Continuous professional teacher development (CPTD) offers ongoing support to teachers, making them more active, critical, and reflexive practitioners through exposure to frequent technical solutions to modern educational complexities (Gore et al. 2017). Therefore, CPTD is a vital mechanism for updating teachers’ knowledge bases, deepening specialist subject skills, and improving classroom practice through diverse learning opportunities, such as workshops and professional communities. Grounding development in this way is essential; otherwise, as Weller (2020) cautions, an over-focus on adopting new tools breeds a “pedagogical amnesia” that obscures the deeper social and theoretical histories driving authentic learning. This amnesia fosters technological determinism—the flawed assumption that technology alone possesses the agency to transform education, independent of social context or pedagogical design.
In South Africa, this framing is acute; systemic constraints reduce technology integration to a mere hardware acquisition rather than pedagogical transformation (Johns and Sosibo 2019). To transcend this technical fix, CPTD must pivot toward educators’ internal dispositions. Digital integration is increasingly recognized as a vital mechanism for facilitating student collaboration and assessing learning (Alenezi 2023; Theodorio 2024). Extending the topic but using an arts-based, post-qualitative inquiry, this study moves beyond these functional applications. That is, resisting a linear “skills-transfer” model by moving away from mechanistic training toward a cultivation of human-centered capacities (Wood 2024).
This study was conducted at the 2024 NQTs Winter School hosted by the University of Cape Town (UCT), where Newly Qualified Teachers (NQTs)—operationally defined as early-career educators in their first one to three years of practice—engaged in an interactive workshop. This session used accessible tools, defined here as software that is economically free or low-cost, widely available on everyday devices, user-friendly, and functional under limited bandwidth, such as PowerPoint, TikTok, and CapCut, to acknowledge technology’s role in co-creative thinking (Selfa-Sastre et al. 2022). By leveraging familiar platforms such as WhatsApp to enhance engagement (Aulia et al. 2024), this time-bounded encounter explored how existing digital fluencies can drive meaningful pedagogical growth.
Integrating theoretical concepts with technical skills is becoming increasingly urgent as the educational landscape incorporates more complex systems (Ahmed et al. 2024). This urgency is reflected in the UNESCO (2024) AI Competency Framework for Teachers, which emphasizes that professional development must transcend technical operation to encompass the critical, ethical, social, and technological dimensions of learning environments. This transition reflects the need to move from merely using a tool to understanding its ethical and pedagogical nuances.
As digital empowerment is rooted in the ‘internal readiness’ of the teacher (Wood 2024), prioritizing these affective and relational dimensions enables teachers to move from passive technology use toward active, multimodal pedagogy. For CPTD to be meaningful, it must pivot toward these dispositional layers to foster long-term change in challenging educational contexts.
Theoretical Perspectives: Inner Development Goals (IDGs)
The theoretical anchor for this inquiry is the Inner Development Goals (IDGs) framework, which provides a structured analytical mapping for understanding how educators’ inner capacities catalyze and implement pedagogical transformation (Ankrah et al. 2023; Wood 2024). While traditional professional development has historically focused on isolated technical mechanics (Ertmer and Ottenbreit-Leftwich 2010), contemporary global assessments reveal that teacher professional development (TPD) initiatives still disproportionately emphasize technical tool proficiency over systemic pedagogical transformation (Oni and Ngongpah 2024). In response, this study adopts a nested hierarchy where the Inner Development Goals (IDGs) serve as the internal catalyst for technology integration. Rather than mere technical acquisition, integration is framed as a mechanism to fulfill UNESCO Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4), which outlines the global mandate for inclusive, equitable, and quality education (Shtaltovna et al. 2024) as it applies specifically to the localized challenges and opportunities within the South African education system. This framework positions SDG4 targets as the macro-societal horizon and inner dimensions as the ontological core: the critical internal capacities educators need to drive digital transformation and sustain pedagogical practice within resource-constrained contexts.
As conceptualized by Björkman et al. (2020), the IDG framework consists of five dimensions: Being, Thinking, Relating, Collaborating, and Acting—encompassing twenty-three skills designed to bridge the gap between individual capacity and national or global goals, such as Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Through this conceptual orientation, we view technology integration as a relational practice (Weller 2020), an interconnection where the self and the digital converge to drive pedagogical transformation. We argue that the current educational landscape requires more than technical mastery, demanding awareness of the energetic and relational links among oneself, others, the environment, and technology (Dängeli 2019).
It follows that the NQT Winter School serves as the site where CPTD and IDGs align to highlight how, and more deeply why, basic technology may contribute to addressing the goal of quality and equitable education (SDG4). By focusing on the teacher’s internal growth and adaptation, we extend the inquiry from a ‘how-to’ of technology integration to the deeper ‘why’ of pedagogical practice in resource-constrained contexts. By utilizing the IDGs dimensions of being, thinking, relating, collaborating, and acting as interpretive filters, we move beyond a descriptive report to analyze the tensions and systemic barriers NQTs encounter in under-resourced educational contexts. By connecting participant reflections to the IDGs framework, this section shifts the analytical focus from technical acquisition to the social and dispositional dimensions of digital teaching. The application of the five dynamic IDG dimensions across this inquiry is detailed below:
Being (Relationship to Self): Encompassing self-awareness and presence (Ankrah et al. 2023; Wood 2024), this dimension allowed participants to reflect on their own digital identities and technical anxieties before engaging with new tools.
Thinking (Cognitive Skills): By fostering complexity awareness and critical thinking (Shtaltovna et al. 2024), this dimension supported moving beyond a “linear” view of technology as a delivery system toward a “generative” tool for conceptualizing diverse subjects—ranging from Mathematics and Physical Science to History.
Relating (Caring for Others and the World): Centered on social and interpersonal skills like empathy and compassion (Ankrah et al. 2023; Wood 2024), this dimension was vital for navigating the participants’ diverse educational backgrounds and fostering a sense of shared purpose despite institutional differences.
Collaborating (Social Skills): Focusing on the ability to drive collective action through communication and co-creation, this dimension was directly applied in the short filmmaking process and peer knowledge-sharing ecosystem of the workshop’s supportive WhatsApp groups.
Acting (Driving Change): Encompassing the transformation of personal growth into action through courage and creativity (Ankrah et al. 2023; Wood 2024), this dimension was evidenced when participants translated theoretical concepts into experimental pedagogical prototypes.
It should be noted, however, that while these dimensions remained works-in-progress due to the workshop’s temporal constraints, they served as vital proofs-of-concept for the educators involved.
Literature Review: Continuous Professional Teacher Development and Multimodal Literacy
Scholarship extensively underscores multimodal literacy—the ability to use text, image, audio, video and gesture—as a catalyst for pedagogical evolution (Carcamo and Carmona 2025; Liu and Lim 2024). However, technical digital media production is insufficient without a shift in an educator’s internal disposition from a functional ‘how to’ approach to contextualized ‘why’ that favors local, co-creative media production over generic, ready-made content. While active film creation may empower teachers to build inclusive learning environments, research has largely focused on language education, leaving multimodal integration across non-language disciplines under-explored (Carcamo and Carmona 2025; Liu and Lim 2024). Systematic reviews emphasize that using digital technologies can foster collaborative creativity (Selfa-Sastre et al. 2022).
Generative AI (GAI) further enriches this multimodal landscape. Tools like ChatGPT offer unprecedented opportunities for personalized learning and enhanced student engagement (Ahmed et al. 2024). Yet, this shift toward AI-enhanced learning environments requires educators to navigate challenges regarding academic integrity, content accuracy, and student critical thinking. While systematic reviews of emerging educational technologies (Li et al. 2022) and broad perception mappings (Ahmed et al. 2024) show positive student attitudes toward AI assistance, this context underscores the need for CPTD models to prepare teachers not just for filmmaking, but for the broader AI-enhanced digital ecosystem.
Subsequently, this short filmmaking workshop sought to address this gap by conceptualizing multimodal literacy not as a subject-specific skill, but as a fundamental 21st-century competency. By prioritizing the process of collective creation over a “flawless” final product, the workshop responded to the need identified by Carcamo and Carmona (2025), Collie and Martin (2024), and Liu and Lim (2024) to develop and evaluate pedagogical models that prioritize the unique demands of varied disciplines across the curriculum. We argue that moving beyond language-specific outcomes requires a pivot toward a multidisciplinary approach where the creation of digital media serves as a tool for deepening conceptual understanding across fields.
Given South Africa’s systemic challenges, including limited technical literacy, inadequate infrastructure, and insufficient training (Johns and Sosibo 2019), such targeted CPTD aligns directly with the National Development Plan (NDP) 2030 mandate for continuous, career-long technology engagement (National Planning Commission 2012). The Newly Qualified Teacher (NQT) Winter School represents one such critical CPTD platform. As an annual professional development initiative, it provides collaborative, hands-on pedagogical workshops designed to support beginning teachers navigating these systemic constraints. The short filmmaking workshop evaluated in this study was implemented within this broader programmatic framework.
The central inquiry explored how educational short filmmaking can enhance the pedagogical practices of both in-service teachers and NQTs, within inclusive teaching environments. To address this, our sub-inquiries explored how short filmmaking enhances critical reflection, its adaptability across different subject areas, its impact on sustainable post-workshop teaching practices, and how it bridges pre-existing technical knowledge gaps.
Methodology
Sixteen participants attended the workshop, including NQTs, mentor teachers, subject coordinators, school and college administrators, and postgraduate students. These attendees came from four colleges and ten schools across primary, secondary, and Further Education and Training phases, bringing a diverse field of subject interests ranging from languages and humanities to sciences and mathematics. Rather than a rigid experimental intervention, the workshop unfolded as a process-oriented learning journey: moving collaboratively through conceptual scriptwriting, storyboarding, mobile filming, and digital editing with accessible software. This interactive workflow resisted technical perfection, as time constraints restricted the sessions to two hours per day over two days, truncating the planned formal assessment phase. Instead, the workflow prioritized immediate collective problem-solving, hands-on engagement with mobile technologies, and spontaneous pedagogical applications that emerged entirely within the brief session.
A pre-workshop survey (Appendix A) captured participants’ existing knowledge, expectations, and learning goals. Attendees joined the workshop primarily to overcome personal barriers to digital media integration and to network with peers. The workshop’s overarching objective was to shift participants’ orientations from consumer-based digital users to co-creative producers of contextualized educational media. This tool mapped these baseline contexts, establishing an initial connection between the researcher-facilitators and the attendees before the workshop encounter. As part of a longer, full-day Winter School schedule, these workshop activities unfolded across two phases.
Development and Pre-production
This phase leveraged participants’ social media familiarity to demystify film literacy, establishing an immediate foundation for multimodal short filmmaking (Figure 1). For this introductory session, the short film resources utilized in the presentation refer specifically to a curated selection of three educational short films provided by one of the co-authors, ranging in duration from 60 seconds to 3 minutes. Through an abbreviated exploration of narrative typologies (e.g., visual composition, sound, and time) (Alves and Pereira 2020), this presentation offered attendees an opportunity to build on their previous knowledge of presenting lesson content with PowerPoint, translating complex aspects of film theory into immediately applicable, creative affordances. Specifically, it prompted newly qualified teachers to reinvent familiar everyday technologies—such as PowerPoint, Canva, CapCut, and WhatsApp—re-purposing them as accessible tools for creating localized lesson content or facilitating learner-led classroom presentations.
This approach empowered participants to apply film knowledge through contextualized, experiential short filmmaking, transforming passive concepts into active pedagogical tools. Moving into collaborative production, participants formed four groups to engage in hands-on short filmmaking as a multimodal literacy practice (Figure 2), aiming to expand their toolkit of innovative methodologies in diverse educational environments.
The workshop applied the Inner Development Goals (IDGs) framework to create spaces for collaborative sense-making, critical analysis, creative expression, and cultural understanding. Through relational teamwork and shared decision-making, participants experienced the transformative power of collective creation, nurturing essential 21st-century teaching capacities. Focused short film analysis sessions and reflective practices cultivated critical engagement, enabling educators to challenge settled assumptions regarding the aesthetic narrative elements of media. Furthermore, creative expression emerged dynamically through scriptwriting and editing, encouraging participants to give visual language to unique perspectives and cultivate deep cross-cultural empathy, as illustrated in Figure 3.
Production and Post-production
Following the initial phase on day one, participants collaborated in spontaneously created WhatsApp groups to negotiate their 2–3 minute experimental short film concepts and development. These groups bridged the gap between the workshop sessions, fostering a dynamic space for peer learning and shared insights before entering the second phase on day two. These digital dialogues highlighted the agential value of readily available, familiar technologies in reshaping pedagogical practices. In the second phase, participants engaged in basic editing using Canva and CapCut, utilized PowerPoint, and exported their experimental short film productions for screening, as illustrated in Figure 4.
This interaction further nurtured cross-cultural understanding by troubling diverse forms of presentation, social commentary, and film as a living historical record. Through material encounters such as storyboarding and hands-on filming, educators experienced shifting social and collaborative capacities, deploying short filmmaking as a transformative pedagogical approach. As indicated in Figure 4, participants engaged with shared laptops and editing software, though several preferred utilizing their own smart devices throughout the process. This filmmaking experience provided a reflexive space for participants to co-create a short film scene rooted in their specific subjects, deliberately prioritizing the collaborative, relational process over a flawless aesthetic product. Ultimately, the central inquiry focused on how educators might practically manifest these multimodal techniques and insights within their diverse subject curricula to enrich their students' learning experiences.
Ethical Procedures and Data Management
This study followed standard ethical protocols, obtaining written informed consent from all participants who were briefed on the study's aims, voluntary participation, and right to withdraw. To ensure strict confidentiality, all participant and institutional identities were anonymized using pseudonyms, and visual materials underwent facial blurring. To mitigate social desirability bias given the authors’ roles as facilitators, post-workshop reflections were distributed, collected, and aggregated anonymously by the Winter School administrative team before analysis. Research data were securely stored on password-protected devices accessible only to the research team, with no instances of participant distress observed during the minimal-risk workshop.
Findings
The findings reveal a spectrum of critical reflection among educators, ranging from traditional “board and chalk" methodologies constrained by external infrastructure gaps to nuanced shifts toward student-centered, multimodal pedagogies. While structural barriers like limited classroom hardware induced participant frustration, educators successfully recognized the generative capacity of basic software to translate pedagogical goals into visual narratives. Ultimately, the collaborative short filmmaking process fostered critical reflection, enabling participants to navigate institutional limitations through innovative, low-resource problem-solving.
Pedagogical Practices of Short Filmmaking
The workshop enabled participants to develop an understanding of the pedagogical utility of short filmmaking and identify potential strengths and weaknesses of these practices within their specific school environments. Participant responses from the pre-workshop survey and post-workshop reflections revealed varied levels of reflective practice. Educators at the emerging end of the spectrum noted that their integration of film media was severely limited by systemic resource scarcity within their schools. As participant A7.2 observed:
It is a good practice to use technology and short film when teaching, but I don’t think that it is something that can be fully transferred and be used thoroughly in our schools… [we] might have all these skills [but] they could not be accommodated by available technological facilities.
Conversely, other participants exhibited deeper levels of reflection, recognizing the benefits of adapting their strategies to digital environments (“I feel the digital space allows me to utilise resources to the benefit of the learners”, A9.1). Five educators explicitly acknowledged a conscious shift away from a teacher-focused style by leveraging familiar, accessible tools. For example, A5.1 said, “Very interesting and practical. Gave me ways in which I can use my PowerPoint and how to do videos.” Four other participants shared similar observations. Others recognised the necessity of these skills for the current tech-savvy generation, highlighting a growing awareness of modern pedagogical approaches that use basic software. For example, A13.1 shared:
Using PowerPoint that adds a tool to create a short movie takes PowerPoint to a whole new level. It is basic but innovative approaches within basic software. It is consistent with the needs of the current generation of learners in schools.
While six participants expressed frustration regarding structural constraints—such as a scarcity of classroom projectors—this tension highlights how external material limitations impinge on pedagogical practice and restrict opportunities for educators to develop familiarity with digital tools. Nevertheless, all participants recognized how short filmmaking prompts the translation of complex pedagogical goals into visual narratives, fostering creative problem-solving precisely under these material constraints.
Pedagogical Approaches for Creating Short Film
As highlighted before, when registering for the workshop, participants indicated their specific subject interests: Afrikaans Home Language and First Additional Language; Applied Psychology; English, History; Visual Arts; IsiXhosa as First Additional Language, Life Orientation; Dramatic Arts; Physical Science; and Maths. Recognizing that they were bringing a diverse range of interests to the workshop, we emphasised that the basic model would be tailored to meet the unique needs of each subject area.
First, the workshop emphasized digital storytelling. Through a hands-on storyboarding and production session (as detailed in the workshop design), participants experienced how digital storytelling, using accessible tools like PowerPoint and free resources, can serve as a valuable foundation for introducing and facilitating short filmmaking activities. Attendees actively engaged with this practical approach, directly applying filmmaking techniques using readily available software, such as Canva, CapCut, or built-in smartphone video editors, and expressed strong enthusiasm for integrating these multimodal practices into their future curricula.
During the workshop, groups engaged in collaborative animation and editing based on narratives from various subjects. It was seen that collaborative learning through group work was a positive aspect of the workshop, providing a supportive environment for skill development across different subjects. The main drawback of including more subjects rather than one was the time constraint. Working on more than one subject in one group of teachers meant that more time was needed compared to one group with one subject, considering the hands-on nature of the workshop.
For example, A5 said, “We are looking forward to using the skills of filmmaking to further enhance creativity through teaching and learning.” This practical experience fostered a deeper understanding of pedagogical applications and allowed them to develop essential skills such as animation and editing using simple software. For example, A1 said, “I find this to be a new and exciting way to engage learners, teaching and learning new concepts via film-making sounds exciting.”
Second, the integration relied heavily on the collaborative efforts inherent to short filmmaking. Participants had the view that short filmmaking is inherently a collaborative activity that requires encouraging group members to work effectively, communicate their perspectives and negotiate creative choices. Some participants expressed a desire to extend this collaboration to their students to achieve better learning outcomes. For example, one participant said, “I would like to learn more about the process of working with students rather than just me making my own short clips to document their work” (A6), and the other one said, “working collaboratively in the classroom as a project is already half of teaching” (A11). Further, post-workshop collective feedback indicated that "Working in WhatsApp groups worked well to collaborate."
Our collaborative professional development sessions align with Goswami’s (2025) focus on mutual respect. While participants negotiated conceptual ideas regarding cultural narratives, hands-on digital production developed their communication and technical skills (Selfa-Sastre et al. 2022). This skill cultivation supports localized cultural inclusivity (Umoren 2025) and mirrors UNESCO’s (2023) framework for communicating diverse classroom perspectives (Abioye 2025; Okebukola 2025).
Cultivating Readiness for Future Pedagogical Sustainability
Findings revealed that the workshop fostered a strong intent toward sustainable changes in NQTs and teaching practices. While long-term tracking was beyond the study’s scope, the data indicate that the workshop built an internal readiness. Participants gained a deep understanding of short film agency, recognized its pedagogical impact, and actively brainstormed how to navigate material constraints within their future curricula. They identified practical applications leveraging familiar, accessible tools, such as using PowerPoint, TikTok and CapCut to create short film content. Evidence of this intent is demonstrated by the explicit plan to transfer these short filmmaking skills to postgraduate students, highlighting the potential for continued impact. As participant A7, a college tutor, shared: “I am impressed with this skill, and I will use this knowledge to teach my postgraduate students in education how to incorporate short film when teaching.” Even experienced in-service teachers acknowledged the workshop’s potential to reshape their long-term methods. These findings suggest the workshop provided a foundation for future pedagogical integration, though longitudinal research is required to evaluate whether this initial agential intent translates into sustained classroom practice.
Short Filmmaking and the Pre-existing Knowledge Gap
The workshop sought to address pre-existing knowledge gaps in short filmmaking for pedagogical purposes among NQTs and in-service teachers. Many participants noted that they learned extensively about practical applications of tools, particularly PowerPoint, for creating short movies. For individuals with limited experience, such as those who had not previously utilized filmmaking software, the workshop provided a valuable learning experience through peer collaboration. For example, participant A4 said,
I knew how to use PowerPoint to teach. But I had no clue that PowerPoints could be made in the form of a short film, like a short video to teach. Moreover, I used to design the PowerPoints alone. Now I know it makes a difference if they are designed in a collaborative manner. People have ideas that one person cannot have all.
Other participants appreciated the use of other familiar platforms to create short films. Participant A3 said, “...good to learn that simple editing software such as TikTok and CapCut can do animations and also different sounds with a free license can be obtained from other platforms such as Creative Commons and be reused.” Discovering innovative uses for PowerPoint, integrating external audio assets, and applying mobile video editing software highlight the workshop’s contribution to current knowledge, effectively bridging the gap between pre-existing understanding and the new insights.
Limitations
The workshop experience highlighted certain limitations, particularly time constraints and technological challenges. Participants identified difficulties related to limited duration, technological infrastructure issues (such as familiar but not abundantly available software), and the need for clearer guidelines and hands-on support. Given the limited time frame, these issues could not be addressed in detail. Rather than seeing these as barriers or a failure to meet the goal, these challenges are part of what practical research is about. As workshops deal with real-world conditions and practical issues, even careful planning may not necessarily eliminate all unintended results. Yet, they also revealed both immediate and long-term needs to reevaluate the entire process and strategies. Essentially, the long-term application of these skills is mediated by the school’s broader digital capacity and environment. As Timotheou et al. (2022) highlight, the successful impact of digital technologies in education is heavily influenced by systemic and institutional factors, including infrastructure, leadership support, and dedicated professional development policies. Therefore, the challenges teachers face are often not solely a matter of individual competence but are compounded by the extent of their school’s digital transformation. CPTD programmes like short filmmaking must thus aim to equip teachers not just with skills, but also with the creative confidence to navigate these institutional limitations.
Conclusion and Recommendations
The findings revealed a significant shift in perspective, as participants transformed from passive recipients of information to proactive agents of change. In this context, change agency manifests as a transition in which educators move past a reliance on institutional provisioning. Instead, they leverage internal readiness, collaborative problem-solving, and accessible digital tools to proactively reshape their pedagogical environments despite material constraints. They learned to view continuous professional development as an opportunity to cultivate a healthy ecosystem where both human and technological growth support each other. Short filmmaking skills were thus found to be a powerful pedagogical enhancement through familiar and largely available software, serving not only as examples of technology integration, but as tools to empower participants to inspire other educators. Findings demonstrate that short filmmaking with basic technology offers a valuable pedagogical strategy for improving learning experiences in resource-constrained contexts. The central question moving forward is how, under the current state or more severe shortage of technological conditions in schools, educators can practically apply and integrate these techniques into their diverse curricula to enrich student learning experiences and foster sustained engagement. Ultimately, prioritizing the relational and energetic links of the IDGs will remain at the center of digital transformation, advancing a more comprehensive understanding of multimodal literacy as a fundamental competency for modern educators.
To optimise future iterations, the following recommendations are provided:
- Extend the workshop duration to allow for a more detailed review of challenges.
- Provide detailed navigational guidelines for the short filmmaking and editing processes.
- Increase facilitator assistance during practical sessions.
- Address technological infrastructure issues, such as software and operating system compatibility, to ensure a more efficient workshop experience.
- Utilize readily available and familiar technology-based assessment techniques to assess the effectiveness of the workshop. Refraining from the use of paper-based techniques.
