Dialogic Understanding of Teachers' Online ...

Lee, K., & Brett, C. (2015). Dialogic understanding of teachers' online transformative learning: A qualitative case study of teacher discussions in a graduate-level online course. Teaching and Teacher Education, 46, 72-83.

Dialogic Understanding of Teachers’ Online Transformative Learning: A Qualitative Case Study of Teacher Discussions in a Graduate-level Online Course Teachers are expected to implement new educational technologies and adapt to new teaching environments. However, it involves a complex learning process that can lead to their perspective transformation. We have developed and taught a discussion-based online course to facilitate teachers’ transformative learning. This qualitative case study examines teachers’ perspective transformation in our course to understand the nature of effective online teacherto-teacher discussions. Based on a theoretical framework that integrates Mezirow’s transformative learning model and Bakhtin’s dialogism, this paper builds on previous literature on teacher-to-teacher discussions as well as providing a fresh perspective to inform the current globalized teacher education context. Key Words: Teacher Professional Development, Transformative Learning, Community of Practice, Online course design, Dialogue, Teacher-to-teacher Discussion

1. Background With our fast-changing social conditions, schools are increasingly expected to help students acquire critical and other skills to assist their adaptation to environmental changes throughout their lifetime (Lynch, 2000; Trilling & Fadel, 2009). This expectation further implies that teachers themselves must be similarly adaptable in order to effectively teach their students. Changing teaching practices evidenced through adopting new technologies in one’s classroom is often considered as explicit evidence that a teacher has effectively adapted to a new educational environment (Lawless & Pellegrino, 2007). In the field of teacher professional development (TPD), therefore, there have been great research efforts to understand how teachers effectively learn and implement new technologies into their classroom teaching and the impediments that may prevent this from happening. Avidov-Ungar and Eshet-Alkalai (2011) argue the successful implementation of innovative technologies in teaching requires teachers to have not only technological competencies but also content knowledge and pedagogical understanding, that is collectively, “technological pedagogical content knowledge” (known as the TPCK model, Koehler & Mishra, 2008). The authors demonstrate that teachers having a higher level of TPCK tend to be more positive towards classroom change and to perceive their school as a learning organization, which increases their willingness to attempt to use technologies in teaching. Similar studies about the relationship between teachers’ TPCK and their implementation of technologies also suggest that without all three components of this multidimensional knowledge, teachers are likely to face a wide range of challenges with teaching in technological environments (Cunningham, 2009; Harris, Mishra & Koehler, 2009). King (2001; 2002) and Kitchenham (2006) use a transformative 1


learning framework to describe such teachers’ journeys of learning using educational technologies, in which critical self-examination and perspective transformations were evident. Thus, we would argue that pedagogical change using new technologies can involve a complex learning process that leads to potential transformation of teachers’ attitudes, perspectives, and so practices. However, changing perspectives can be very challenging for individual teachers and is often accompanied by negative emotional reactions such as hostility, denial, or distress (Servage, 2008). In this context, socio-cultural understanding of learning as active participation in shared practices of social communities has been suggested as one of the most promising approaches to TPD (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998; Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002). A teacher community of practice (CoP), and particularly one which has created a shared trust among its members, enables teachers to learn new knowledge and perspectives through interacting with other teachers and transforming their teaching practices with community supports (Darling-Hammond & Ball, 1997; Hawkins, 1996; Lock, 2006; MacDonald, 2006; Wang & Lu, 2012). Teacher CoPs, therefore, further facilitate organizational improvement in school settings through teachers’ collaborative efforts to change their teaching practices and contexts (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012). Considering the growing social pressure on individual teachers for classroom innovation and the challenging nature of transformative learning that teachers experience when implementing new technologies in their teaching, building teacher CoPs has become a significant and important means of TPD. There has been a parallel emphasis on encouraging technological integration into TPD practices through means such as online courses, which can offer teachers various forms of interaction as a way to construct meaningful knowledge for teaching (e.g., Hramiak, 2010; Slaouti, 2007). Online TPD practices, similar to the CoP approach, are rooted in a theoretical base of social constructivism that views learning as social interactions and values dialogues between learners who are in different stages of cognitive development (Vygotsky, 1978). The major purpose of online learning design, therefore, is not to deliver particular knowledge to teachers but to provide them with various opportunities to interact with peerteachers, reflect on their own learning processes; and furthermore, transfer the learning outcomes of their classroom practices (Thompson, Schmidt, & Davis, 2003; Laferriere, Lamon, & Chan, 2006; Schlager, Fusco, & Schank, 2002). This TPD approach to teachers’ learning and implementing of new technologies has at least two advantages. First, teachers have opportunities to interact with other teachers online without leaving their classrooms and homes unlike face-to-face TPD workshops. Second, teachers gain practical knowledge, which is more likely to be applied in their teaching practices because of the actual learning experiences of using those technologies. 2


Unfortunately, these two current approaches to TPD have not been practically integrated with each other although there have been several attempts to build online teacher CoPs (e.g., MERLOT, Tapped In, The Math Forum). Furthermore, their collective effects on changing teachers’ teaching practices remain unexplored although each approach has been separately reported effective in teachers’ transformative learning (Servage, 2008). To explore the potential value of integrating these two approaches, the two authors of this paper have been engaged in a multi-year effort to deliberately integrate a CoP model into an online TPD course (Authors, 2013). Since 2011 when we first developed a theoretically-driven “double-layered CoP model” for online course design, our iterative design-andteaching attempts have been situated in a graduate-level discussion-based online course titled ‘Educational applications of Computer-mediated communications (CMC)’ at a leading Faculty of Education in a very multicultural urban centre in Canada. The effectiveness of the model has been examined through analyzing teachers’ perspective transformation in the course discussions and we have suggested that the course structure of the double-layered CoP fosters teachers’ transformative learning. We have also found Bakhtin’s dialogism (1981) a useful perspective to inform and evaluate our teaching practices in this particular educational context. This paper, therefore, aims to suggest some general theoretical implications of our design-andteaching experiences that may be effectively implemented in diverse teacher education settings not only in North America but globally. For that purpose, we will describe how teachers’ perspectives are changed through open-ended dialogues in our online TPD course, leading to teachers’ transformative learning for educational use of technologies. It will be then argued that the Bakhtinian approach to dialogue may help deepen teacher educators’ understanding of how effective online teacher discussions support perspective transformation. In our methodology section, we will also provide a brief description of the structure of our online course, viewed as a double-layered CoP, connecting the course experience to teachers’ professional communities outside the course environment. 2. A theoretical framework: Dialogue and transformative learning The theoretical framework of our inquiry lies in the intersection of Bakhtin’s dialogism (1981) and transformative learning theory (Mezirow, 1991). A number of teacher educators have examined teacherto-teacher discussions (or talks) using diverse research foci and methods to understand teachers’ learning processes (e.g., Dudley, 2013; Kosko & Herbst, 2012; Sannino, 2010). In this study, we used the Bakhtinian concept of dialogue to examine teacher-to-teacher discussions in our online course as a way to

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understand teachers’ transformative learning processes. This theoretical approach was useful for this particular teacher education context in the following three aspects. 2.1. Designing a course as a dialogic community First, in order to address educational issues of which teachers are not often conscious (e.g., limitations of their pedagogical practices), teachers need to uncover and examine the seriousness and relevance of those problems in their own teaching practices (Servage, 2008). This problem solving process requires teachers to challenge and transform their taken-for-granted assumptions and beliefs about effective teaching and being a good teacher. One way to transform long-held beliefs and practices, involves individuals engaging in critical reflection on a “disorienting dilemma,” which refers to a situation where one’s expectations and assumptions do not match (Mezirow, 1991). Kitchenham (2006), for example, demonstrates how teachers transform their perspectives during self-reflective learning to resolve conflicting teaching situations experienced while using educational technologies: Perspective transformations occur when people become critically aware of how and why their psychocultural assumptions are constrained, determine what to do to revise those assumptions to make meaning from given situations, and then take some form of action to incorporate their revised frames of reference. (p. 207)

That is, transformative learning is “the expansion of consciousness through the transformation of basic worldview and specific capacities of the self” (Elias, 1997, p.3). This process includes dialogic interactions among participants such as representing the self to others, sharing different perspectives, assessing various values, and reconstructing new beliefs (Mezirow, 2003). In this context, dialogue is “a sustained collective inquiry into the processes, assumptions and certainties that compose everyday experiences” (Isaacs, 1993, p. 25), which is closely related to Bakhtin’s notion of dialogue, an authentic process of being through experiencing the world with others (Rule, 2011). Bakhtin’s dialogue of “ideological becoming” necessarily involves complex meaning making processes including selecting, assimilating, and agreeing or disagreeing with other’s words, which exist in “other people’s mouths, in other people’s contexts, serving other people’s intentions” (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 294). Thus, a dialogic understanding of learning emphasizes interacting with diverse voices in “social learning spaces” (Zack & Graves, 2001, p. 235) where individuals may develop a unique ideological understanding of the self, the others, and the world (Ball & Freeman, 2004; Hamston, 2006; Kubli, 2005).

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Owing to the dialogic nature of transformative learning, it tends to be most prevalent in supportive learning communities (Ryman, Burrell, Hardham, Richardson, & Ross, 2009). Therefore, effective TPD courses need to become supportive teacher communities where teachers collectively face and resolve disorienting dilemmas, relevant to their teaching practices, and experience their perspective changes through interacting with other teachers. 2.2. Facilitating course discussions to be dialogic Bakhtin’s dialogism further informs us how to facilitate teacher-to-teacher discussions in a TPD course so as to foster teachers’ transformative learning. The nature of “dialogue” required for transformative learning is distinguished from both discussion aimed at consensus and debate seeking better ideas (Rule, 2011). Although Bakhtinian dialogue too involves interactions with others, it is distinct from “interaction” in social constructivist learning theories (e.g., Hannafin, 1989; Vygotsky, 1978; Woo & Reeves, 2007), which often focuses on constructing a homogeneous piece of knowledge (Matusov, 2011). Rather, Bakhtin (1981) would argue that knowledge is neither absolute nor can be predefined as an instructional goal. Thus the dialogue of ideological becoming is ultimately an individualized process so that individuals participating in dialogue do not necessarily construct a shared knowledge as a result. Most importantly, a central focus of transformative learning is not to construct shared knowledge but to develop alternative perspectives for understanding one’s practices and awareness of the socio-political settings in which these practices are involved (Cranton, 1996). Bakhtin also refuses a neutral stance towards interaction as “reciprocal events that require at least two objects and two actions” (Wagner, 1994, p. 8) because he believes that “a person enters into dialogues as an integral voice” (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 293). Dialogue is deeply embedded in stratified sociohistorical structures to which individual speakers belong, so its complexity cannot be reduced to considerations of neutral interactions between persons with equal power (Roberts, 2012). For example, teacher educators’ authority, which is already embedded in a stratified institutional structure of Faculties of Education, may not be simply relinquished by their mechanical efforts to empower their students to create their own knowledge (Ellsworth, 1992). To illustrate the complexity of dialogue, Bakhtin (1981) describes two different kinds of discourses that exist in speech settings: one is unchallengeable “authoritative discourse”. Its source of authority tends to be external, established and “organically connected with a past that is felt to be hierarchically higher” (p. 342), thus forcing individuals to accept an authoritative speaker’s voice and transform their perspectives in a certain direction. The other is

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“internally persuasive discourse,” which allows individuals to respond to multiple voices and create new and independent voices (Matusov, 2007; 2009; Rule, 2011). Such dialogue engages participants in: [A]n intense interaction, a struggle with other internally persuasive discourses. Our ideological development is just such an intense struggle within us for hegemony among various available verbal and ideological points of view, approaches, directions and value. (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 345346)

Such considerations shift our pedagogical focus of teaching TPD courses from one of helping teachers learn particular skills and knowledge to one where we engage them in “open-ended dialogues” that enable internally persuasive discourses among participants (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 293). We further encourage teachers to collectively challenge and deconstruct authoritative discourses (e.g., dominant social discourses or teacher educators’ voices) in order to deepen their understanding of effective teaching in their own professional contexts. For example, despite our instructional focus on facilitating teachers’ effective use of educational technologies, we are also openly critical about the often taken-for-granted “progressive” view of educational technologies, which can lead to an unquestioned acceptance of technological solutions to different educational problems (Selwyn, 2013). The overstated promises of new technologies for classroom innovation have resulted in instructional imperatives where teachers are forced to learn and implement technologies in their teaching to be considered a good teacher. Having challenged this technological-deterministic discourse, we welcomed teachers’ internally persuasive discourses about effective educational use of technologies designed for their own authentic teaching contexts. 2.3. Analyzing teacher-to-teacher discussion with dialogism Based on our new pedagogical approach, we used Bakhtin’s two concepts of discourse - authoritative and internally persuasive - in our analysis of teacher-to-teacher discussions. We viewed challenging authoritative discourses and being engaged in internally persuasive discourses as critical processes of teachers’ transformative learning. Further, Bakhtin’s works (1981; 1984) situating “text” as a nexus of different speech was also helpful particularly for analyzing teacher discussions in the asynchronous context of our discussion-based online course where teachers mostly interact with text. Dialogues between our voices and characters’ voices in texts [novels in Bakhtin’s original thesis] allow us to develop alternative and independent understandings through interrogating both self and others because “[w]e are selves among others, the world consists of points of view on points of view, and wisdom results from open-ended dialogues” (Morson, 2007, p. 356).

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In this respect, Bakhtin (1981) suggests three critical principles of open-ended dialogue, which together provide a better picture of what meaningful online teacher discussion threads might involve: 

Outsideness: First, there is the principle of participant positions. In open-ended dialogue, one presents oneself in response to others (or addressees) and this position allows understanding of oneself and one’s boundaries in relation to others. Bakhtin (1986) emphasizes the importance of dialogic social context where all utterances have both an author and an addressee and in this context all utterances are half ours and half belong to addressees. Thus, the author needs to consider and often “sense and imagines his addressees” (p. 95). Applying these ideas to the online course, this suggests that teachers need to acknowledge situational and personal differences among them and be willing to reveal and discuss those differences since knowing the differences between the self and others is the first step to changing one’s perspective.

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Heteroglossia: The second principle addresses a quality of text. In open-ended dialogue, multiple perspectives and narratives coexist. Bakhtin (1984) explains this concept using Dostoevsky’s novels that include “a plurality of independent and unmerged voices and consciousnesses, a genuine polyphony of fully valid voices” (p. 6). Again, applied to the online context, heteroglossia appears as an essential condition of meaningful online discussion threads that open dialogic possibilities up for participants, whereas discussions threads having a single shared voice or authoritative discourse cannot bring about open-ended dialogue.

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Simultaneity: The third principle relates to the conditions of events. To Bakhtin (1981), “[u]nderstanding comes to fruition only in the response; understanding and response are dialectically merged and mutually condition one another” (p. 282). Thus, open-ended dialogue is a simultaneous event between the self and the other that involves reciprocal acts of listening and speaking, responding and being responded to, questioning and being questioned (Holquist, 2002). Even in the context of reading novels, despite the distance between an author (and characters) and readers, readers produce new voice and meaning through simultaneous interactions with others’ voices in the texts. Similarly, even in the asynchronous online context, we may expect dialogic teacher discussions to create simultaneous interactions among teachers.

2.4. A complementary conceptual framework The first theoretical frame we are using in this paper is Mezirow’s transformative learning process which can be condensed into four main phases: 1) a disorienting dilemma which causes the learner to experience a radical mismatch between assumptions and situations, 2) critical reflection including self-examination 7


of the experience and a critical assessment of the assumptions, 3) rational dialogue which involves sharing the experience with others and exploring alternative approaches to the situations, and 4) planning a different action, acquiring knowledge for implementing the plan, and reintegrating new perspectives into one’s life (Herbers, 1998, as sited in Glisczinski, 2007; Mezirow, 2000). Mezirow (2003) further suggests four dialogic interactions that support transformative learning: 1) representing the self to others, 2) sharing different perspectives, 3) assessing various values, and 4) reconstructing new beliefs. These dialogic processes highlight the mutual relation between the transformative learning and the Bakhtinian approach to reading texts to interrogate different perspectives. Whereas Mezirow’s model provides a useful structure for examining teachers’ transformative learning processes, the Bakhtinian account of text-based open-ended dialogue explains what effective teacher discussions need to include. For example, based upon Bakhtin’s dialogism, Morson (2007) argues that to develop open-ended dialogues through closed-text-based interactions readers need three fundamental skills specifically: translation, where we imagine a character’s situation and choice based on our own socio-cultural contexts, identification, where we place ourselves into the positions of the characters and feels the character’s consciousness from within, and impersonation, where we understand the characters and so speak in their voices. In our asynchronous discussion-based online course where we are often interacting through texts, therefore, we see these skills being particularly important for effective teacher discussions compared to face-to-face TPD environments. Therefore, we argue that the theoretical integration of these two perspectives can be an effective analytical tool for articulating the transformative processes we see occurring in the online courses described in this paper. Table 1 shows the key features of these two perspectives we are using in our study. Table 1 Key Elements of Mezirow and Bakhtin’s Ideas Mezirow’s Transformative Learning Model Learning Phases (2000)

1) A disorienting dilemma 2) Critical reflection 3) Rational dialogue 4) Planning a different action

Dialogic Process (2003)

1) Representing the self to others 2) Sharing different perspectives 3) Assessing various values 4) Reconstructing new beliefs

Bakhtin’s Dialogism Discourses in Dialogue

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 Challenging authoritative discourse  Being engaged in internally persuasive discourse (Matusov, 2009)

Dialogue Principles (1981)

 Outsideness  Heteroglossia  Simultaneity

Dialogic Reading

 Translation  Identification  Impersonation (Morson, 2007)


3. Methodology 3.1. Research Method In this qualitative case study, we take a closer look at actual examples of teacher-to-teacher discussions that demonstrate how teachers’ epistemological and pedagogical perspectives appear to change during the course. A case study is a helpful research strategy to retain a holistic understanding of real-life events and to ask ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions that investigate the effects of certain interventions in the complex social context of education (Yin, 2003). It can be used with other research methods, both quantitative and qualitative, to improve the contextual understanding of the case (Hartley, 1994). A qualitative research approach seems more appropriate than a quantitative approach for this case study because it investigates teachers’ discussions in a single online course through in-depth content analyses. Using our theoretical framework informed both by Mezirow’s transformative learning model and Bakhtin’s dialogism, therefore, we qualitatively examine how teachers’ open-ended dialogues lead to their perspective transformations. Our two research questions are: 1. Question 1: How are inservice teachers’ changed perspectives reflected in open-ended dialogues in the online course? 2. What are the characteristics of teacher-to-teacher discussions that facilitate open-ended dialogues in the online course? 3.2. Research Context: An Online TPD Course viewed as a Double-Layered CoP We see the double-layered CoP as a way to link inservice teachers’ online learning more deeply to their classroom teaching through participation in two different CoPs throughout the course period. First, the course itself develops into an internal CoP based on a shared conceptual understanding of CoP, and second, individual teachers participate in external CoPs related to their professional contexts outside the course environment. This “bring your external CoP stories into your online course CoP and bring your course knowledge back to your external CoP” approach facilitates the interconnectivity between two CoPs via the discussion-based online environment (Authors, 2013). The graduate-level online course titled ‘Educational applications of Computer-mediated communications (CMC)’ has been designed and taught based on the model for the last three years. The course aims to facilitate teachers’ transformative learning for the effective use of educational technologies that leads to epistemological and pedagogical belief changes beyond that of technological knowledge acquisition. The main subject areas of the course discussions are the various characteristics of CMC and its educational applications, pedagogical 9


considerations for using CMC tools in classrooms, and critical issues related to the educational CMC environments. The course consists of four different learning phases: The first course preparation phase is the period of time before the course starts and in this period, inservice teachers are provided with a course orientation that stresses the important goal of the course, namely learning through participation in two CoPs. Inservice teachers are also asked to write their biographies to introduce themselves to peer-teachers in the course. In the second foundation building phase, inservice teachers construct shared conceptual understandings of CoP and CMC through reading assignments. They also reflect on and write about their previous learning experiences in professional communities using the readings and this initial connection between the online course and their own teaching contexts deepens their understanding of CoP. The third interactive learning phase includes two major activities: participating in online discussions about weekly readings and conducting a group case study about implementing technologies in a particular educational setting. Simultaneously, in their external CoPs, teachers are engaged in different shared practices. Despite differences in their external CoP experiences, they are encouraged to bring those experiences into the course to enrich the course discussions and provide real instructional examples to make the conceptual ideas more explicit. The last knowledge transfer phase is the ultimate goal of the course, where inservice teachers effectively integrate CMC technologies with their teaching practices. By writing a final paper on CMC application in a specific teaching context, inservice teachers construct transferable knowledge. We noted that a number of teachers report in these papers on their own teaching experiences using CMC technologies with different supports from their external CoPs. This Double-Layered CoP model and our course structure are described in more detail in a separate article (Authors, 2013). 3.3. Research Participants and Data Sources For the last three years, a total number of 44 inservice teachers pursuing graduate studies at both the master’s and doctoral level for their professional development have participated in the course (12 teachers in 2011 class, 15 teachers in 2012 class, and 17 teachers in 2013 class). The participants come from a wide range of cultural and disciplinary backgrounds and speak more than one language although the majority live within about 100 kilometers of the institution. The authors are a course instructor and a teaching assistant who closely investigate inservice teachers’ online discussions and artifacts during and after the course period. Each course is 12-weeks long and discussion-based using online readings and

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resources in an asynchronous conferencing environment developed within the institution, called PeppeR1. The course artifacts such as discussion threads, learning journals, course assignments, and chat records written by inservice teachers throughout the courses are collected. A formal ethics review was approved for a large-scale online learning research project that consisted of a series of small studies conducted in PeppeR environment and this case study was conducted as part of that larger project. In addition, individual informed consent for using the course artifacts for research purposes was obtained from all course participants at the end of each course. As an example of the course artifacts generated in one of these courses, 15 teachers in the 2012 class wrote 1078 entries and generated 88 discussion threads over a 12-week period; one discussion thread consisted of 12.25 entries on average. About 7 discussion threads were generated each week. Those 88 discussion threads were anonymized and examined by the authors and 23 threads were identified by both authors as being dialogical, that is, the discussion thread either met all three principles of open-ended dialogue (i.e. outsideness, heteroglossia, and simultaneity) or challenged authoritative discourse. We conducted in-depth reading on those 23 threads. The unit of a thread consists of one initial inservice teacher response (the starred entry) directed to the weekly discussion topic (the first entry in the conference on the top of the starred entry) and several subsequent entries responding to each other (see Figure 1 and Figure 2). We also conducted an in-depth content analysis of inservice teachers’ learning journals which contained their reflections on their learning experiences in the two CoPs during the course. The average number of learning journal entries that individual teachers’ wrote was 8.3 during the course period. Additional data sources included researchers’ field notes used to deepen understanding of the results and to resolve possible questions arising from data interpretation. For ensuring the “trustworthiness” of the qualitative research outcomes (Lincoln & Guba, 1985), we utilized the concept of “critical friends”. One author first analyzed the texts and another author double-checked the results and other members in the PeppeR research team were invited to participate in the triangulation process.

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PeppeR is a locally developed online collaborative discussion environment with text, messaging and media capacities used as one of the online learning platforms in the Institution.

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Figure 1. Example of a discussion thread in PeppeR

Figure 2. Example of an entry in PeppeR.

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4. Findings 4.1. Question 1: How are inservice teachers’ changed perspectives reflected in open-ended dialogues in the online course? First, there were several discussion entries demonstrating teachers’ perspective transformations. Although there were a lot more entries that suggest teachers faced a disorienting dilemma, the first learning phase of Mezirow’s transformative learning model (2000), it was difficult to find explicit evidence for their perspective changes. This may indicate the need for a longer period of time to elapse in order to allow other learning phases - critical reflection, rational dialogue, and planning a different action – to occur. Despite this limitation, one discussion thread was selected as a good illustration of open-ended dialogue that fosters teachers’ perspective transformation (See Appendix A). To answer the first research question, we will describe three teachers’ perspective changes in this open-ended dialogue excerpt, supplemented with data from teachers’ learning journals, which are also used to trace the changes. The discussion is about teachers’ roles and responsibilities for reducing the digital divide in current classrooms and while this excerpt is long, it demonstrates that dialogical discussion threads were generally longer in their nature than non-dialogical ones. Underlined segments are referred to in this section to highlight our findings. 4.1.1. Maggie [Master of Education – Teaching math] Maggie is a Caucasian Canadian who teaches math at the secondary level. In note #1 (Appendix A), Maggie accused teachers who have not implemented technologies in their classrooms of increasing the digital divide in classrooms. Her voice triggered heated debate about teachers’ responsibilities and abilities in current school settings and other teachers refuted her argument: Jenny (#3), Rose (#5), Fiona (#8) and Maria (#13) directly expressed their objection to Maggie’s idea while the responses of Rachel (#9) and Yasmin (#10) were indirect. Later, Maggie reflected that it was a relatively new experience to have her fundamental belief about teachers directly challenged and questioned by other teachers through teacher-to-teacher discussions in a TPD environment. It may be a natural consequence of the common focus of most practice-oriented collaborative TPD models on sharing practical knowledge and codesigning teaching activities (see Hung & Yeh, 2013). Toward the end of the discussion, Karol suggested “[i]t is the responsibility of educators [teachers] to participate and embrace this new-age and involve students, parents and other educators, to take active participatory roles in radical change, or run the risk of being left behind” (#16), a view in line with Maggie’s initial opinion (#1). However, in response to Karol, Maggie raised the question “[w]hose 13


responsibility is it to make changes in the school system?” (#17). Her question demonstrates that she had experienced a disorienting dilemma through others’ critical responses to her own claims and had subsequently reconsidered her initial position. It further led her to subsequent phases of critical reflection and rational dialogue about the complex power-relationship in her school system and her own position as a teacher in such a context (Mezirow, 2000). Her transformative learning process through the open-ended dialogue in the course was clearly illustrated in her last reflective learning journal: I have experienced perspective changes… I feel a sense of trust and comfort with my classmates and I feel like I can say what I think without judgment. Personally, I enjoy reading opinions that differ from my own. It gives me a different perspective and a new way to look at things… Because of the warmth I feel in this course, I feel that I am more likely to collaborate and participate in discussions with my peers.

4.1.2. Maria [Master of Education – Teaching a grade 3/4] Another teacher who experienced perspective transformation evidenced in the discussion thread is Maria. Maria is an elementary teacher and a Canadian with Indian heritage. She initially expressed her disagreement with Maggie’s opinion and wrote “teachers cannot do anything by themselves… like everyone else, teachers follow guidelines of practice and those guidelines are what we can assess our teachings on” (#13). However, her passive perspective on teachers’ subjectivity was also directly questioned by Jenny (#14). Although there was no clear evidence for her perspective transformation within the discussion thread, it did clearly appear in her learning journal entries about her external CoP experiences. In her discussion entry (#15), she confessed that she had never thought about moving to the policy side, whereas in her last reflective journal she mentions that she has participated in different teacher communities in order to effect different positive changes in her school. This shift indicates a considerable perspective transformation: I enrolled myself into our school’s technology integration team where interested teachers met with the principal to discuss the use of our new Wi-Fi and BYOD initiative... With the unfortunate teacher strike situation, I was exposed to my active membership role in the union… The collective teacher presence in this union is crucial to the success of union negotiations.

4.1.3. Holly [Master of Science – Teaching university clinical labs] Holly, who is Canadian with Eastern Asian heritage is a professional physiotherapist teaching universitylevel courses, introduced her online experience in her biography as:

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Lee, K., & Brett, C. (2015). Dialogic understanding of teachers' online transformative learning: A qualitative case study of teacher discussions in a graduate-level online course. Teaching and Teacher Education, 46, 72-83. This is my first on-line course, and my experience with the technical aspects of computer and internet use is basic and limited – I do not have a blog, web page, twitter account, etc. But at least I have a smart phone!!

Also, in her first learning journal on September 12, she reflected on the concept of “ethics of inconvenience” based on the course reading and argued for the lack of relevance for online teaching in her own particular teaching context: For my own teaching… I do not think that this type of on-line discussion will be sufficient for teaching skills… As technology allows for more e-teaching and on-line learning to occur, the teaching [and] learning are fast becoming convenient for all involved… sometimes the preferred method of teaching especially in medical education is face-to-face, which is more time consuming and “inconvenient”.

In the discussion thread, she adhered to her original attitude about implementing new technologies in her teaching context, which was less positive (see #2 & #6). Although she remained silent in the discussion after her two entries without showing any change in her stance, her perspective transformation was also much more evident in her learning journals. On November 12, for example, she shared her plan to develop a community of students in her classroom using online discussion board: I am now preparing to teach my 16 week course, and I will think about how I can use the Discussion Board available in Blackboard to somehow promote a sense of “community of students” in the first year class. My plan is to use the discussion boards as a tool for peer-topeer reflection and clarification of new information that they learn during class.

Holly experienced a disorienting dilemma between her original belief that using online technologies for learning is redundant and her first online learning experience in the course CoP. Through open-ended dialogues in the course, she became naturally involved in a dialogic process of representing her perspective, sharing and assessing different perspectives and values, and reconstructing new beliefs (Mezirow, 2003). In the last excerpt from her learning journal on December 2, she reflected explicitly on her transformative learning experience in her course CoP: My attitude towards the use and application of CMC technologies to healthcare education has changed since taking this course, and it is still evolving. I now know that given the appropriate teaching methods with the appropriate learning objectives and audience, we can use these technologies with success. I have nurtured this attitude not only from the readings and discussions during this course, but also with the support, friendship and trust shared with all my classmates and Clare.

As three cases above illustrate, we observed teachers’ transformative learning through the dialogic process. As well, the three principles of open-ended dialogue further illustrate the process of teachers’ perspective changes (Bakhtin, 1981). First, teachers were willing to present themselves in 15


response to others, and felt able to express contrary opinions to others in the course. These objections increased teachers’ awareness of outsideness of their utterances, that is, the social presence of addressees that listened and responded to their utterances. As a result, multiple independent and valid voices came into the discussion threads and such heteroglossia of the threads opened up dialogic possibilities for teachers. Finally, teachers persisted in their reading, responding, and questioning others’ voices throughout the course both through the course discussions and within their learning journals to deepen their understanding. The simultaneity of this dialogic event involving reciprocal interactions between the self and the other eventually contributed to our teachers’ perspective transformations. 4.2. Question 2: What are the characteristics of teacher-to-teacher discussions that facilitate open-ended dialogues in the online course? 4.2.1. Dialogic discussion topics and heteroglossia of discussion First, results of the content analysis of the dialogic discussion threads suggest that inservice teachers were engaged in open-ended dialogue mostly in relation to general topics rather than specific ones, which we think allowed most teachers in the course to develop the relevance of those issues within their own teaching practices (Servage, 2008). For example, all 15 teachers in the 2012 class taught different subjects at diverse educational levels (from higher school social sciences to college mathematics). Thus, if topics were too specific, they would not be able to stimulate dialogical discussions that satisfied the three principles of open-ended dialogue, particularly heteroglossia and simultaneity. In the example (Appendix A), teachers also discussed the general educational issue of their roles and responsibilities for reducing the existing digital divide in classrooms. Each teacher was able to situate the topic in their own educational setting and develop their own contextualized internally persuasive discourse. Another example of discussion topics that facilitated open-ended dialogue was the issue of whether using different web-based search tools in classroom helps or hinders students in developing research skills. When the discussion topic allowed teachers to share opposing opinions, most teachers tended to feel more comfortable participating in the discussion. As discussion moderators summarized in the discussion below, many teachers found the topic important and relevant to their teaching practices and presented diverse opinions: There were lots of great ideas brought up that we will summarize below… Maria and Alivia expressed concern that the use of these tools could limit students' opportunities to practice research skills, simply directing them to correct answers… However, Yasmin suggested that … research skills can be scaffolded with these tools. Rose added that it is not an ‘either-or’ proposition and that if done correctly, using these resources can facilitate teaching students… 16


By contrast, a discussion topic about the BYOD initiative did not facilitate open-ended dialogue. Maria first shared a current initiative in her school board and her positive opinion on the initiative “there is the Bring Your Own Device Initiative… my school just ordered their first bundle of iPads and with WiFi… It is just amazing what students from Kindergarten and up can do with technology.” And a few other teachers, including Maggie and Rose, agree enthusiastically with the importance of using technologies in classrooms: Maggie: That is very exciting that your school is getting iPads for the classrooms! I am always pleasantly surprised at how much children know about technology and how quickly they catch on to how to use it… Technology can be such a great learning tool for children both in the classroom and outside of an educational environment. Rose: The College that I teach at is also trying to move to a BYOD format… As a math teacher I would love to see a BYOT (Bring Your Own Tablet PC - with a pen attachment) initiative... If public schools start to go that way too, I think it would make it easier for Colleges to do…

In her response to Maria, Kate, a PhD student working in a higher education context, asked a question “I wonder if this initiative will widen or close the digital divide (i.e. who is able to bring a device and which type of device)?” Although she tried to bring the significant issue of the digital divide into the discussion, her question was unable to draw a response from her addressees. A few days later, Kate wrote her own response to the question: Kate: However, simply passing out free Internet is not necessarily enough, as the digital divide will still exist between the digital haves and have not’s, in terms of those without access and those with access to technology, such as a computer. Rose: I completely agree that we really need to be cognisant of whether students can afford what we are asking them to purchase. We have not actually implemented the BYOD at my school, right now. It's just an idea we are talking about and likely moving towards. But there are so many obstacles, and the digital divide is a big one.

Despite Rose’s response that agreed with Kate’s critical voice, the discussion did not further develop into an open-ended dialogue. This example demonstrates the importance of choosing dialogic discussion topics that encourage participants to respond actively to each other and to be critical about each other’s voices beyond simply sharing their own ideas or experiences. In addition, as Rose mentioned above, most teachers in the 2012 class had not experienced these initiatives so that even the first phase of transformative learning model, a disorienting dilemma, could not occur. Having considered that sharing different perspectives and assessing various values are two critical steps of the dialogic process whereby teachers reconstruct their beliefs (Mezirow, 2003), it may be that having issues with clearly opposing sides, like a debate situation, may actually foster teachers’ open17


ended dialogue. In a similar vein, teachers seemed to feel safer disagreeing with one another when discussion entries included rather strong opinions. For instance, when Maggie (see Appendix A) stated, “an overwhelming number have done nothing” and “we must change” in her entry (#1), most teachers in the course actively engaged with and responded to the discussion. These examples suggest that discussion topics that require teachers to take a clear position or side or to articulate a radical idea may foster dialogic discussion among participants who, otherwise, might be reluctant to oppose other participants. One rationale for this result may be that typically much of the discourse in online environments is quite careful and respectful of challenging others, because offering opposition to others’ ideas without nonverbal signals online can be interpreted as an attack (Rourke & Kanuka, 2007). When participants do add one-sided, and less nuanced positions in this context, others may challenge the lack of circumspection in those very direct position statements. Even so, there is still a small amount of critical commentary overall in online discussion courses, and once mutual trust and shared membership among teachers develops in an online course CoP, instructors may need to actively scaffold discussions with topics and commentary that legitimizes the use of critical voices within the peer-to-peer discussion. 4.2.2. Authoritative discourses and internally persuasive discourses in discussions The dialogue between Rachel and Yasmin (#9 - #12) shows course participants also questioned the authoritative discourse of an educational researcher who authored a scientific journal article, which was provided by instructor as one of the course readings (see Appendix A). Rachel did not passively accept the researcher’s authoritative discourse but actively responded to the discourse, something which occurs less frequently in many TPD courses. By situating the academic author’s authoritative voice in her own teaching context, she transformed the authoritative discourse into internally persuasive discourse, which opened up dialogic possibilities in the course. Rachel’s text elicited another response from her classmate Yasmin, which let Rachel be more explicit about her feelings and opinions about the author’s voice, “which I found rather off-putting” (#11). Although Yasmin’s response was based on a misunderstanding of Rachel’s initial text, the exchange developed into a meaningful ontological dialogue about themselves “… chose to enroll in a graduate program to take the time to reflect on [their] practices…” in contrast with the regular teachers “… immersed in their everyday routine with the stress of student assessment and test scores” (#10). Their discussion entries can be considered as dialogical texts illustrating a Bakhtinian understanding of dialogue as a process of ideological becoming. As Bakhtin (1981) suggests, teachers came to a deeper understanding of themselves and others through dialogic discussion involving complex meaning making

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processes such as selecting, assimilating, and agreeing or disagreeing with others’ words that once served others’ intentions in others’ contexts (Bakhtin, 1981). Another interesting case of a teachers’ transformative learning in our course is illustrated by Rose, a Canadian with East Indian heritage and a math teacher at a local community college. She had already taken online courses taught in Pepper and showed a relatively positive attitude towards educational technologies. She also tended to represent herself as someone who knows, who has had more experiences than her peers, and who is willing to share her expertise. As she states in her biography: I’m pretty comfortable with online learning. If you’re nervous about taking an online course, don’t worry! I can say from experience that you get the hang of it really quickly… I am also fortunate enough to use technology in some of my classes, which I will talk more about below.

During first 3 or 4 weeks in most of her discussion entries, she shared her successful experiences of using online technologies in her math courses and encouraged other teachers to use the technologies. Her arguments were very much in line with dominant educational discourses about the effectiveness and the necessity of integrating technologies in current classrooms (e.g., 21st century learning skills): September 10: It’s always tough to change the way you’ve become accustom to teaching… [However] the software we use allows communicating with students, receiving immediate feedback… lets students submit their work to me online … definitely adds another dimension to the class atmosphere. September 11: [I]f we want to prepare our students for the real world, we must give them the skills that will be required, and this includes the use of technology and the social web. I have had adult students come into my class afraid to touch the computer, but by the end they are very comfortable using the internet. That skill is… more valuable than all the math I teach them.

However, during a fundamental discussion about the social constructivist pedagogical approach to using CMC technologies, she faced a disorienting dilemma between her enthusiasm for the social aspects of technologies and her pedagogical belief about the nature of effective math teaching. She then examined various difficulties she would face if she used student-centered or collaborative learning approaches: October 27: I have been struggling with the question of whether social interaction is a prerequisite for learning. When I think about all this in the context of math education (which I always do!), I realize that … deep learning, can happen by interacting with textbooks … November 2: [M]ath is a subject that builds on itself and reading about a concept from the most complicated perspective is not usually helpful … As a math teacher I struggle a lot with

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Lee, K., & Brett, C. (2015). Dialogic understanding of teachers' online transformative learning: A qualitative case study of teacher discussions in a graduate-level online course. Teaching and Teacher Education, 46, 72-83. the idea of letting students chose what they want to learn based solely on what interests them … November 15: Math classes in post-secondary education tend to be mostly lecture based, with professors explaining concepts and doing example questions… with such a large class, these activities often end up being done individually, with students working on their own…

As the excerpts from her discussion entries above demonstrate, she kept questioning the effectiveness of a social constructivist learning approach to using technologies in her own teaching context. The idea of integrating CMC technologies for increasing students’ collaboration was one of the main ideas of the course that most teachers (including the instructor) agreed with, and thus it was an authoritative discourse in the course. However, through critical reflection on the authoritative course discourse, she engaged in her own internally persuasive discourse about the effective use of CMC technologies in math courses. She also problematized her initial enthusiastic insistence on integrating online technologies in all classrooms and realized that some of her beliefs were rather technologicallydeterministic or technologically-imperative. That is, a number of teachers in our course like Rose engaged in intense interactions (or struggles) with various internally persuasive discourses in discussions including their own discourses, through which they were able to transform their perspectives or experience ideological development (Bakhtin, 1981). 5. Discussion We want to use this discussion section to share our own transformative learning experiences through our iterative design-and-teaching attempts and through our in-depth reflection on these learning experiences using Bakhtin’s dialogism. We believe our sharing can deepen teacher educators’ understanding of the nature of teacher-to-teacher discussions for teachers’ learning and so contribute to current TPD practices in this field of teacher education. 5.1. Developing a supportive course CoP First of all, one of our major instructional foci has been to build mutual trust and membership among teachers so to facilitate their discussions in our course viewed as a CoP. The importance of such efforts to develop supportive TPD communities both in face-to-face and online environments has been acknowledged by many researchers in the teacher education context (e.g., Borko, 2004; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2001; Dudley, 2013; Huffman, 2011; Liu, 2012; Lock, 2006; Reitzug, 2002). Most of these efforts have theoretically rooted in a social learning paradigm and practically based on facilitating teachers’ shared practices in their communities such as action research, collaborative problem-solving, and lesson 20


study projects. Huffman (2011), for example, stresses the importance of developing a shared goal of improving students’ learning in teachers’ learning communities and creating conditions for teacher collaboration. Dudley (2013) similarly argues that such a shared goal in those learning communities could enable teachers to overcome their self-conscious ego and participate in such communities in an equal position as a co-learner. Although our pedagogical approach has been in line with these arguments, we also recognized the undeniable hierarchical relationships among different individuals in a graduate-level course (e.g. instructor, PhD students, master students, experienced teachers, or novice teachers). Therefore, we have explicitly addressed underlying issues of power in this course rather than taking a neutral (or naive) position about the course structure, which stressed equality among participants. Our deliberate disclosure of unequal power differences between individuals (based on their levels of experiences, skills, and academic positions) and continuing efforts to acknowledge the value of all levels of contributions seemed to facilitate teachers’ collective attempt to create a safer dialogic space in the course. As a result, most teachers reported their positive perspective transformations about collaborative learning through their own learning experiences in the course CoP. For example, Alivia reflects: September 30: …When there is a large discrepancy of opinions of many people, or where groups of people take polarized sides and decisions are either not made, or are made without majority of consensus… Also, the increased time it takes to organize meetings is often a problem given the busy schedule most individuals have these days. November 28: Having taken this course, and collaborated with my small group for our case study… There were no discrepancies, polarized discussions, or difficult individuals. I was very pleasantly surprised at how easy our group got along and completed the assignment despite 2 members being on the other side of the world!

5.2. Challenging an authoritative discourse in the field of teacher education Second, through our dialogue with inservice teachers in our course CoP, we came to question the imperative tone of educational discourse in the literature, which expects that teachers should adopt new technologies in their teaching to be more effective. Although the original aim of our course design was to improve teachers’ educational implementation of CMC using a social constructivist approach, by having them experience socially-constructivist learning, we realized individual teachers have diverse professional needs and teaching conditions in today’s globalized and multicultural educational context (Townsend & Bates, 2007). Teachers brought an increasing level of diversity to the course not only related to their teaching environments but also derived from their personal backgrounds. Such diversity suggested that standardized TPD practices based on a one-size-fits-all approach may be less effective. Instead, we came 21


to reconsider some of our own unexamined educational understandings as themselves representing problematic authoritative discourses (e.g., a progressive view of educational technologies and constructivist learning theories). We became more critically aware of the limitations of a solely top-down TPD approach where teacher educators are the expert voices on teaching and learning. This transformation has enabled us to be much more receptive to teachers’ diverse voices, as they raised issues that often conflicted with our own voices and we too, have become more dialogic readers who better understand the diversity of teachers’ voices. Conclusion and implications for an international teacher education context In this paper, using the textual examples of teacher-to-teacher discussions in an online course, we demonstrated that teachers can experience perspective transformation through participating in open-ended dialogues. Teachers’ dialogic transformative learning process was theorized using Bakhtin’s three principles of open-ended dialogues (1981), which further informed our analysis of the characteristics of teacher-to-teacher discussions that facilitate open-ended dialogues: Discussion topics that enable teachers to share different (often opposite) opinions from others’ tend to foster heteroglossic dialogues. Also, teachers’ perspective changes are more evident across time in the discussion threads, in which teachers actively interact with various internally persuasive discourses or challenge authoritative discourses (e.g., teacher educators’ instructional goals or other dominant educational discourses). These findings also suggest the importance of developing a supportive course CoP where all teachers feel safe to reveal their genuine identities and thoughts regardless of their levels or positions in relation to the hierarchical relationships within Faculties of Education. To be really effective, it requires all course participants to put collective efforts toward building the course CoP and support each other’s dialogue or ideological becoming through the course discussions. These instructional suggestions for online TPD courses may also be effectively implemented in diverse teacher education settings not only in North America but internationally in the following two ways. First, there has been world-wide attention both to the effective educational use of technologies and TPD practices to facilitate this pedagogical process. In recent years, for example, an increasing number of studies on teachers’ TPCK learning have been conducted in different countries: Brazil (Rolando, Salvador, & Luz, 2013), Brunei (Moroney & Haigh, 2011), Cambodia (Chea & Vibulphol, 2014), China (Xiang & Ning, 2014), Ethiopia (Engida, 2014), Saudi Arabia (Alsofyani, bin Aris, & Eynon, 2013), Singapore (Koh & Chai, 2014), and Turkey (Cengiz, 2014) to mention only a few. The aim of this paper is not to assume we can provide a one-size-fits-all solution or standardized method for TPD but to open up 22


dialogic possibilities for an international community of teacher educators whose practices are situated in various educational and cultural contexts. Second, at a more practical level, emerging CMC technologies offer great potential for developing international teacher TPD communities. We have observed the growth of international teacher communities both within and outside Faculties of Education (e.g., online teacher communities in social networking sites). There is a growing group of international teachers as well as domestic teachers who leave their home countries to teach in international settings registered in online teacher education programs at Faculties of Education. Among 15 teachers in the 2012 class, for example, 4 teachers (1 was an international student and 3 were Canadians) were teaching abroad and each participated in the online course discussions from that international location: Japan, Taiwan, UK, and USA. They brought diverse voices from their own teaching contexts into the course, which added important information and perspective to the open-ended dialogues in the course. Due to the current global mobilization, as cases discussed in this paper demonstrate, not only international teachers but also most Canadian teachers in the class had multi-cultural and multi-linguistic backgrounds (e.g., Chinese, Egyptian, Taiwanese, Indian, Iranian, and European heritages). In this context, where the line between international and domestic teachers has been blurred, what may be arguably the most urgent task of teacher educators is to develop supportive online teacher communities through facilitating inclusive and culturally relevant teacher-toteacher discussions. Thus, we see the findings of this qualitative case study as particularly relevant to the international teacher education context. Our findings further suggest a need for more nuanced understanding of the nature of online teacher-to-teacher discussions to inform the integration of two major TPD approaches - CoP and online courses - with one other. To develop a more sophisticated understanding of teacher-to-teacher discussion, we need to put a stronger emphasis on understanding individual teachers’ internal dialogues as they engage with the dialogic reading of others’ texts in the course. This learning process may be often overlooked in regular analyses of online discussions due to its relative invisibility (Author 2 et al., 2013; Author 2 et al., 2014). In addition, to improve our contextual knowledge of this particular TPD approach – an online course viewed as double-layered CoP – our next cycle of this research project will focus on the unique characteristics of online teacher-to-teacher discussions to examine in what ways they may be different from face-to-face ones. For this purpose, we are planning to conduct an in-depth analysis of teacher discussions in their external CoPs, which are mostly located in their face-to-face TPD or realworld teaching contexts.

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Appendix A Example of Authentic Dialogue and Perspective Transformation # 1

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Excerpt from Teachers’ Entries Maggie: There is also an increasing digital divide between students and teachers … Although some teachers have done what they can to bring schools into the 21st century, I personally believe an overwhelming number have done nothing. This could be due to the lack of resources which many schools face… Tools change as the society and our world change… We must change the tools we are using to help our students advance into the 21st century with the skills that are needed for this time… Holly: I agree with Maggie in that some of the gap is caused by teachers not adding new teaching strategies into the classroom that involve technology; and some of the gap is financial … There may be a third reason for the “gap” – that it takes time to change … Jenny: Maggie, I too believe that many teachers have not done enough to bring schools in the 21st century but should the onus be solely on them? Teachers often have a full plate and without top-down support… experimenting with new technologies and concepts for the classroom would draw on their free time. Who should be responsible for mining for the gems? Maggie: I believe that change needs to come from above or top-down. Unfortunately, teachers can only do so much without the proper training and support from the school boards that they work for. If school boards are willing to provide funding for resources and professional development, teachers will be able to help close gaps within their classrooms… Also, as Holly mentioned, in order to close gaps and make changes, it takes time. Sometimes, a great deal of time. Rose: Widespread top-down initiatives are expensive and new ideas don’t always work. Our current methods of teaching, while not progressive, are also not awful. When we choose to implement a new teaching strategy, especially an expensive one, we need to make sure it is an improvement on the old. I would rather take time implementing a good idea than rush to implement a bad one. Holly: Only Fools Rush In.... You [Rose] have brought up a very important point to consider – these new 27


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technologies are expensive to implement and maintain; and they can become antiquated in about 6 months and require constant up-grading. Maggie: Rose… I agree with you that educators should not rush into using a specific technology in the classroom especially if they are unaware on how to use it effectively. However, I also think it is important that educators realize that although research may claim that a particular technology was effective/ineffective for one group does not necessarily mean that it will be the same way for your particular group of students… Sometimes, rather than relying on research, we need to try out certain technologies and implement them within the classroom to see how they will work for our specific group of students. Fiona: Handicapped teachers? I agree that there are some teachers who do not seem to understand the importance of Web 2.0 … However I think this is due a lack of professional development - and knowledge … many teachers are unsure how this can be successfully integrated within the classroom … As an educator who is a big fan of Web 2.0 and has some sort of understanding of its uses, importance and advantages I often find myself dealing with these questions. I think schools, boards and local authorities need to make a drive and push to educate our educators first before we can see real changes within classroom environments. Rachel: … In Williams (2008) article, I did notice that some of the “blame” appears to be offloaded to teachers (e.g., interactive whiteboards are too often employed as high-tech versions of chalk and talk)… I do agree, that these discussions need to take a broader view than the idea that teachers need more ICT training towards discussions of enabling “cultural change in the profession” … So although others have argued in favor of a top down approach, I would offer that if change is to be far-reaching, it needs to come from within. Yasmin: Rachel … I think that teachers are more inclined to use interactive whiteboards as chalk and talk and they should not be blamed for that since teacher-centered approach is how most teachers have been taught and probably taught to teach ... May be you chose to enroll in a graduate program to take the time to reflect on your practices as a teacher and what you wanted to change or see changed in schools. However, a lot of teachers are immersed in their everyday routine with the stress of student assessment and test scores. I think if teachers do not have the support needed to ease in the use of technology in the classroom and the required PD to help them see the benefit(s) ... technology will continue to be viewed as a burden that is ever-changing and it is just elusive to try and keep up. Rachel: Yasmin … I believe that teachers should not be blamed when technology innovations are not as transformative as reformers hope!!! The SMART Board is one example of a technology whose presence in classrooms is the result of top-down initiatives. Williams (2008) references a large scale study that found there was no evidence of learning gains when interactive whiteboards were introduced into classrooms “largely, it seems because of the ways in which teachers were using the boards” (p. 220). Williams makes no mention of lack of PD training. He does not present innovative use case scenarios that could guide the use of interactive whiteboards. He just says that teachers used them ineffectively (which I found rather off-putting). Yasmin: … this is the ordeal I am feeling right now, is that teachers will continue to be blamed since the administration are bringing in those new technologies (turning a blind eye on the lack of PD training and collaboration), yet teachers are not using them properly. Maria: [Maggie] To answer the question of what have teachers done to bring schools into the 21st century, I think we shouldn’t even use the word teachers but rather the school boards … teachers cannot do anything by themselves. If teachers had choices such as these, I think there would be a profound difference. However, like everyone else, teachers follow guidelines of practice and those guidelines are what we can assess our teachings on… Boards are providing the tools and ideas but leaving it to the teachers to use it, without providing much knowledge and resources for it… I think we are just waiting for the curriculum, to change the content of what needs to be taught and make it more contemporary to fit students’ interests… I think it is a slow process to get to where we want, and perhaps I feel this way because I am speaking from an elementary school level perspective… I wonder will these obstacles ever end and will the gap ever disappear? Jenny: Teachers as leaders. Maria… On the point about waiting for the curriculum to change and reflect 28


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contemporary interests, may I ask if as a teacher have you thought about moving to the policy side of things? Or how would you like to see teachers consulted? Also, I see your point about why it is difficult for teachers to cater to a wide variety of interests outside of the curriculum. Maria: Jenny, to answer your questions, I haven’t thought about moving to the policy side. I am a new teacher and perhaps my lack of teaching experience also plays a role in my perspectives… Karol: … teachers need to aggressively adopt the new technologies that the students of today are intensely familiar with. Today’s students have not known a life without electronics and social media in same way shape or form. It is the responsibility of educators to participate and embrace this new-age and involve students, parents and other educators, to take active participatory roles in radical change, or run the risk of being left behind. Maggie: You argued that it is an educators’ responsibility … My question is twofold: 1) Whose responsibility is it to make changes in the school system? Is this radical change up to the educators…? Or is it the responsibility of higher institutions such as the school boards/government…? 2) Should there be a radical change that restructures the entire school system so that technology is more common within classrooms? Or should this change be a slow and incremental process? Alivia: Maggie, fantastic questions. I stared at my keyboard for a while... they are difficult to answer. Ideally, change would come from the top, but considering what a state our economic situation is, there is most likely little money available to radically change and upgrade technology in schools … I can only speak from my own experiences with the TDSB, but this seems to have been the way it has worked for me. Each year, our school would add a few more computers to the lab or a few smartboards to some rooms. What happens when the change is incremental is that some rooms have technology and others do not. What does the lack of technology in some spaces say to students about the subject matter, the teacher, acceptance or resistance to technology and so on? Does it appear that some classes are on board with technology and others are not? How do we decide who gets what technology? It's unjust, but it comes down to funding and making choices …

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