The presentation reports on the development and coordination of effective forum discussion for the professional development of teachers in online Communities of Practice (CoPs). Following the theoretical perspectives of situated learning (Lave and Wenger 1991) and social constructivism, online CoPs constitute a model for effective and sustainable professional development (Wenger et al. 2015).
Participation in online CoPs, enacted through asynchronous text-based computer conferencing in the discussion forum, can be analysed through the Community of Inquiry framework (Garrison et al. 2000), a sound theoretical framework for analyzing computer conferencing for educational purposes (Valverde-Berrocoso et al. 2020). It posits that learning occurs through the interaction of three core components in the Community, namely the cognitive, teaching, and social presences and provides explicit categories, indicators and examples for their analysis. However, there is no conclusive evidence on how best to conduct in-depth forum discussion for meaningful and worthwhile learning outcomes (Garrison & Cleveland-Innes 2005, Atapattu et al. 2019).
The present study complements current cognition by identifying social and teaching presence categories associated with in-depth forum discussion and reported effectiveness in professional online CoPs. It is structured as collective case studies of 4 online CoPs for the professional development of 49 in-service English language teachers in the context of a 5-month teacher education project in Greece. It combines a) qualitative comparative analysis (QCA, Ragin 2009) of the four Communities' forum transcripts to specify the combination of variables leading to in-depth discussion with b) quantitative analysis of teachers' questionnaires to investigate perceived learning and reported effectiveness for their teaching practice. The findings contribute to the refinement of the categories and indicators that define the presences as well as the specification of the discourse leading to in-depth forum discussion and reported effectiveness: a teaching presence characterized by strong direct instruction combined with social presence that exhibits high levels of affective and cohesive discourse indicators in the discussion forum. This anatomy of success has led to the identification of a framework with practical implications for the development and coordination of effective forum discussions to inform future research and training practice in various professional contexts.
Keywords: presence, in-depth discussion, professional development
References
Atapattu, T., Thilakaratne, M., Vivian, R. & Falkner, K. (2019). Detecting cognitive engagement using word embeddings within an online teacher professional development community. Computers & Education, 140, 103594.
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Garrison, D.R. & Cleveland-Innes M. (2005). Facilitating cognitive presence in online learning: Interaction is not enough. American Journal of Distance Education, 19(3), 133-148.
Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ragin, C. C. (2009). Redesigning social inquiry: Fuzzy sets and beyond. University of Chicago Press.
Wenger, E., Fenton-O'Creevy, M., Hutchinson, S., Kubiak, C. & Wenger-Trayner, B. (eds). (2015). Learning in Landscapes of Practice, Boundaries, identity, and knowledgeability in practice-based learning. London, Routledge.
