Encouraging collaboration and building Community in Online Asynchronous Professional Development: designing for social c
- PDF / 529,171 Bytes
- 21 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 107 Downloads / 210 Views
Encouraging collaboration and building Community in Online Asynchronous Professional Development: designing for social capital Susan A. Yoon 1 & Katherine Miller 1 & Thomas Richman 1 & Daniel Wendel 2 & Ilana Schoenfeld 2 & Emma Anderson 2 & Jooeun Shim 1 Received: 28 February 2020 / Accepted: 11 August 2020 / Published online: 18 August 2020 # International Society of the Learning Sciences, Inc. 2020
Abstract
This research investigates a design and development approach to improving science teachers’ access to effective professional development (PD) in a fully online, asynchronous environment. Working with a small number of teachers, this study explores how a design combining social capital mechanisms with essential teacher learning and PD characteristics supported teachers’ abilities to participate in the online course and collaboratively build knowledge. Teachers’ perceptions of their experiences both in surveys and interviews demonstrated high satisfaction with the quality and usability of the PD, including positive beliefs related to the social capital elements of tie quality, depth of interaction, and access to expertise. Further transactivity analyses of their interactions in course discussions showed higher levels of collaborative discourse resulting from prompts that specifically targeted the exchange of information over those that asked teachers to reflect about their content understanding or their classroom practice. Implications for this design for asynchronous online PD approaches to reach more teachers are discussed. Keywords Social Capital . Online Asynchronous Learning . Teacher Professional Development . Transactivity Global shifts in emphases in K–12 science education toward deeper understanding and greater application and utility of scientific knowledge and skills (e.g., European Commission 2015; National Research Council 2012) have created a steep learning curve for teachers. As a result, improving access to effective PD for all science teachers has been signaled as an immediate * Susan A. Yoon [email protected]
1
Graduate School of Education University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
2
Scheller Teacher Education Program Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
352
Yoon S.A. et al.
imperative (Wilson 2013). From 2010 to 2014, our team aimed at addressing this demand by developing and delivering face-to-face PD using computer-supported complex systems biology curriculum and instruction. Built on characteristics of effective PD for science teachers documented in various articles (e.g., Desimone 2009; Gerard et al. 2011), this work included providing hands-on teacher training, aligning PD with teaching contexts, exposing teachers to real-world scientific practices, and working with teachers as collaborators. Findings from several of our studies (e.g., Yoon et al. 2016, 2017a) have revealed high teacher satisfaction, high curricular utility, and increased student participation and learning outcomes. Importantly, strategic efforts to build teachers’ social ca
Data Loading...
