a design framework for online teacher professional development communities
TRANSCRIPT
A design framework for online teacher professionaldevelopment communities
Katrina Yan Liu
Received: 15 October 2011 / Revised: 23 July 2012 / Accepted: 31 August 2012 / Published online: 13 September 2012
� Education Research Institute, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea 2012
Abstract This paper provides a design framework for
building online teacher professional development commu-
nities for preservice and inservice teachers. The framework
is based on a comprehensive literature review on the latest
technology and epistemology of online community and
teacher professional development, comprising four major
design factors and three contextual factors. The design
factors include learning goals, communication tools, par-
ticipant structures, and member responsibilities; the con-
textual factors are culture, politics, and economics. Finally,
the role of universities and implications of the design
framework for teacher professional development in the
new culture of learning are discussed.
Keywords Community of practice � Online learning
communities � Teacher professional development �Online technology
Introduction
Teachers are facing greater challenges now than at any
point in the past century. Teachers need to create a new and
different learning environment for their students (Friesen
and Clifford 2003), to balance the individual needs of
diverse students with the demands of curriculum and the
goals of the larger group (Hammerness et al. 2005), to
become an agent of change transforming the existing social
order and empowering all students (Darling-Hammond
2002), to enable their students to interact effectively with
people of different social and cultural backgrounds in this
more globally intertwined age (Darling-Hammond 2010;
Ravitch 2011), and to develop an education that enhances
students’ strengths rather than fixing their deficits (Zhao
2012). In addition to these challenges in professional
practice, teachers are expected to provide better education
to all students while meeting increased performance stan-
dards under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the
growing movement to establish standardized testing of
students in tandem with using those test results in a value-
added assessment methodology that may determine the
future of individual teachers and their schools.
In this era, teacher professional development (TPD) is
clearly an essential component to improving education
through advancing the quality and expertise of teachers
(Bredeson and Johansson 2000; Bredeson 2003, Loucks-
Housley et al. 2003; Hammerness et al. 2005). According to
Hammerness et al. (2005), the knowledge, skills, and atti-
tudes needed for optimal teaching cannot be fully developed
through the process of preservice teacher education.
Instead, teachers need to be lifelong learners—and this is
even more true in this current period in which learning
standards are being constantly redefined through projects
such as NCLB and the Common Core State Standards.
Unfortunately, as Scott (2010) correctly pointed out, there is
a divide between theories of effective TPD and the realities
of TPD practice within educational contexts. Moreover,
although NCLB appears to place great importance on TPD,
the concept is not well defined (or perhaps is too well
defined): the NCLB definition under Title II has fifteen
required activities and another three optional activities that
range across every aspect of education from specifying the
minimum length of workshops to calling for TPD programs
to be assessed in terms of the increase in student achieve-
ment under teachers participating in the TPD program (Title
K. Y. Liu (&)
Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University
of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Whitewater, WI 53190, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
123
Asia Pacific Educ. Rev. (2012) 13:701–711
DOI 10.1007/s12564-012-9230-0
IX Part A Section 901(34)).1 Finally, existing models of
professional development have a practical problem: they
have not successfully helped teachers improve their prac-
tices because they are not tailored to teachers’ specific
needs, nor do they accommodate teachers’ busy schedules
(Sprague 2007). As a result, TPD tends to be viewed as an
add-on to already busy teacher workdays, or worse, as time
off for teachers and principals rather than as legitimate
professional work. Further, TPD is seen to focus on indi-
vidual development, without attention to organizational
improvements or the development of ‘‘professional capital’’
(Hargreaves and Fullan 2012), and as well as something
generally developed by outside professional development
experts and conducted in a ‘‘hit-and-run style,’’ without
coherence or sustainability (Bredeson 2003; Loucks-
Housley et al. 2003). In short, in spite of the clear need for
effective TPD—whether considering the demands of NCLB
or not—the institutions and practices providing TPD tend to
be marginalized and maligned, perhaps justly so.
Situative research on TPD provides a schematic model
for comparative purposes that places teachers, facilitators,
and the PD program within a broader context (Borko 2004,
p. 5). According to Borko (2004), some of this research
shows that strong professional communities foster teacher
learning and can stimulate reflective practice; however, the
development of TPD communities can be difficult and
time-consuming (p. 7). An obvious direction for TPD is to
go online (Bonk 2009); teaching-oriented online commu-
nities in various forms have long existed, from the virtual
worlds of Tapped In (http://tappedin.org/tappedin), Inquiry
Learning Forum (http://ilf.crlt.indiana.edu), and multiple
forums in Second Life, to more amorphous networks such
as FarNet (now part of the larger virtual learning network
in New Zealand: http://www.vln.school.nz) and innumer-
able email lists, web sites, and collaborative blogs. Taking
TPD online is not an easy task, however, especially if one
of the goals is to help teachers create community. Douglas-
Faraci found, for example, that a simple e-learning
approach to TPD is not sufficient for success in all
domains2 of learner-centered TPD, when measured through
participant self-assessment (Douglas-Faraci 2010). Signif-
icantly, the two domains missing from the e-learning
approach are interaction and collaboration between par-
ticipants, and assessment and evaluation of the results of
the online TPD in the participants’ classrooms. In other
words, just taking TPD courses online fails in exactly the
area required for creating community as well as in that
necessary to determine the effectiveness of those courses.
Thus, although the primary concerns with online TPD that
Douglas-Faraci identified through the literature were that
programs were not rigorous and that their rigor could not,
in fact, be assessed (p. 754), self-assessment by online TPD
participants showed no concern about those aspects. This is
not to say that rigor and the need to be able to assess rigor
is unimportant, but clearly the priorities of TPD providers
and scholars in the universities and those of TPD partici-
pants in the schools do not completely align.
The goal of this study is to outline a model for a more
effective alternative to traditional teacher professional
development, one that can address the needs identified both
by TPD professionals for rigor and by participants for com-
munity building and assessment. Based on both the literature
and an on-going self-study of my own TPD activities over the
past 5 years, I have found that the most promising solution is
to combine two existing methods into a new alternative that
can either supplement or replace more traditional systems.
To that end, I take from Lave and Wenger (1991) the concept
of a community of practice (often abbreviated as CoP), and
combine with it the newer idea of a virtual community using
online social networking and communication media such
as Facebook, Twitter, teleconferencing, and blogging. This
kind of online learning community for TPD holds promise as
the most effective way for teacher professional development
programs to provide participants with continuing support,
combining the potential for rigorous content, adequate
assessment, and sustainable community.
Possibilities of online teacher professional development
communities
In order to address the need for flexibility, sustainability,
and rigor in professional development programs, online
TPD programs have emerged (Dede 2006; Schrum 1992;
Killion 2000; Koch and Fusco 2008; Lloyd and Duncan-
Howell 2010). A recently discussed topic that has captured
popular and scholarly attention is online learning commu-
nities for TPD. In the past decade, information and com-
munication technologies (ICT) and digital networks have
altered both the learning environment and the diverse roles
of learners within them. Anytime, anywhere and just-in-
time concepts are part of daily life for those who are able to
access ICT (Garber 2004; Liu 2005; Lock 2006). As Bonk
(2009) rightly points out, due to web technology, we can all
be ‘‘adventurers, explorers, writers, dreamers, and learners.
At times we move from physical to virtual and other times
reverse’’ (p. 23). ICT provides people with greater possi-
bilities and more opportunities to work collaboratively in
bridging distance and time. Having identified challenges
1 http://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/pg107.html#sec9101,
retrieved May 11, 2012.2 The domains include: (1) variety of multimedia resources; (2)
participant interaction and collaboration; (3) instructor/facilitator
quality; (4) participant understanding and ability to implement the
skills and strategies learned; (5) whether the training was standards
aligned; and (6) assessment and evaluation.
702 K. Y. Liu
123
conventional teacher professional development models
face, with the advances in ICT and ICT infrastructures
available to schools and teachers, the teacher education
field has sparked a shift toward online community3 models
for the purpose of providing ongoing support to teachers’
professional practice. Advocates of online communities
believe that by leveraging technology, they can recreate a
‘‘we’’ that has gradually broken down into many isolated
‘‘I’s,’’ can go beyond the boundaries of countries, cultures,
and races, and can break the limits of time and space to
‘‘meet’’ at any time and any place.
The following section addresses the definitions of online
professional development communities, then considers the
goals, communication tools, and social structures of the
community, as well as the cultural, political, and economic
context, which form the foundation of the proposed design
framework.
Definitions of online professional development
community
Although widely discussed in the education field, the defi-
nition of an online community varies from a tightly knit
group of people who share important parts of their lives on a
day-to-day basis to an amorphous chat group that can be
joined (and left) by anyone with a valid password. Lave and
Wenger (1991) advanced the term community of practice
(CoP) to capture the importance of activity for fusing indi-
viduals to communities in the real world, and the importance
of communities in legitimizing individual practices. Barab
and Duffy (2000) discussed a CoP as a collection of indi-
viduals sharing mutually defined practices, beliefs, and
understandings over an extended time frame in the pursuit of
a shared enterprise. They described a CoP with the following
four characteristics: (1) shared knowledge, values, and
beliefs; (2) overlapping histories among members; (3)
mutual interdependence; and (4) mechanisms for repro-
duction. Later, Barab and Schatz (2001) extended the list to
eight characteristics. Then, based on a review of the litera-
ture and previous work, Barab et al. (2006) defined a CoP as
a persistent, sustained social network of individuals who
share and develop an overlapping knowledge base, set of
beliefs, values, history, and experiences focused on a com-
mon practice and/or mutual enterprise. From this definition,
it is obvious that CoPs are more than a temporary meeting of
like-minded individuals in a workshop or a course. They
grow, evolve, and change dynamically, transcending any
particular member and outliving any particular task.
An online community is assumed to contain some char-
acteristics of a real-world community, with additional
challenges added by the technologies and by the physical
distancing these technologies both permit and cause. Within
these parameters, there are two contrasting definitions of the
term of online community. The first simply equates online
community with a space mediated by various forms of
information technology. For example, Hagel and Amstrong
(1997) define virtual communities as a computer-mediated
space where there is an integration of content and commu-
nication with an emphasis on member-generated content.
The second view believes that online communities are new
forms of ‘‘community’’ created by participants through a
variety of web-based communication pathways. For exam-
ple, according to Rheingold (1993), online communities are
‘‘social aggregations that emerge from the Internet when
enough people carry on those public discussions long
enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of
personal relationships in cyberspace.’’
Compared to the first view, technology in the second
view is only a tool for community building; the members
develop genuine relationships and determine the nature of
the community. Combining this view with Barab, MaK-
inster, and Scheckler’s definition of a CoP, I would say that
an online community is a persistent, sustained social net-
work of individuals who, by using various forms of tech-
nologically mediated communications, share and develop
an overlapping knowledge base, set of beliefs, values,
history, and experiences focused on a common practice
and/or mutual enterprise. In other words, we need to rec-
ognize that in an online community, technology is only a
tool for community building. Therefore, technological
support is important to help build non-face-to-face com-
munication, but learning to use technology should not be
the central purpose of building an online community unless
the goal of the community is to enhance participants’
knowledge and skills in integrating technology in their
classrooms. It takes some time for members of the com-
munity to shift their focus from learning how to use the
technologies and become familiar enough with the online
environment to pay more attention to what they interact
about in the community. Conrad’s (2005) research reveals
that, having spent a considerable period of time online,
learners’ perceptions of community and online learning
shift away from technical considerations toward affective
considerations such as relationships, interconnectedness,
and familiarization among community members.
All of these definitions aside, the term ‘‘community,’’
when used to describe virtual communities, is contentious
in some circles. According to Howard Rheingold, who
invented the term virtual community and published a book
3 No single term exists for online community in the education field.
Some people use online network, some use computer-mediated
community, some use electronic community, virtual community, and
electronic networks. In this paper, online community will be used,
although the other terms will also appear when they are used in the
literature this paper cites.
A design framework for online TPD communities 703
123
of the same name in 1993, the traditional definition of a
community is of a geographically circumscribed entity
(neighborhood, village, etc.). Virtual communities are
usually dispersed geographically, and therefore are not
communities under the original definition. However, if one
considers communities to simply possess boundaries of
some sort between their members and non-members, then a
virtual community is certainly a community. Researchers
such as Conrad (2002) found that many learners lacked a
basic concept of community even after participating in
several online courses. Similarly, notions of community
within the realm of professional development communities
or professional learning communities have been used to
mean everything from small groups of individuals to entire
school districts. As Huffman (2011) observes, ‘‘the lack of
a consistently used, common definition…only serves to
confuse the practitioner’’ (p. 322).
As Hayles (2002) argues, the technologies of virtual
reality, with their potential for full-body mediation, make
the concepts of ‘‘presence’’ and ‘‘absence’’ seem irrele-
vant and also change the traditional meanings of presence
and absence. It is true that in an online community, the
concepts of presence and absence seem to be changed too.
When a group of people ‘‘meet’’ in the online community
through audio and video technology, they can see each
other and talk with each other. Are they present or absent
at the meeting? Virtual or online communities, on the
other hand, have also become a supplemental form of
communication between people who know each other
primarily in real life. When I call my father through
Skype and we both turn on the webcamera, we can see
each other while talking, using online video to create an
electronically mediated face-to-face world. My father
always says, ‘‘Oh, this is so great—I feel you are just in
front of me!’’ It seems that communications technology
has taken us beyond the one-directional media wasteland
described by Neal Postman (1985), and perhaps onto the
road to the global village Marshall McLuhan envisioned
in 1964.
Nevertheless, the creating of community online, and
especially the creating and sustaining of professional
community online, does not automatically arise from new
technology; however, well it simulates co-present reality.
Obviously, electronic and especially Internet-related tech-
nologies have greatly changed the meaning of community,
or at least the potential scope of community from the co-
present to the virtual. Nevertheless, we need to ask what is
the potential of these technologies to build communities of
practice for professional development? In other words, how
best to build a goal-centered online community of practice
that unites communication tools and social activities within
the larger cultural, political, and economic context in which
teaching and learning takes place?
A strong professional community in the real world is
characterized by shared goals such as student learning and
meaningful collaboration among faculty members—see, for
example, Hord’s five dimensions of a professional learning
community (1997) and Huffman’s subsequent operational-
ization of that model for longitudinal research (2011). An
organization that is constructed with clear purposes and
maintained with shared goals among members will develop
and sustain the capacity for community if support—struc-
tures, tools, financial, and political assistance—appropriate
to the organization’s total context can be maintained
(Kreijns et al. 2003; Garrison 2006; Shea 2006; Ryman
et al. 2009). For this reason, I follow a variation of Borko’s
‘‘model of’’ a professional development system (Borko
2004, p. 4), which places teachers, facilitators, and the
program itself within an (untheorized) context—but instead
I present it as a ‘‘model for’’ online teacher professional
development community (Geertz 1973, p. 93). Figure 1
shows a goal-centered model that places the technical and
social aspects of community within the larger cultural,
political, and economic context so that they reinforce each
other and the goals of the community. Following ideas
established in the literature, I have separated the social
aspects of community of practice into participant structures
and participant responsibilities. As I draw out the value and
implications of this model in the next section of this paper,
the reasons for this separation should become clear.
Learning goals
An online community’s direction and outcomes are greatly
influenced by the learning goals of the community—in fact,
it can be argued that the other design factors should
be determined by the goals. Barab et al. (2006) designed
the Inquiry Learning Forum (ILF) as a web-supported
community of K-12 math and science teachers who work
together to create, improve, and share inquiry-based
learning. They designed the ILF with the belief that
teachers need to be full participants in and owners of their
own virtual space. The goals of the ILF are to improve
student learning and teacher growth by supporting preser-
vice and inservice teachers in:
• teaching sound inquiry-based science and math in the
context of national and state standards and effective
pedagogical practices
• inquiring into both their own and other teachers’
classroom practices
• sharing inquiry-based resources, lesson plans, web
sites, and relevant materials to support student learning
• connecting with other teachers who have varying
degrees of experience and similar interests achieving
their professional growth goals
704 K. Y. Liu
123
Under the guidance of these specific goals, the com-
munity designed six learning opportunities for members:
Engage in online discussions, Visit ILF Classrooms,
Become part of an Inquiry Circle, Facilitate a Discussion,
Personalize your Professional Development through ILF
Involvement, and Obtain College Credit for courses offered
through the ILF. All events and activities in ILF were
designed toward achieving the original goals of the
community.
As a counter example, consider the description by Parr
and Ward (2006) of what was at first a not very successful
case of building an online community for schoolteachers.
The project, Learning Communities in the Far North
(FarNet), not to be confused with the North American
internetwork of the same name proposed in 1991, was
launched in 2001 as a number of digital opportunity pilot
projects funded by the New Zealand Ministry of Education.
The purpose of FarNet was to link teachers in ten schools
for their professional development in integrating informa-
tion and communications technology (ICT) into various
educational settings in order to improve student achieve-
ments in math, science, and technology. The project used a
web site with pages associated with each curriculum area
and all teachers who taught in that area were members.
According Parr and Ward (2005), the goal of the online
community was to make good resources available elec-
tronically and so make math, science, and technology
‘‘come alive’’ for students (p.v). Curriculum leaders were
appointed from across the schools and were responsible for
obtaining and posting resources on the pages for their
subject area. It is obvious that in this project, there were no
clear goals for the online community building and sus-
taining. Teachers were simply requested to post resources
for others to access, which is a major shift in terms
of deprivatizing practice. Therefore, there was a lack of
willingness to share among teachers. On the other hand, the
curriculum leaders in the project, without a strong guiding
purpose and shared understanding of their role, focused on
their own ideas and visions. The project was unable to
build a safe, supportive, and constructive community of
practice for the teachers; as Parr and Ward observe in their
final report (2005),
The creation of a professional learning community
is a complex process and a number of factors need
to be present before such a community will thrive.
These include cultivating a climate where teachers
are comfortable to deprivatize practice and accept
collective responsibility for teacher and student
learning. The proportion of teachers who participated
by ‘‘posting’’ resources on the FarNet site was small
and virtually confined to curriculum leaders. There
was little evidence of widespread use of the resources
available, which were predominantly electronic ver-
sions of print resources with some notable excep-
tions. Where communities appeared to operate best in
FarNet, for example the community of Maori teach-
ers, they were building on previous links. In other
cases they were sustained, albeit in a weak form, by
volunteerism (vi).
GoalsParticipants Structures
ParticipantResponsibilities
Communication ToolsPolitics
Culture
Cost (Humanware, software, hardware)
Fig. 1 An online teacher
professional development
community
A design framework for online TPD communities 705
123
In other words, even in the sub-case of Maori teachers, in
which there was an existing base for the online community
of practice, community itself failed to thrive, and the
project was not considered a success.
However, in subsequent years, FarNet has confounded
the pessimism of the final report, not as a stand-alone
project but as an element within the larger, nation-wide
virtual learning system. Bennet and Barbour (2011) have
described efforts to work with Maori secondary students
through virtual learning networks in FarNet that show some
success. Importantly, they identify the need to integrate
TPD as vital to ensuring the continuing success of the
program. The goal here—addressing the learning needs of
Maori students—leads them to call for a unifying justifi-
cation for developing TPD addressing both the technical
issues of online education and the larger sociopolitical
context of the Maori community in New Zealand (Bennet
and Barbour 2011, 83).
These two cases show that the first and most important
step in building an online teacher professional community
is to establish clear goals, so that participants know what
they should do, what they are going to achieve, how to link
their participation activities to their classroom practice, and
feel secure to participate in online interactions. In an online
community, clear goals and specific design principles seem
to be even more important than those in a real-world
community, perhaps in part because the members of the
online community do not have many opportunities to meet
face-to-face to clarify expectations and uncertainties. The
two online community cases described above make it clear
that there are always goals in the design of an online
community, explicit or not. When placed against each
other, the Tapped In and FarNet examples show that the
goals of an online community of practice must come from
the members themselves, and cannot be imposed upon
participating teachers from the outside without considering
the needs and interests of the teachers. In other words, there
must be an organic connection between the real-world
practice of teachers and the online world of teacher pro-
fessional development, such as the needs of the Maori
students in the later development of FarNet.
Communication tools
Communication tools should be selected based on learning
goals. From observing different online communities, it is
easy to determine that the most commonly used communi-
cation tools are live chat, video, discussion board, library or
laboratory, and distance video conference tools. For exam-
ple, chat is only one of the many features of the Tapped In
interface. Other features for members include a private
office, special interest groups, threaded discussion boards,
storage for files and links, and a special K-12 Student
Campus. Special Interest Groups are primarily resource
rooms where group members store their files and links.
Groups will occasionally meet in their group rooms, but
more often they use the threaded discussion board in their
group room to communicate among themselves. As for the
ILF, four major communication tools are used: discussion
board, live chat, video classroom, and library. Live chat is
one of the more popular online communication tools
because of its instant interaction function. As Rheingold
(1993) describes, thousands of people in the world are joined
together in a cross-cultural grab bag of written conversations
known as Internet Relay Chat (IRC). IRC has enabled a
global structure to construct itself with three fundamental
elements: artificial but stable identities, quick wit, and the
use of words to construct an imagined shared context for
conversation.
Participant structures
The term ‘‘participant structure’’ was coined by Susan
Philips (1972) to describe the different ways that teachers
arrange ‘‘verbal interactions’’ with students (p. 377).
More recent work on discourse analysis suggests that
communication involves substantially more than verbal
communication, including (but not limited to) ‘‘bodies,
clothes, non-linguistic symbols, objects, tools, technolo-
gies, times and places’’ as well as ‘‘ways of acting and
interacting’’ (Gee 1999, p. 25). As Shaffer (2005) uses
the term to refer to discourse in the more general sense,
and include within the term ‘‘classroom social arrange-
ments’’ and how they impact learning, I use the term
here to refer to discourse in the online community
including non-linguistic symbols such as pictures and
videos.
In the ILF, a variety of participant structures are
designed to encourage teachers’ inquiry. One major par-
ticipant structure is the ILF Classrooms that enable ILF
members to virtually visit the classrooms of other teachers.
The home screen of the ILF contains classrooms through
the Classrooms space. After ILF members select a specific
classroom lesson, they can watch seven or eight video
segments of the implemented lesson. Community members
can view an overview of the lesson, reflective commentary
from the teachers, descriptions of teaching activity, lesson
plans, student examples, and connections to both state and
national standards. It might be true that when teachers
watch the other community members’ lessons, they can
learn the strengths and weaknesses of the lessons from the
video-taped classroom reality, the lesson plans, and the
reflections. However, because of the design constraints,
there seem to be no opportunities for the teachers who
watch the class videos to comment on the lessons, and thus
no discussion can arise between the teachers who taught
706 K. Y. Liu
123
the lessons and the viewers of their lessons. Taking the
Japanese lesson study model as an example (Fernandez
2002), discussing a lesson to generate questions and con-
structive criticism, and subsequently suggest alternative
approaches, is a process of collaborative reflection. This
collaborative process can eventually enhance teachers’
daily practice and students’ learning. Designers should
therefore consider a discussion forum on video-taped les-
sons to be an important participant structure. Another pri-
mary area of interest in the ILF is the Collaboratory, a
space in which groups of teachers can come together in an
online space around some collective experience and/or
curricular interest. Each group within the Collaboratory is
referred to as an Inquiry Circle. The Inquiry Circles allow
for smaller sub-groups to collaborate and give members
control of adding documents, discussion threads, web
resources, and other ILF resources without having to con-
tact an ILF staff member, which meet the first design
principle of foster ownership and participation.
Participant responsibilities
When designing an online professional development
community for teachers, questions about the responsibili-
ties of different members of the community will emerge.
Who creates community? Who should take responsibility
for maintaining the community? Is responsibility taken or
is it given? In Conrad’s (2005) research, the adult learners
felt that they themselves were the primary architects of
their community. They named themselves as not just as
learners but also as instructors, administrators, and even
employees responsible for helping to create a sense of
community. The growth of community over time was
marked by increased levels of comfort, intimacy, and sense
of responsibility of each participant in the community.
In Parr and Ward’s (2006) FarNet case, however, some
teachers did not realize the responsibility of building up
the community. Teachers said, ‘‘This is the resource I
made, I am not going to share it with X school. What
have they done?’’ (p. 784). This statement shows that
some teachers did not take the responsibility to contribute
to the community, which in turn has negative impacts on
other teachers who might be willing to share at first place.
It is more challenging for teachers to develop a sense of
responsibility in an online environment for the reason that
most of the participants do not know each other and thus
they do not have a feeling of connectedness or a need to
take a responsibility in community building. From Parr
and Ward’s FarNet case, it can be seen that time is a
critical factor in cultivating a sense of responsibility
within the community. Teachers in an online community
need time to get to know one another and each individ-
ual’s goals and primary needs to build up a level of
familiarity. Another phenomenon shown in Parr and
Ward’s FarNet case is that contributions tend to be dis-
tributed to a small number of people in an online com-
munity. This disparity in contribution may be due to
design constraints that do not specify each participant’s
responsibilities when they first join the community or do
not provide opportunities for participant to realize that
each individual member of the community has ideas and
strengths that are valuable for the development of the
community. Unlike the simple request for teachers to post
resources to the web site in the FarNet case, the Tapped
In community brings together a design team representing
researchers, teacher educators, technology developers, and
Tapped In members to work out a robust, versatile
and scalable system that values each individual’s talents
and interests. In the system, different participants have
different goals and core activities. For example, the Help
Desk enables experienced Tapped In volunteers to engage
with new visitors, taking on some of the responsibility for
technical training while simultaneously expanding the
ranks of participants in the community. Experienced
Tapped In members can also create and manage their own
interest areas.
The success (or lack thereof) of the examples above
shows the importance of separating the social aspects of
online community into participant structures and partici-
pant responsibilities. By mandating participant structures
linked to participant responsibilities that emphasized dis-
ciplinary boundaries and hierarchy, FarNet failed to build
the kind of community teachers needed for their profes-
sional development. Tapped In, on the other hand, by
separating participant structures and responsibilities, and
by enabling participants to both select their involvement
and create new ways to engage with each other, provided a
base for participation, growth, and evolution. When com-
bined with the variety of communication tools available to
Tapped In participants (in contrast to the more restricted
webpage approach of FarNet), the result was a system that
was able to reinforce and develop the shared goals of the
community. Subsequent development of FarNet within the
larger online teaching and learning system of New Zea-
land’s bears this analysis out: allowing participants to
develop their own structures and responsibilities supported
by a greater variety of communication tools has reversed
the initial lack of success of the community building effort.
There are other design issues identified in the literature,
such as resources available to the online community
(Schlager and Schank 1997), the technical tools, audience
analysis, and budget available to the system designers
(Charalambos et al. 2004), and so forth. However, using
the model in Fig. 1, these other design issues more prop-
erly fit into the larger context. It is that larger context to
which I now turn.
A design framework for online TPD communities 707
123
Cultural, political, and economic context
In the real world, TPD is influenced by many aspects, one
of which is typically labeled ‘‘context’’ (see, for example
the diagrams in Borko 2004). Loucks-Housley et al. (2003)
identify nine contextual factors influencing professional
development such as students, teachers and teachers’
learning needs, organizational culture, and available
resources. As before, rather than proliferating factors, I
organize them in the model in Fig. 1 into cultural, political,
and economic factors.
Culture of collaboration
It is widely accepted that teachers typically work in iso-
lation from their peers, and the prevailing professional
expectation is that they achieve competence on their own
(Lortie 1975; MacLaughlin and Talbert 2001). This tradi-
tional culture left teachers to practice as they chose and
impeded teachers’ professional development. However, as
MacLaughlin and Talbert discovered, there were schools
and departments where teachers worked together in com-
munities of practice united around shared beliefs and
responsibilities for teaching in a culture of collaboration.
In research on online communities, collaborative culture
has also been identified as a supporting factor. In Selwyn’s
(2000) study, a group of teachers used an established forum
as an information and empathetic exchange resource over
2 years of postings and discussion. One recurring form of
discussion involved participants using the forum as an
information sharing environment. In Nicholson and Bond’s
(2003) study, an electronic discussion board was used as
a place for preservice teachers to share experiences and
ideas. The electronic discussion board became a place
where problems could be discussed, potential solutions
suggested, and collaborative reflections on students and the
practice of teaching supported.
Politics of teaching, learning, and professional
development
In the real world, teacher professional development com-
munities are influenced by internal and external politics.
This is often the case as well with online learning commu-
nities. Will online teacher professional development obtain
political support from decision makers? If so, will they draw
away money from other parts of the professional develop-
ment budget, causing conflict within the field? In addition,
how will online participation be credited? As mentioned
above, the foundational documents for NCLB (and now
Race To The Top) attempt to place comprehensive teacher
professional development within the overall regime of stu-
dent assessment: core curriculum, standardized testing, and
value-added assessment of teachers and schools. In so doing,
however, the focus on community goals necessary to build a
community of practice has been lost. Collaboration is not
enhanced by hierarchy, as the initial experience of FarNet
shows quite clearly, nor is it encouraged by the pitting of
teacher against teacher, school against school inherent to
high-stakes testing. Moreover, although online technology
holds out great potential for learning and education, as
scholars such as Bonk (2009) repeatedly observe, it also
holds out significant potential for surveillance and admin-
istrative abuse resulting from the loss of privacy of practice
required by collaboration among teachers. The attempt to
marry collaboration among participants with the assessment
of individual participants in online portfolio systems has
already been shown to stunt development of novice teachers
(Liu 2011). There is no reason to believe results would be
different for experienced teachers, especially given the
current political climate in the United States with respect to
K-12 education. These policy issues need to be addressed at
the school, district, and state level if teachers are going to
feel empowered to participate, and online TPD communities
are going to develop to their full potential.
Economics of online community
Construction cost and long-term funding is very important
for the success of online learning communities (Bonk
2009), and financial support for teachers to participate in
the online learning communities and related activities such
as intermittent face-to-face meetings are vital to help
teachers maintain ongoing participation. The ILF design
report mentioned receiving a three-year grant, but did not
detail the amount of the grant or how they spent the money.
It is worth noting that there are few interactions or updates
after 2004 in the ILF online community. It is inevitable that
constructing and maintaining an online teacher profes-
sional development community requires financial support;
personnel, software, and hardware are important costs
too. For example, the adoption of Telepresence technology
at schools and universities makes long-distance meetings
comparable to face-to-face ones. However, not every
school or university has the capacity to purchase such
expensive equipment without proper funding. Less expen-
sive technologies, such as WebEx conferencing or even
Skype conference calls, while within the reach of less
wealthy organizations, do not provide the same quality of
experience as Telepresence, and are dependent on web-
connected computers and the successful functioning of
distributed Internet technology. In this regard, the eco-
nomic and political factors are inseparable: efforts to
internationalize teacher professional development, for
example, have repeatedly foundered on both the cost of
efficient telecommunications technology and the desire of
708 K. Y. Liu
123
national governments to surveil and control cross-border
information exchange.
The combination of the cultural, political, and economic
context for online TPD communities thus has to be con-
sidered in tandem with the internal synergy of participant
structures, participant responsibilities, and communication
tools in support of the participants’ shared learning goals. It
is entirely possible that one or more goals articulated by
participants are technically feasible but politically unlikely.
Conversely, it is possible that economic support in terms of
high-cost communications technology is available, but lack
of attention to shared goals leads to failure of the com-
munity to thrive anyway. For this reason, it is vital that all
stakeholders participate in the design of the community,
even though ultimately it is the teachers and their students
who will form the core of the organization.
A final question to consider is, given the universal
model presented in Fig. 1 for an online teacher professional
development community, what might be the role of uni-
versities in the new culture of learning? After all, univer-
sity teacher education programs have long been central to
TPD, particularly in providing graduate or continuing
education credit usable for maintaining licensure. Although
the details will certainly be contingent upon the needs of a
given group of teachers and their students, university-based
TPD programs can stimulate and help sustain online
communities by providing access to content and peda-
gogical knowledge, and a certain measure of technical
leadership. In addition, their existing role in teacher
licensure makes them ideal for providing the institutional
framework and experience in assessing and granting TPD
credit. Nevertheless, as the examples of Tapped In and
FarNet show, it is vitally important to allow participants to
shape the goals and especially the participant structures and
responsibilities of the community if there is to be both
initial success and sustained engagement as well. In these
areas, the role of the university-based teacher educators is
perhaps best limited to that of facilitator, in order to avoid
the imposition of external goals, structures, and responsi-
bilities, resulting in the shutting down of involvement by
all but a handful of participants. Finally, universities are
uniquely placed to provide an audience for participants’
successes through research, publication, and presentation,
further expanding the active role of teachers in the devel-
opment of their own discipline.
Conclusions and implications
This paper presents a design framework for online teacher
professional development communities grounded on social
and pedagogical theories as well as past efforts docu-
mented in the literature. The framework summarized in
Fig. 1 that results from this research places shared learning
goals at the center of a system that develops social and
technical factors in support of those goals within an overall
cultural, political, and economic context to produce an
effective and sustainable online community for teacher
professional development.
Although existing research presents some successful
cases of online TPD communities in aspects such as
improved sense of community and collaboration among
online community members, there is need for further
investigation into the effectiveness and qualities of online
professional development communities, especially in terms
of promoting teaching practice and student performance.
At the same time, it should be recognized that valuing
online community does not mean devaluing real commu-
nity of co-present interaction. Although research on the
interaction between online and co-present communities of
practice remains to be done, it seems self-evident that
seeing and meeting each other in a healthy, real-world
community would only contribute energy to building and
sustaining a related online community. In the end, the goal
of improved teaching and improved learning through
improved community is the important point; whether that is
accomplished through face-to-face workshops, confer-
ences, and training sessions, or through collaborative
online communities of practice is entirely contingent upon
the needs and abilities of the teachers and their students.
References
Barab, S. A., & Duffy, T. (2000). From practice fields to communities
of practice. In D. Johansson & S. M. Land (Eds.), Theoreticalfoundations of learning environments (pp. 25–56). Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Barab, S. A., MaKinster, J. G., & Scheckler, R. (2006). Designing
system dualities: Characterizing an online professional develop-
ment community. In S. A. Barab, R. Kling, & J. Gray (Eds.),
Designing for virtual communities in the service of learning.
Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Barab, S. A., & Schatz, S. (2001). Using activity theory to
conceptualize online community and using online community
to conceptualize activity theory. In Paper presented at theannual meeting of the American Educational Research Associ-ation, Seattle, April 2001.
Bennet, C., & Barbour, M. K. (2011). The FarNet journey: Perceptions
of Maori students engaged in secondary online learning. Journalof Open, Flexible, and Distance Learning, 16(1), 83–98.
Bonk, C. (2009). The world is open: How web technology isrevolutionizing education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Borko, H. (2004). Professional development and teacher learning:
Mapping the terrain. Educational Researcher, 33(8), 3–15.
Bredeson, P. V. (2003). Designs for learning: A new architecture forprofessional development in schools. Thousand Oaks: Corwin
Press.
Bredeson, P. V., & Johansson, D. (2000). The school principal’s role
in teacher professional development. Journal of In-ServiceEducation, 26(2), 385–401.
A design framework for online TPD communities 709
123
Charalambos, V., Michalinos, Z., & Chamberlain, R. (2004). The
design of online learning communities: Critical issues. Educa-tional Media International, 41(2), 135–143.
Conrad, D. (2002). Deep in the heart of learners: Insights into the
nature of online community. Journal of Distance Education,7(1). Retrieved December 11, 2007, from http://www.jofde.ca/
index.php/jde/article/view/133/114.
Conrad, D. (2005). Building and maintaining community in cohort-
based online learning. Journal of Distance Education, 20(1),
1–20.
Darling-Hammond, L. (2002). Learning to teach for social justice. In
L. Darling-Hammond, J. French, & S. P. Garcia-Lopez (Eds.),
Learning to teach for social justice. New York: Teachers
College Press.
Darling-Hammond, L. (2010). The flat world and education: HowAmerica’s commitment to equity will determine our future. New
York: Teachers College Press.
Dede, C. (Ed.). (2006). Online professional development for teachers:Emerging models and methods. Cambridge: Harvard Education
Press.
Douglas-Faraci, D. (2010). A correlational study of six professional
development domains in e-learning teacher professional devel-
opment. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching,6(4), 754–766.
Fernandez, C. (2002). Learning from Japanese approaches to
professional development: The case of lesson study. Journal ofTeacher Education, 53(5), 393–405.
Friesen, S., & Clifford, P. (2003). Working across different spaces to createcommunities of practice in teacher professional development. In
Proceedings of MICTE 2003 Multimedia, Information and Commu-nication Technologies, Badajoz, Spain, December 3–6. Retri-
eved from http://www.galileo.org/research/publications/different_
spaces.pdf.
Garber, D. (2004). Technical evaluation report 34: Growing virtual
communities. International Review of Research in Open andDistance Learning, 5(2), 1–7.
Garrison, D. R. (2006). Online collaboration principles. Journal ofAsynchronous Learning Networks, 10(1), 25–33.
Gee, J. P. (1999). An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory andmethod. London: Routledge.
Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays.
New York: Basic Books.
Hagel, J., & Amstrong, A. (1997). Net gain: Expanding marketsthrough virtual communities. Boston: Harvard Business School
Press.
Hammerness, K., Darling-Hammond, L., & Bransford, J. (2005). How
teachers learn and develop. In L. Darling-Hammond & J.
Bransford (Eds.), Preparing teachers for a changing world:What teachers should learn and be able to do (pp. 358–389). San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Hargreaves, A., & Fullan, M. (2012). Professional capital: Trans-forming teaching in every school. New York: Teachers College
Press.
Hayles, N. K. (2002). Virtual bodies and flickering signifiers. In
N. Mirzoeff (Ed.), The visual culture reader (pp. 152–160).
London: Routledge.
Hord, S. M. (1997). Professional learning communities: Communities
of continuous inquiry and improvement. Retrieved July 20,
2009, from Southwest Educational Development Laboratory at
http://www.sedl.org/pubs/change34/welcome.html.
Huberman, M. (1993). The lives of teachers. New York: Teachers
College Press.
Huffman, J. B. (2011). Professional learning communities in the
USA: Demystifying, creating, and sustaining. The InternationalJournal of Learning, 17(12), 321–336.
Killion, J. (2000). Log on to learn. Journal of Staff Development,21(3), 48–53.
Koch, M., & Fusco, J. (2008). Designing for growth: Enabling
communities of practice to develop and extend their work online.
In C. Kimble & P. Hildreth (Eds.), Communities of practice:Creating learning environments for education (Vol. 2, pp. 1–23).
Charlotte: Information Age Publishing.
Kreijns, K. A., Kirschner, P. A., & Jochems, W. (2003). Identifying the
pitfalls for social interaction in computer-supported collaborative
learning environments: A review of the research. Computersin Human Behavior, 19(3), 335–353.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimateperipheral participation. New York: Cambridge University
Press.
Liu, K. (2005). E-Learning on adult education: An Internet course on
Electronics Packaging. In: Proceedings of international e-learnconference 2005, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Liu, K. (2011). Enhancing prospective teachers’ critical reflection inthe ePortfolio environment. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation,
University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Lloyd, M., & Duncan-Howell, J. (2010). Changing the metaphor: The
potential of online communities in teacher professional devel-
opment. In J. Lindberg & A. Olofsson (Eds.), Online learningcommunities and teacher professional development: Methodsfor improved education delivery (pp. 60–76). doi:10.4018/978-1
-60566-780-5.
Lock, J. V. (2006). A new image: Online communities to facilitate
teacher professional development. Journal of Technology andTeacher Education, 14(4), 663–678.
Lortie, D. C. (1975). Schoolteacher (2nd ed.). Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.
Loucks-Housley, S., Love, N., Stiles, K. E., Mundry, S., & Hewson,
P. W. (2003). Designing professional development for teachersof science and mathematics (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks: Corwin
Press, Inc.
MacLaughlin, M., & Talbert, J. (2001). Professional communitiesand the work of high school teaching. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media: The extensions of man.
New York: McGraw Hill.
Nicholson, S. A., & Bond, N. (2003). Collaborative reflection and
professional community building: An analysis of preservice
teachers’ use of an electronic discussion board. Journal ofTechnology and Teacher Education, 11(2), 259–279.
Parr, J., & Ward, L. (2005). Digital opportunities pilot project (2001–
2003) Evaluation of project Farnet: Learning communities in thefar north. Report to the Ministry of Education, Government of New
Zealand. Retrieved May 5, 2012, from http://www.educationcounts.
govt.nz/publications/ict/5767/evaluation_of_project_farnet_learning_
communities_in_the_far_north .
Parr, J., & Ward, L. (2006). Building on foundations: Creating an
online community. Journal of Technology and Teacher Educa-tion, 14(4), 775–793.
Philips, S. U. (1972). Participant structures and communicative
competence: Warm springs children in community and class-
room. In C. B. Cazden, V. John-Steiner, & D. H. Hymes (Eds.),
Functions of language in the classroom (pp. 370–394). New
York: Teachers College Press.
Postman, N. (1985). Amusing ourselves to death: Public discourse inthe age of show business. New York: Penguin Books.
Ravitch, D. (2011). The death and life of the great American schoolsystem: How testing and choice are undermining education.
New York: Basic Books.
Rheingold, H. (1993). The virtual community: Homesteading on theelectronic frontier. New York: Addison-Wesley.
710 K. Y. Liu
123
Ryman, S., Hardham, G., Richardson, B., & Ross, J. (2009). Creating
and sustaining online learning communities: Designing for
transformative learning. International Journal of Pedagogiesand Learning, 5(3), 32–45.
Schlager, M. S., & Schank, P. (1997). Tapped. A new online teacher
community concept for the next generation of Internet technol-
ogy. In Proceedings of CSCL, the second international confer-ence on computer support for collaborative learning (pp.
231–240).
Schrum, L. (1992). Information age innovations: A case study of
online professional development. In Paper presented at theannual conference of the American Educational ResearchAssociation, San Francisco, April 1992.
Scott, S. (2010). The theory and practice divide in relation to teacher
professional development. In J. Lindberg & A. Olofsson (Eds.),
Online learning communities and teacher professional develop-ment: Methods for improved education delivery, (pp. 20–40).
doi:10.4018/978-1-60566-780-5.
Selwyn, N. (2000). Creating a ‘‘connected’’ community? Teachers’
use of an electronic discussion group. Teachers College Record,102(4), 750–788.
Shea, P. (2006). A study of students’ sense of learning community in
online environments. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Envi-ronments, 10(1), 35–44.
Sprague, D. (2007). Online professional development for teachers:
Emerging models and methods [Review of the book Onlineprofessional development for teachers: emerging models andmethods]. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 15(1),
145–149.
Shaffer, D. W. (2005). Epistemography and the participant structuresof a professional practicum: A story behind the story ofjournalism 828. WCER Working Paper No. 2005–8.
Zhao, Y. (2012). World class learners: Educating creative andentrepreneurial students. California: Corwin Press.
A design framework for online TPD communities 711
123