A case study on design of teacher peer-coaching activities supported by a Web 2.0 community

Abstract

Recently, increased attention has been paid to the concept of the community of practice (CoP), which is seen as a valuable and sustainable way for teacher professional development. Peer coaching is always regarded as an effective way to build communities of teachers in that teachers enhance their expertise by sharing, learning from each other, and collaborating. Peer coaching supported by web 2.0 technology provides new opportunities for teacher professional development and building of CoP. And the great success of Social Network Services, such as Facebook, has shed a light on the importance of relationship building in community development. This paper presents a case study on the design of teachers' online peer coaching activities supported by a Web 2.0 community to enhance CoP building. Relation and knowledge flow are defined as a unit of activity design. The paper reports the theoretical framework and results of activity design, the implementation and evaluation of the activities and useful reflections. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.