Design Principles to support Student Learning in Teacher Learning Groups

This study presents design principles for student facilitation in teacher learning groups (TLGs), based on a systematic literature review searching for characteristics, conditions, and outcomes of students working in TLGs. Notions of team learning, network learning, community learning, and collective learning within teacher education were taken as the main components of the search. The review turned out to be very lean in terms of input; only 17 articles did justice to this theme. The exercise resulted in five main characteristics of TLGs (i.e. shared vision and goals; a project-based approach; shared responsibility and ownership; diversity and equality; supportive structures, resources and roles) and associated conditional factors. We combined these characteristics and conditional factors to formulate design principles, which can serve as a starting point for the supervision of students in TLGs. The limited number of search results shows that more research into student learning in TLGs is needed. Furthermore, the design principles yielded by the review are formulated in very general terms. In follow-up research, we will monitor four institutes for primary teacher education that enable student learning in TLGs with various social configurations. This study is expected to further concretise the design principles for student learning in TLGs.