Norbert Pachler
Institute of Education, University of London, UK

Caroline Daly
Institute of Education, University of London, UK

Professional teacher learning in virtual environments

In this paper we explore the affordances of virtual environments in enabling professional teacher learning by examining the ways in which teachers view their experiences as learners in an online context.

In particular, we examine the complexities of the learning process in the context of a group of teachers who are studying face-to-face and online for the Master of Teaching degree at the Institute of Education, University of London.

Many students new to studying online bring with them a certain passive orientation and a performative outlook on learning shaped, among other things, by the prevalence of transmission models for learning. Embracing the collaborative potential of electronic discussion groups can be problematic for them. To bring about a change in perception and orientation in how to use the new medium to facilitate their own learning and the learning of others is a complex process. The learners themselves offer multiple and contradictory accounts of their online activities and polarised conceptions of 'autonomous' and 'collaborative' learning are inadequate to describe the experiences of the participants working in virtual contexts.

We address core questions in relation to this problematic. First, we problematise the term 'learning' in relation to the specific context of the Master of Teaching and its particular constituencies, i.e. professional teacher learning. Then, we ask whether it is possible to identify conceptual transformations which occur in teachers in a virtual context in terms of the differing relations that exist between the individual, the online texts they engage with and electronic peer discourse. We have found it helpful to build on Scwienhorst's (2002 and 2003) classification of learning perspectives in the computer-assisted foreign language learning context, to identify a variety of learning orientations amongst teachers online, developing notions of the intentional learner, learner as communicator and learner as experimenter/researcher. How, if at all, are these varying learning perspectives shaped by particular pedagogical affordances offered by the online environment?

References

Schwienhorst, K. (2002) 'Why virtual, why environments? Implementing virtual reality concepts in computer-assisted language learning.' In Simulation and Gaming 33 (2), pp. 196-209

Smith, R. (2003) 'Pedagogy for autonomy as (becoming-)appropriate methodology.' In Palfreyman, D. and Smith, R. (eds) Learner autonomy across cultures. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 129-146