Teachers' professional formation and the role of online communities

"Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly."

• domain: "nor merely a network of connections"

• community: not merely a website; not merely having the same job

• practice: "not merely a community of interest"

"Nexus of multimembership

... we all belong to many communities of practice: some past some current; some as full members, some in more peripheral ways. Somemay be central to our identities while others are more incidental"

The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe. Our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today. A real challenge for any learning theory is to actuate known knowledge at the point of application. When knowledge, however, is needed, but not known, the ability to plug into sources to meet the requirements becomes a vital skill. As knowledge continues to grow and evolve, access to what is needed is more important than what the learner currently possesses.

An important part of learning is to build your own personal learning network -- a group of people who can guide your learning, point you to learning opportunities, answer your questions, and give you the benefit of their own knowledge and experience.

Goffman 1959 - Presentation of self in everyday life

• Miller 1995 - The presentation of self in electronic life: Goffman on the Internet
• Walker 2000 - "It's difficult to hide it": the presentation of self on Internet home pages
• Papacharissi 2002 - The presentation of self in virtual life: characteristics of personal home pages
• Schau & Gilly 2003 - We are what we post? Self-presentation in personal web space
• Trammell & Keshelashvili 2004 - A self presentation study of A-List blogs
• Bortree 2005 - Presentation of self on the web: an ethnographic study of teenage girls' weblogs
• Walther 2006 - Selective self-presentation in comptuer mediated communication: hyperpersonal dimesnios of technology, language and cognition

Quasi-ethnographic approach in my own institution?

With my own students?

"Personal data shall be obtained only for one or more specified and lawful purposes, and shall not be further processed in any manner incompatible with that purpose or those purposes."

"The further processing of personal data only for research purposes in compliance with the relevant conditions is not to be regarded as incompatible with the purposes for which they were obtained.”

Teachers' professional formation

and the role of online communities

Miles Berry

2 June 2011

Professional formation?

Profession

Professionalism

Education

Training

Vocation

Vocational

Novice

Beginner

Competent

Proficient

Expert

TDA 2007

Dreyfus & Dreyfus 1980

"We will reform teacher training to shift trainee teachers out of college and into the classroom... Teaching is a craft and it is best learnt as an apprentice observing a master craftsman or woman."

Gove, 2010

Communities of Practice

• Apprenticeship
• Situated Learning
• Legitimate Peripheral Participation

Lave & Wenger 1991

Wenger, 2006

Competence

Autonomy

Relatedness

Identity

Self efficacy

Motivation

Job fulfilment

Commitment

Wenger 1998, p158

Day et al 2006

Professional identity

Situated identity

Personal identity

Sammons et al 2007

Community

Learning as belonging

Identity

Learning as becoming

Learning

Practice

Online?

learning as doing

Meaning

Methods

Learning as experience

Wenger 1998

Tobin, 1998

Siemens, 2005

Environment

Network

Community

Institution based

Beyond the organisation

Formal

Intentional

Accidental

Informal

Ethics

Data Protection Act 1998