Challenges of Contemporary Teaching: Continuing Education and Pedagogical Practices in Cyberculture

Abstract

 Education is currently facing many challenges, which have had an impact on the way we teach and learn. With this focus, we aimed to determine what teaching knowledge is necessary for today's world, according to the perception of practicing teachers. In this context, we used methodological procedures with a qualitative approach of an interventionist nature. In order to achieve the desired results, we provided ongoing training to twenty-five elementary school teachers – final years, in a city in the southwest of Bahia. The training consisted of one in-person meeting and four online meetings. In the last meeting, we selected five of the teachers participating in the training for a focus group, based on some selection criteria, such as: being effective in the municipal education system; all of them working in basic education; having a degree in language or humanities; having a specialization in the area in which they work; and having more than ten years of experience in the profession. In effect, the results indicated that continuing education is necessary in contemporary times, as teachers can work effectively, share knowledge with their peers, cyberculture knowledge, network knowledge and curricular knowledge. Thus, we found that teachers need to reinvent their pedagogical practice. Participants also highlighted the need to add mediated knowledge to pedagogical knowledge, which is why pedagogical practice needs to be remodeled. The results showed that teachers will feel comfortable in digital teaching-learning environments and will understand continuing education as a reflection on their own pedagogical practices.  

Keywords: Teaching knowledge. Cyberculture. Digital technologies.