RSA 3: Teachers Making Connections: Online Communities as a Source of Professional Learning

Summary:

The teaching profession is constantly adjusting to accommodate change. Teachers are

under constant pressure to learn new skills, update their knowledge and change classroom

practices (Richardson, 1990).  Current professional development programs are failing to achieve successful change in teachers’ practice (Guskey, 2002). Online communities may be a source of continuous professional development for teachers.  The article, Teachers making connections: Online communities as a source of professional learning (2010), presents the findings of a study that was conducted on three online communities for teachers. The study identifies what an online community is and their potential as a source for professional learning for teachers.

Collaboration is widely identified as an important activity in encouraging teacher learning.  Online communities offer teachers a collaborative forum to discuss change and gather evidence of how successful a change was in a classroom.  Participants can then decide, based on discussions in chat rooms and through other online media, whether to try the suggested strategies or approaches themselves (Galland, 2002). Online communities are also not constrained by time.

The results from the study has shown that membership to online communities provides

teachers with a rich source of professional learning. Perhaps the most significant result collected from the survey was the result that 86.7% of members considered it to be a meaningful form of professional development.

References

Duncan-Howell. (2009). Teachers making connections: Online communities as a source of

professional learning.  British Journal of Educational Technology, 41(2), 324-340. 

Galland, P. (2002). Techie teachers—web-based staff development at your leisure. TechTrends, 46(3), 11–16.

Guskey, T. R. (2002). Professional development and teacher change. Teachers and Teaching, 8(3/4), 381–391.

Richardson, V. (1990). Significant and worthwhile change in teaching practice. Educational

Researcher, 19(7), 10–18.