{"id":8285,"date":"2019-01-30T15:28:06","date_gmt":"2019-01-30T15:28:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/citejournal.org\/\/\/"},"modified":"2019-06-05T15:44:39","modified_gmt":"2019-06-05T15:44:39","slug":"professional-learning-practices-and-beliefs-of-an-online-community-of-english-language-teachers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citejournal.org\/volume-19\/issue-1-19\/current-practice\/professional-learning-practices-and-beliefs-of-an-online-community-of-english-language-teachers","title":{"rendered":"Professional Learning Practices and Beliefs of an Online Community of English Language Teachers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Professional learning online and on social media is becoming widespread for teachers in many countries.  Macia and Garcia (2016) reviewed selected studies on informal online communities and networks as a source of teacher development. The authors stated,<\/p>\n

Although informal learning and online collaboration have been largely studied, the corpus of research on teachers\u2019 online collaboration for professional development is not extensive and, in most cases, the examples of communities and networks that have been analyzed were developed for research purposes in university environments. (p. 293)<\/p>\n

Inspired by this concern, the research presented here investigated an informal community or network that developed organically. Because the field of teacher professional development in online communities is arguably at an early stage of development, this study applied the most widely used theoretical framework, Communities of Practice, to aid the process of finding commonalities across similar studies (Macia & Garcia, 2016).<\/p>\n

The study presented here focused on English language teachers (ELTs) who had a common global interest in learning from each other.  Through my own professional learning practices, I had discovered many ELTs were tweeting from all over the globe united in language and professional development, providing evidence that social media can help teachers, with varying degrees of experience, find meaningful professional learning outside the boundaries of their respective institutions.<\/p>\n

Literature Review<\/h2>\n

Varying Models for Professional Learning<\/h3>\n

The terms \u201cprofessional development\u201d and \u201cprofessional learning\u201d are often used interchangeably in the literature on teacher education (Avalos, 2011). In this paper the term \u201cprofessional learning\u201d is defined as the practice of teachers to support their pedagogical and content knowledge as well as their teaching practices for the purposes of improving student learning and relevance in the field (as also in Trust, Krutka, & Carpenter, 2016). In the case of this study, the field is English language teaching, in which \u201cpedagogical knowledge\u201d generally refers to education theories and \u201ccontent knowledge\u201d generally refers to the knowledge of applied linguistics.<\/p>\n

In a review of professional learning articles, Avalos (2011) noted that the traditional in-service teacher training model for professional learning has many limitations, a claim supported by other studies (Apple, 2009; Darling-Hammond, Wei, Andree, Richardson, and Orphanos, 2009; Duncan-Howell, 2010; Gibson & Brooks, 2013; Guskey, 2003; Kennedy, 2005; Opfer & Pedder, 2011; Trust et al., 2016). Gibson and Brooks (2013) pointed out that the traditional model often provides little applicability to the classroom, overloads teachers with content, uses the one-size-fits-all approach and, offers no modeling, practice, and follow-up. They also argued that administrators have minimal awareness if the curriculum has changed as a result of traditional professional learning practices.<\/p>\n

Duncan-Howell (2010) added that this traditional face-to-face model does not encourage the development of new skills nor does it have a lasting effect on teaching practices.  For some teachers, these in-service professional development models are sometimes perceived as deskilling \u201cteachers from their intellectual work, treating them as passive recipients of mandates\u201d (Apple, 2009; Trust et al. , 2016).<\/p>\n

An alternative to the traditional in-service teacher-training model is online (or computer-mediated) professional learning. Within the past two decades, more studies and articles have described and promoted the benefits of this approach (Gibson & Brooks, 2013; Guskey, 2003; Kennedy, 2005; Macia & Garcia, 2016; Moolenaar, Sleegers, & Daly, 2012; Reich, Levinson, & Johnston, 2011; Stickler & Emke, 2015; Yoon, Duncan, Lee, Scarloss, & Shapley, 2007).<\/p>\n

Online professional learning is reported by some as more coherent and better connected to the school\u2019s goals and to teachers\u2019 needs (Gibson & Brooks, 2012; Stickler & Emke, 2015).  Some teachers have thus claimed that this online learning has resulted in an increase in student learning and achievement (Moolenaar, Sleegers, & Day, 2012; Stickler & Emke, 2015) and a greater sense of teacher satisfaction with the collaboration process (Reich, Levinson, & Johnson, 2011; Stickler & Emke, 2015). Gibson and Brooks (2012) claimed that online professional learning can be ongoing and intensive; it can be more focused on content and curriculum, and it is delivered in more meaningful and relevant ways that provide opportunities for practice and feedback. Finally, online professional learning is usually less expensive, especially for freelance or part-time instructors who may not be supported with district funding for professional development (Stickler & Emke, 2015).<\/p>\n

Concerns teachers have about online professional learning include privacy (Akcayir, 2017; Seaman & Tinti-Kane, 2013), defining professional boundaries (Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2013), and institutional constraints (Manca & Ranieri, 2016; Walster, 2017).<\/p>\n

Online Communities for Professional Learning<\/h3>\n

In 2010, Duncan-Howell referred to online communities as a new source of professional learning. Online communities can be formal or informal. A formal community has specific goals for the community, and the success of a formal online community is defined by how well it meets these goals and how well it cultivates sharing and trust (Booth, 2012; Bourhis & Dube, 2010).  An informal online community creates a learning ecology (Hill, Wilson, & Watson, 2004), which encompasses informal collaborative learning environments. In this sense, the main difference is that a formal community has a shared goal or objective, whereas members each have their own individual goals in an informal community.<\/p>\n

Social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, have helped teachers create online communities for professional learning (Booth, 2012; Brass & Mecoli, 2011; Brown & Munger, 2010; Chen, Chen, & Tsai, 2009; Davis, 2015; Duncan-Howell, 2010; Holmes, 2013; Hur & Brush, 2009; Schlager, Faroq, Fusco, Schank, & Dwyer, 2009; Tsai, 2012; Tsai, Laffey, & Hanuscin, 2010; Vavasseur & MacGregor, 2008; Wesely, 2013; Zuidema, 2012). Social media helps online community members gain access to professional learning resources that might have been previously difficult to find (Booth, 2012; Dede, Ketelhut, Whitehouse, Breit, & McCloskey, 2009; Loucks-Horsley, Stiles, Mundry, Love, & Hewson, 2010; Nochumson, 2018; Schlager et al., 2009). These communities \u201ccan allow teachers to diversify their networks and to gain access to human and content resources not available locally\u201d and \u201cgive teachers agency in co-constructing their own personalized programs of professional learning\u201d (Reich et al., 2011, p. 384).<\/p>\n

Online communities are social learning structures and the term can be used interchangeably with online networks. A commonly used term for online networks for professional learning is professional learning networks (PLNs). Wenger, Trayner, and de Laat (2011) distinguished between the two stating that communities are \u201cthe development of a shared identity around a topic or set of challenges,\u201d whereas networks are \u201cthe set of relationships, personal interactions, and connections among participants who have personal reasons to connect\u201d (p. 9). In this paper, PLNs refer to online communities for professional learning.<\/p>\n

Professional Learning Networks as Communities of Practice<\/h3>\n

Several studies have described and analyzed PLNs through the theoretical framework of Communities of Practice (Booth, 2012; Cranefield & Yoong, 2009; Davis, 2015; El-Hani & Greca, 2013; Hur & Brush, 2009; Ranieri, Manca, & Fini, 2012; Tsai, 2012; Wesely, 2013). Booth (2012) described communities of practice as \u201cgroups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this are by interacting on an ongoing basis\u201d (p. 4). The Communities of Practice framework (Wenger, 1998; Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2015) is grounded on a social theory of learning, postulating that learning is the product of a community and its interactions.<\/p>\n

In her qualitative study of world language teachers on Twitter, Wesely (2013) posited that PLNs can serve as communities of practice. She analyzed her participants using Wenger\u2019s (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2015) themes of domain, community, and practice. Put simply, the domain refers to the shared interests of the group, in this case the PLN, the community refers directly to the members of the PLN, and the practice refers to the discussions and texts produced by members of the PLN online and offline. Two of these themes, domain and practice, are central to this study.<\/p>\n

Davis (2015), Hur and Brush (2009), and Wesely (2013) implemented the framework on their investigations of PLNs already existing outside the control of the researchers or specific institutions. Davis (2015) and Wesely (2013) investigated Twitter as the primary platform for PLN interactions. Five main themes or reasons for using Twitter (Davis, 2015) and other online communities (Hur & Brush, 2009) emerged, many of which overlapped in meaning.<\/p>\n

Hur and Brush (2009) found teachers wanted to participate in online communities to experience a sense of camaraderie while Davis\u2019 (2015) participants found Twitter promoted a sense of belonging. Teachers also found the technical benefits of Twitter (Davis, 2015) and the advantages of online environments (Hur & Brush, 2009) helped ease facilitation of their professional learning.<\/p>\n

Wesely (2013) sought to understand how the characteristics of her participants\u2019 community of practice related to teacher learning. Community was the characteristic that overlapped the most with the aforementioned studies, in that she found many of her participants \u201chad a profound feeling of professional isolation in their school environment\u201d (p. 312), and Twitter helped them find this community in their PLN. The difference between the Davis (2015) and Hur and Brush (2009) <\/strong>studies and Wesely\u2019s study is that her participants\u2019 community was explicitly a site of teacher learning.<\/p>\n

Similar to Wesely\u2019s study, the current study also investigated preexisting PLNs outside the control of the researchers and sought to examine how PLNs for English language teachers compared and contrasted with PLNs for teachers in general (Davis, 2015; Hur & Brush, 2009) and PLNs for world language teachers (Wesely, 2013) using the communities of practice framework.<\/p>\n

Research Questions<\/h3>\n

This study sought to investigate similar issues with the following research questions:<\/p>\n