On the role of (in)formal learning for teachers’ employability and innovative working behavior across career phases: a cross-sectional study.

Are our teachers able to keep up with changing insights and knowledge within their domain, are they ready for innovative didactical approaches and technological innovations? According to Dirk van Damme, The Head of the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) of the OECD (2014) teachers in Europe do not show sufficient expertise and flexibility to cope with these challenges. In other words, they are not sufficient employable, nor score high enough on innovative work behavior (IWB). Given the dynamic environment of schools, investment in human capital is crucial and implies a strategic approach of supporting teachers’ continuous professional development. The professional development of teachers is both formal and informal in nature. However, research on the relation between teachers’ informal learning and their employability and innovative working behavior remains scarce. Most of the rare studies looking into the relation between informal learning and teachers’ employability and their innovative working behaviour were performed in higher education and with low number of participants (e.g. van der Heijden, Boon, van der Klink, & Meijs, 2009; Van der Rijt et al., 2012). In addition, age-related variables such as future time perspective, i.e. people’s perception of the number of opportunities and limitations are ahead in their (working) life (Lang & Carstensen, 2002), experience and career phases (e.g. Huberman, 1989; Sammons et al., 2006) seem to play a role in teachers’ learning, employability and IWB and were not taken into account. It is assumed that teachers’ formal and informal learning leads towards a higher employability and more IWB; exactly the behavior that is needed to face the innovations schools are dealing with today and in the future. Next, researcher such as Williams (2003) and Richter et al. (2011) indicated that especially teachers in their mid-career phase are believed to learn more in an informal way, while early-career teachers prefer formal learning and teachers in later career are less interested in learning.