Cross-generational learning, a benefit of teacher collaboration that was introduced by Carroll and Foster (2008) and mentioned in Vangrieken et.al. 's (2015) article is a major topic of discussion in my opinion.

Gatekeeping as a mentality I think is deeply rooted into people’s minds and it can be explained from different perspectives. Socioeconomic factors and living in modern capitalist societies have driven people to be more competitive towards each other. Community building in any context has been weakened systemically in my opinion, but especially in professional contexts people rush to secure their careers, often practicing maladaptive behaviors of “the end justifies the means”, meaning that reaching their personal goals justifies any wrongfulness towards others along the way. Also, specifically in the education sector, I believe that open education and open research have not reached enough popularity among practitioners in the field. I am comparing this to the previous discipline that I was studying about which was Informatics, where the benefits of open source tools are widely recognized and appreciated by both practitioners and researchers in the field. I think that there’s a lack of awareness on open educational resources and mostly empowerment so that teachers are not only consumers of those contents but active contributors. 

Another aspect of this growing competitiveness that hinders cross-generational learning is the general beliefs around public education in my opinion. For example, in Greece where I come from, there is a general belief about working in the public sector, that once you are designated a permanent position, e.g as a teacher in a public institution, it’s near impossible that your spot will be compromised. 

That belief comes from various factors such as the lack of evaluation in schools and general downgrade of public education.