RSA3: Can Online Learning Communities Foster Professional Development?

RSA3: Can Online Learning Communities Foster Professional Development?

http://uisbrookenslibrary.worldcat.org/oclc/811569370

http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/LA/0894-mar2012/LA0894Research.pdf



     One of the most frustrating aspects of teaching today is the lack of appropriate and pertinent professional development. The question the article "Can Online Learning Communities Foster Professional Development?" asks is "What types of professional development are most useful to inservice teachers as they consider issues relating to multiple literacies, digital literacies, and the literacy heritages of children from diverse backgrounds and with diverse ways of making meaning?" (p. 256). Critical to effective professional development is ongoing coaching, reflection on lessons, collaboration with colleagues and a focus on student outcomes (p. 256). The author, Richard Beach, says that professional learning communities (PLC) are a way to implement and integrate these components into schools. Of course, it can be a challenge for teachers to find the time and energy to learn what is necessary to effect the change necessary. Online PLCs can solve both of these challenges. Beach describes four major components to an effective online PLC:

1. a central social networking/discussion forum for teacher collaboration
2. teachers' personal learning networks (PLNs)
3. students' online work collected in blogs, wikis, podcasts, or e-portfolios
4. a schoolwide online curriculum repository containing lesson plans and units addressing standards (p. 257)

Beach describes each of these four components in the rest of the article and describes how they work to support the whole of a PLC. The sense of community a shared purpose generates makes the PLC successful as a whole and for the individual teachers (and, ultimately, the students).

     In Building Online Learning Communities (2007), Palloff and Pratt argue that the a sense of community and trust are two important components of effective professional development. Online learning communities can provide that sense of community that can lead to the trust so necessary for teachers to make effective use of professional development. Too often, however, teachers are thrust into collaboration groups or professional learning communities not of their choosing; when that happens, it is difficult to feel a sense of belonging so crucial to effective collaboration. As a result, there is little to no follow through, nothing is accomplished, and everyone is frustrated.  However, if teachers are left to generate issues that are important to their PLC and given the time to make them work, they are far more likely to be successful.

References

Beach, R. (March 1, 2012). Research and Policy: Can Online Learning Communities Foster Professional Development? Language Arts, 89, 4, 256-262.

Palloff, M. & Pratt, K.(2007) Building Online Learning Communities: Effective Strategies for the Virtual Classroom  San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.