Teacher Participation in Self-Regulated Online Communities
Hur, J., & Brush, T. (2009). Teacher Participation in Online Communities: Why Do Teachers Want to Participate in Self-generated Online Communities of K-12 Teachers? Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 41(3), 279.
The purpose of this study was to examine teacher participation in online communities. The findings resulted in five categories: sharing emotions, utilizing resources, combating teacher isolation, exploring ideas, experiencing a sense of camaraderie. The development of community, promoting teacher self-esteem and providing support for teachers are keys to successful professional development. Communication is more accessible due to the increasing power of the internet and the availability of web 2.0 tools. Tapped In (Schlager & Fusco, 2008) and Inquiry Learning Forum (Barab et. al., 2001) are two examples of communities that have been organized for teachers in online environments. However self-generated online communities have not been sufficiently researched. Teachers create their own learning environments all the time and often participate for many years. Yet they often do not participate in online learning communities for research purposes. ( Zhao & Rop, 2002) This might lead us to understanding the motivation behind participation in these online communities.
Social learning theory (Putnam & Borko, 2000) explain three ways to view cognition; cognition as situated, cognition as social and cognition as distributed.
Cognition as situated: knowledge and learning are situated in cotexts where learning takes place.
Cognition as social: emphasizes social aspects of learning; what people consider to be knowledge and how people think and develop ideas within communities of practices over time. Knowledge is the outcome of ongoing interactions within groups of people.
Cognition as distributed: cognitive properties are not solely individual; rather they are distributed across individuals (Lave, 1993)
Emotional Sharing: Ongoing debate about the definition of emotions.
Emotions can be initiated by cognition synchronously or as an antecedent to it. People often share emotions with others, especially during extremely negative or positive events. The majority of people share emotion with intimate companions, such as parents, a spouse, or close friends. (Christophe & Rime’, 1997)
