Professional Teacher Learning in Virtual Environments

Abstract

This article is based on qualitative empirical research into the ways in which teachers view their experiences as learners in the context of an online tutor group who are studying for the mixed-mode Master of Teaching degree at the Institute of Education, University of London. Data collected from a stratified sample of teacher participants is analysed according to themes which focus on the social and psychological dimensions of the e-learning experience. Embracing the collaborative potential of electronic discussion groups emerges as potentially problematic, and bringing about change in participants' perception of the medium to facilitate their own learning and the learning of others emerges as a complex process. The teachers offer multiple and contradictory accounts of their online activities, and polarised conceptions of ‘autonomous’ and ‘collaborative’ learning are inadequate to describe their experiences. Conclusions indicate that participants adopt various degrees of (sub)conscious adaptation and resistance to the collaborative learning context. By drawing on Schwienhorst's classification of learning perspectives in computer-assisted foreign language learning, the authors propose that participants exhibit ‘learning trajectories’ which can be identified in in terms of the differing relations that exist between the individual, the online texts they engage with and electronic peer discourse.