BOX 21: enhancing the professional development of teachers

The CADRE, or Center for Animation, Development and Research in Education, is taking a very contemporary tangent this year: it is about developing a CADRE for the 21^e century, hence the name CADRE 21.

Its instigators were also present at the last ICT Camp of the FÉEP to present, as a premiere, the beta version of a part of their website highlighting the professional development of teachers through a system of digital badges.

From virtual to face-to-face framework

The strategic presence of FRAMEWORK 21 will be multiplatform and polymorphic. She will obviously be ubiquitous in social media thanks to her coordinator, the well-known Jacques Cool, through which the project will evolve in different forms. As the latter wishes, CADRE 21 will be a place, a state of mind, a catalyst for positive, up-to-date and lasting change.

This presence is first and foremost a platform for the exchange and sharing of new ideas or current themes in education. It will be a place of animation and a transformative leadership incubator that will spill over into everything related to education in the Francophonie. Also, it will be a physical place, having a storefront in the Ahuntsic district of Montreal: the perfect place for both a training offer, a gathering of education professionals or the search for an arrangement. promoting exchanges and sharing of ideas.

CADRE 21 is intended to be an inclusive and decompartmentalized project. All stakeholders in the world of education in the Francophonie will meet there. This includes preschool, elementary and secondary education as well as post-secondary education settings. Private education, the public sector and the various bodies of the Ministry of Education, Higher Education and Research will be called upon, as will companies working in the field. FRAMEWORK 21, regardless of its physical or virtual form, will remain a unifying place.

The final version of the FRAME 21 website should be operational next November. Until then, a few tweets are already starting to provide an overview of the project.

A teacher recognition initiative

Thus, teachers of all levels of education from all over the Francophonie will be able to collect digital badges mainly focused on the accomplishment of specific tasks in three areas related to their daily professional activities:

• Badge recognizing the integration of ICT in pedagogy using a variety of relevant tools;
• Badge recognizing the use of various pedagogical strategies and approaches in order to deepen student learning;
• Badge recognizing the use of various classroom management strategies adapted to different situations involving the supervision of students in the heat of the moment.

The avowed aim of this initiative is threefold. First, we want to stimulate and encourage a process of reflection on the part of the teacher about his own professional practice. In addition, we are developing another way of supporting professional development initiatives. Finally, we would like to recognize the efforts of those working in the field when they take the means to update their practice by participating in various training courses.

To obtain a digital badge, the education professional will only have to submit a request with supporting documents to the administrators of the virtual platform. The file will be evaluated and, quickly, the badge will be issued. By the way, these are encrypted and assigned to a single person; they will be genuine and non-transferable.

To watch this fall! In the meantime, you can visit the microsite at: www.cadre21.org