Digital Learning Across Boundaries: Using digital technologies to innovate digital collaborations and develop changemaking in student teachers.

This poster will summarise the work we have been doing in the DLAB2 project this year. The project combines key themes of developing changemakers, social innovation and the use of innovative digital learning tools to blend physical and digital learning environments and provide powerful opportunities for international collaboration. The research aligns with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 4.7 (2015) by promoting sustainable societies and global citizenship through education, and developing intercultural awareness through the use of digital technology and pedagogies. This year the project is focusing on crossing personal boundaries which seems particularly salient given the social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The DLAB participants, who total approximately 200 individuals, are not only looking at how technology can be used to innovate learning in school itself but how it can be used more widely to collaborate with children and schools across countries and produce resources collaboratively. Whilst last year’s research explored how to project promoted changemaking activities in school children, this year’s research, and this poster, will detail how the project has supported and developed changemaking in the student teachers, with a particular focus on crossing personal boundaries. The research uses an ethnographic methodology, focusing on the experiences of the students teachers; it applies a participatory action research framework whereby all participants contribute to the research through methods such as photo elicitation and reflective vlogs. Emerging evidence suggests that the ways in which student teachers have crossed personal boundaries, and encouraged children to cross personal boundaries, have revolved around the changes to working practices seen in schools due to COVID-19. This includes uses of technology, approaches to teaching and reflecting upon the children’s needs and experiences during the pandemic