EdTech Scholarship Holder 2025 and PhD-Candidate at the Professorship for Psychology of Teaching and Learning, TUM SOT
October 1, 2025
Fourth Episode: Georgios Mitsostergios
In this fourth episode of Research Spotlight, Georgios Mitsostergios discusses the role of collaborative learning for the professional development of teachers. Listeners can now enjoy an AI-generated audio of the interview here below or on Spotify, and further explore his insights on the opportunities of digital media and artificial intelligence for professional development.
Digital media can make professional development scalable and accessible. Especially now with AI (maintaining caution on its potential) there are opportunities to personalize and expand professional development on demand
Georgios Mitsostergios
Interview
1. Can you briefly introduce yourself and your current role at the TUM?
Hi there! I am Georgios Mitsostergios, I come from Greece, and I currently work as a doctoral candidate at the Professorship for Psychology of Teaching and Learning at the TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology. My PhD is supervised from Prof. Dr. Doris Holzberger.
2. What is your primary area of research, and what initially drew you to this field?
I am investigating how teachers learn and develop professionally, particularly through collaborative learning. For decades, international reports and hundreds of professional development interventions have emphasized collaboration or collective participation among teachers as the main learning format, something which is cost-effective and makes professional development scalable, right? However, despite its prevalence, we lack systematic evidence on whether it is effective or which collaborative activities are most impactful, and how they should be adapted for digital environments—especially nowadays that so many professional development interventions occur online. This is why I am drawn to this topic.
3. What are promising opportunities for teachers and students that arise from integrating digital formats into professional development?
I will name one: Digital media can make professional development scalable and accessible. Especially now with AI, there are opportunities to personalize and expand professional development on demand and make it accessible even to teachers that would otherwise miss professionalization opportunities. Keep in mind however that, after having just participated in the EARLI 2025 conference, I personally emphasize caution against AI’s potential because, my take from witnessing empirical evidence brought by expert researchers across Europe is that we still have a lot to learn in order to properly harness something that literally develops in real time, you know?
4. What role does your research play in ensuring digitization-oriented teacher training?
Well, at the moment, and to the best of my knowledge, several digitization-oriented teacher trainings simply pick up collaborative learning strategies that take place in analog formats which, in most cases, they are not even evidence-based. My aim is first to fill this research gap and only then investigate how to adapt these for digital environments. Thus, I will contribute to developing scalable digitization-oriented teacher training that really works.
5. Could you share something about your interests outside of your academic work?
Thank you for the question. I am really into cinema – not just watching films but literally going to the cinema, grabbing a beer, laying back and transporting to another world for a couple of hours. The best part of it is that it is “collaborative” because I will share this awesome experience in a hall with complete strangers with whom I will leave the hall with a shared feeling of satisfaction. If the movie was good of course.
