Knowledge in network: a digital learning community with transversal gamification for teacher training and professional development
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55560/arete.2026.24.12.13Keywords:
digital learning community, educational gamification, critical digital socioconstructivism, andragogical mediation, design researchAbstract
Teacher training is experiencing a crisis, documented by international organizations, regional research, and institutional assessments. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization projects a global shortage of 44 million teachers by 2030. Latin America also faces gaps in teacher retention and professional development. Against this backdrop, the question arises of how to design a digital learning community that systematically addresses the shortage, fragmentation, and motivational crisis among teachers in Latin America. This community should serve as a space for training and development independent of formal enrollment and reach teachers in the various contexts where they practice. It is grounded in critical digital socioconstructivism, an original synthesis that integrates contributions from Vygotsky, Freire, Wenger, and Garrison, with educational gamification as a cross-cutting element. Its implementation is methodologically structured through a knowledge management model that outlines the sequence of phases within the iterative cycles of design-based research, articulated around six pedagogical pillars. The work has reached the theoretical modeling phase. As a model, it responds, within the Latin American context, to the current crisis in teacher training and development.
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