Exploring Open Digital Badges in Teacher Education: a Case Study from India

Abstract

This case study concerns findings from a workshop with senior teacher educators from three Indian states as part of the TESS-India teacher professional development initiative. The workshop explored how open digital badges might be used to support, capture and validate changes in teachers’ classroom practice. Workshop participants drew on the TESS-India OER to design short online in-service teacher professional development courses to support movement towards the more participatory approach advocated in education policy. As part of this course design process, participants were encouraged to propose digital badges to recognise changes in teachers’ pedagogic practice. Analysis of the workshop discussions and outputs indicated enthusiasm for digital badges, while also revealing that the process of defining digital badges may be helpful in prompting disruption of deeply embedded cultural scripts about ways of being and knowing that shape teacher educators’ practice and helping them to recognise what the work of quality teaching entails.