aiming to understand how personalized learning activities support teachers and other professional learners in a variety of workplaces.