Investigating the Impact of Greek EFL Teachers Participation in Online Communities of Practice as a Means of Professional Development

Abstract

This paper examines EFL teachers participation in online Communities of Practice (CoPs) and its impact on their professional development. The study focuses on 50 EFL teachers who became members of CoPs using an online platform named 2gather developed by the University of Athens in the context of a national in-service professional development project in Greece. Founded on the theory of situated learning, CoPs have been defined as groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis (Wenger et al., 2002). The study involved monitoring the development of four CoPs and teachers patterns of participation using a mixed-methods approach which combined quantitative data and qualitative research of collective case studies (Dornyei, 2007) of different groups of teachers. A comparison of teachers exposure to meaningful professional development (Franke et al., 2001) activities before and after their participation in the CoPs was carried out. In addition, results suggest the existence of statistically significant associations between the teachers participation in online CoPs and perceived benefit and change of their beliefs and/or practices. They also highlight the specific conditions that have supported their reflection, their reported reconstruction of beliefs and practices and the reported effectiveness of their training experience in relation to their teaching practice. The findings contribute to furthering our understanding of effective implementation of online CoPs in the context of continuing professional development.