The Figure of the Teacher-Prosumer for the Development of an Innovative, Sustainable, and Committed Education in Times of COVID-19

Abstract

Studies on the adaptation from face-to-face to online teaching during lockdown show the before and after in education that faces the double challenge of promoting digital skills and public access to connectivity and electronic devices in the post-COVID-19 era. Therefore, this article contributes to these new emerging lines of educational research by presenting an educational innovation project called “Teachers Versus COVID-19”. This project aimed to verify whether the figure of teacher-prosumer, that is, consumers of media culture and creators of their own educational resources, favors the initial training of teachers during the pandemic. To this end, the following objectives were proposed: firstly, test whether the figure of the teacher-prosumer contributes to improving the adaptation of face-to-face teaching to the virtual modality of the Didactics of Social Sciences in the Degree in Primary Education during lockdown; secondly, analyze the production of content on social networks by the students in the Degree in Primary Education, according to the objectives of sustainable development. To validate our teacher-prosumer proposal, we chose the design-based research (DBR) qualitative methodology. For this, 240 students from the course in Didactics of Social Sciences of the Degree in Primary Education at the University of Malaga created 37 educational videos that teach the social sciences curriculum to children between 6 and 12 years of age from the perspective of relevant social problems and the Sustainable Development Goals. These videos were disseminated through the project’s YouTube channel. The results of this study corroborate the effectiveness of turning students into teachers-prosumers, generating the development of critical, creative, digital, and socio-emotional skills so that they feel committed to playing an active role in social changes for a sustainable world.