Online learning networks of preservice and early career teachers

I’ve realised that I’m yet to put up here on this site a plug for my own book (co-authored with Marc Clarà, Ben Kehrwald and Patrick A. Danaher).

It’s got the catchy title of Online Learning Networks of Preservice and  Early Career Teachers. What does that actually mean?

The book brings together a few years of research into understanding what actually works for teachers within online communities.

You can find the book here: http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137503015

The book is structured in a way that aims to make a contribution to theory. Each of the chapters addresses the questions of:

1. What do we mean when we talk about the “greater community of teachers”?
2. What kind of support is relevant to this greater community of teachers?
3. What kind of knowledge do beginning teachers need?
4. How is engagement and presence in an online space for teachers created?
5. What kind of methodology is appropriate for inquiring into online networks of teachers?
6. What does the design and implementation of an online community of teachers look like? (Describing the TeachConnect platform and its development)
7. How should online communities  of teachers be evaluated?
8. What do we know now that we didn’t previously?

Chapter 7 brings the whole book together and there is a figure that I would like to briefly draw attention to – a framework for evaluating online communities:

The y-axis in this diagram is drawn from the framework outlined by Carvalho & Goodyear (2014) in The Architecture of Productive Learning Networks.

This is an ontology for talking about the different design elements in an online network (e.g., a community of teachers). In brief: set design is design for look and feel (the stage on which action occurs; social design is design for the relationships between participants (how you set things up for actors to relate to one another); and epistemic design is design for the relationships with knowledge objects (how actors are able to relate to things).

On the x-axis are theoretical constructs that we believe are critical to the success of any online network of teachers:

1. The richness, connectedness and diversity of the community of teachers that are involved,
2. The type of knowledge development that you are supporting (situational knowledge being more important to beginning teachers, we argue),
3. The presence experienced by the participants in the community.

Each square in this matrix is interrogated within Chapter 7. For example: How can set, social and epistemic design all come together to facilitate presence in the community? How can the design of the learning network facilitate teachers supporting one another to develop situational knowledge about the profession.

The book can be found here.

(Update: We’ve just found out that the book won a USQ Publication Excellence Award for 2016 in the authored books category.)

References

Carvalho, Lucila, and Peter Goodyear. The architecture of productive learning networks. Routledge, 2014.

Kelly, Nick, et al. Online Learning Networks for Pre-Service and Early Career Teachers. Springer, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50302-2