{"id":637,"date":"2014-03-01T01:11:00","date_gmt":"2014-03-01T01:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/cite\/2016\/02\/09\/weaving-contexts-of-participation-online-the-digital-tapestry-of-secondary-english-teachers\/"},"modified":"2016-06-04T02:29:03","modified_gmt":"2016-06-04T02:29:03","slug":"weaving-contexts-of-participation-online-the-digital-tapestry-of-secondary-english-teachers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citejournal.org\/volume-14\/issue-2-14\/english-language-arts\/weaving-contexts-of-participation-online-the-digital-tapestry-of-secondary-english-teachers","title":{"rendered":"Weaving Contexts of Participation Online: The Digital Tapestry of Secondary English Teachers"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n
The intensification of teacher work (Apple, 1988) is characterized by greater scrutiny and increasing demands, and it often results in a reduction of time available for maintaining professional learning, an inhibiting and persistent work overload, and a general reduction in the quality of work (Easthope & Easthope, 2010; Hargreaves, 1994).<\/p>\n
English teachers may feel a particularly acute sense of intensification, for as Burns (2007) asserted, \u201cAs literacy achievement is a central agent for testing in current accountability mandates, literacy teachers and English teachers are particular targets for scrutiny\u201d (p. 123). With increased pressures and less time to meet with colleagues during the workday, what is an English teacher to do?<\/p>\n
In the face of heightened scrutiny and in line with the rise of new media technologies (e.g., blogs, microblogs, and social network sites), many teachers are turning to teacher-generated online environments in an effort to supplement their professional development. For example, at the time of this writing, the English Companion Ning<\/a>, a social network site for teachers of the English language arts, has over 40,000 members. (Editor\u2019s Note<\/em><\/strong>: Website URL\u2019s are listed in the Resources<\/a> section at the end of this paper.) \u00a0Many of the site\u2019s members take part in routine online book clubs, maintain blogs, and contribute to discussion forums within the site (Faulkner, 2009).<\/p>\n Since the emergence of Twitter<\/a>, a popular microblogging platform, many educators have touted its potential as a tool for supporting teachers\u2019 professional learning (e.g., Demski, 2010; Ferriter, 2010; Trinkle, 2009). Furthermore, the ubiquity of blogs has continued to surge, with over 200 million blogs online (Richardson & Mancabelli, 2011), and increasingly teachers are writing about their practice via blogs as Richardson (2006) described.<\/p>\n Researchers have explored online participation in blogs, microblogs, and social network sites as practices that may aid teacher development. Studies have described blogging as a practice that supports teachers in developing their thinking through interaction with other readers and writers (Luehmann, 2008) and detailed the ways teachers are cultivating and sustaining knowledge sharing in professionally oriented social network sites (Booth, 2012). Thus, scholars \u00a0encourage teachers to participate in teacher-generated online environments where they can engage their peers and explore matters related to teaching and learning (e.g., Hicks & Turner, 2013; Lieberman & Pointer Mace, 2010).<\/p>\n Still, little research has emerged regarding the features of the online contexts teachers weave as they engage in professionally oriented participation online. Accordingly, the research reported in this article was guided by the following question: What are the features of the online contexts that selected secondary English teachers weave in exploration of teaching, learning, and literacy?<\/p>\n On Context<\/p>\n Context has long been a concept central to studies of language and learning. Vygotsky (1986) attended to the social context of language and recognized that a word\u2019s meaning remains stable, but its sense comes \u201cfrom the context in which it appears; in different contexts, it changes its sense\u201d (p. 245). In a similar fashion, Bakhtin\u2019s (1986) attention to context was reflected in his notion of voice: \u201cBakhtin stressed the idea that voices always exist in a social milieu; there is no such thing as a voice that exists in total isolation from other voices\u201d (Wertsch, 1991, pp. 51-52).<\/p>\n Thus, it follows that utterances are spoken or written from points of view that are informed by the contexts in which they are expressed. Still, despite contributions from such forebearers of sociocultural theory, pinning down an exact definition of context seems impossible (Goodwin & Duranti, 1992; Lindfors, 1999). Yet, due precisely to the complex and indeterminate nature of context, continued exploration of the concept is necessary.<\/p>\n Cole (1996) offered two related views of context: the surround view and\u00a0 the weaving view. Metaphorically, the surround view presents context as the environment in which an interaction is situated or embedded. For instance, the context surrounding interactions in a formal educational setting may be a Socratic seminar conducted within a classroom housed in a private school that is situated in a diverse neighborhood in a suburban city.<\/p>\n As Lindfors (1999) warned, the boundaries of the immediate environment in this nested view may seem rigid, yet each individual involved brings into the environment prior knowledge, beliefs, and experiences that \u201ccontextualize utterances and interaction events\u201d (p. 218). Thus, the context is ever changing, for individuals in the classroom continue to build new knowledge and experiences together.<\/p>\n The weaving view of context suggests that individuals \u201cdraw on the surround context<\/em> to contextualize<\/em> (weave) each interaction\u201d (Lindfors, 1999, p. 232, italics in original). Context may be considered \u201ca relational property\u201d (Dourish, 2004, p. 22) from this perspective, as people draw upon the available resources relevant to their interactions with others.<\/p>\n Attending to what people do, the weaving metaphor \u201csee[s] the surround context as the total set of available threads\u201d (Lindfors, 1999, p. 232), the affordances and constraints, people may draw upon as they interact with others. The weaving view, then, sees context as something created as individuals engage others.<\/p>\n Conceptualizing context from a weaving view evokes Bakhtin\u2019s assertion that utterances combine the repeatable and the unrepeatable (Lindfors, 1999). According to Bakhtin (1986), utterances draw upon the inevitable and repeatable linguistic elements of language employed when speaking or writing (e.g., syntactic and phonological elements), yet people make those linguistic elements their own as they craft unique utterances that serve particular communicative purposes. Likewise, from a weaving view of context, the surround context\u2019s available threads may be used in various interactions; they are repeatable. People also uniquely select those threads and weave them in unique, unrepeatable ways (Lindfors, 1999).<\/p>\n Weaving Contexts in a Participatory Culture<\/p>\n Drawing upon the affordances of a participatory culture, many teachers are weaving unique contexts online in exploration of matters related to teaching, learning, and literacy. Jenkins (2006a) conceptualized participatory cultures as cultures in which people are encouraged to take part in the generation and distribution of new content. Contrasting with commercial cultures that emerge from industrialized production and commercial circulation (Jenkins, 2006b), participatory cultures account for \u201cthe transformation of former audiences into active participants and agents of cultural production\u201d (Sch\u00e4fer, 2011, p. 10).<\/p>\n Participatory cultures are recognized as having several distinguishing features: (a) relatively low barriers to expression and engagement, (b) support for creating and sharing one\u2019s work, (c) informal mentorship, (d) a belief among members that contributions are meaningful, and (e) a sense of social connection among members (Jenkins, 2006a, p. 7). Such features enable individuals to generate new content and distribute it widely online.<\/p>\n Although Jenkins (2006a) conceptualized participatory cultures through the lens of media studies and focused on helping youths develop the new media literacy skills needed to participate fully in contemporary culture (e.g., play, networking, collective intelligence, and judgment), participatory cultures are not relegated to youths or to fans of popular media. Many teachers blog actively, engage in collaborative problem-solving with their peers, and hold voluntary affiliations in online communities based on their professional interests in teaching and learning. Such activities open avenues through which two or more voices may come into contact, promoting meaning-making in the ways Bakhtin (1986) described.<\/p>\n Participatory cultures have taken shape in response \u201cto the explosion of new media technologies that make it possible for average consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content in powerful new ways\u201d (Jenkins, 2006a, p. 8). Vygotsky (1978, 1997) asserted that tools do more than make a task easier; indeed, new media technologies are changing the way people think about and approach online content.<\/p>\n Blogs, microblogs, and social network sites mediated participation online for the teachers featured in this study, allowing them to extend their capabilities as teachers and learners and providing additional threads with which they could weave the contexts of their participation.<\/p>\n Research Method<\/p>\n I employed criterion-driven sampling (Patton, 2002) to identify prospective participants for this study (Table 1). The sample consisted of secondary English teachers who were directing their own professional development by participating online and in professional organizations. Thus, the criteria likely targeted teachers who were motivated to advance their professional development, which may distinguish them from some of their peers.<\/p>\n Table 1<\/strong> \n
\nCriteria and Rationales for Participant Selection<\/p>\n