Emerging and continuous co-design of a professional learning module

The Context Matters: The SciTeach Center

The work presented here is based at the SciTeach Center, a resource center at the University of Luxembourg that promotes science education at primary school level by offering professional learning modules (PLM), books and teaching materials to loan, as well as pedagogical guides. The SciTeach Center team includes researchers and in-service teachers who work together co-designing PLMs. This continuous collaboration allows the PLMs to be simultaneously grounded in research and being responsive to actual teachers’ needs and school contexts.

One of such PLMs is Bridges and Towers, a popular module that has been offered since 2019. Within this 6-hour module the participants engage in hands-on activities around bridges and towers that promote inquiry-based approach and engineering design.

The Context Matters: How Module Unfolds

In 2024, the Bridges and Towers module was offered two times: in public international school and at the SciTeach Center. Each time the context was different. In the case of the international school: i) there was a limited selection of materials transported from the SciTeach Center; ii) the module responded to teachers’ needs within this school; iii) the participants and coteachers represented diverse backgrounds, and given the diversity within the school, bridges were used as a metaphor for coming together.

In another case: i) the module took place at the SciTeach Center with its large library of resources; ii) the participants represented different schools and, thus, had different needs, iii) coteachers and participants were Luxembourgers, iv) a coteacher with background in citizenship education challenged gender stereotypes common for the Rapunzel story (that was used to discuss towers).

The Context Matters: Being Responsive

The contexts of these two cases are clearly different. However, it is one thing to acknowledge the context, and another to be open and responsive towards it. To do this, teachers and researchers at the SciTeach Center work together to design educational structures (such as PLMs) that we also coteach. This shared teaching helps us remain reflexive and aligned, and it keeps the modules open to contextual adjustments.

Overall, we argue that an open and emerging structure for a PLM ensures adaptive and responsive context that supports coteachers’ and participants’ agency. This brings a module closer to participants’ realities while leaving an opening for them to shape the structures in ways that meet their needs and potentially impacts their practice.