Conclusion:
According to its abstract this presentation promised to suggest "optimal use of available synchronous and asynchronous web-based tools to promote learner-centered, constructivist, and socioculturally oriented collaborative online learning environments."
If teachers pursue professional development in the context of communities of practice then in addition to training received they will work within models of constructivist learning environments, where scaffolding occurs among those in a shared zone of proximal development. Then, and perhaps only then, will they truly have absorbed these principles to the point of applying them in their classrooms and, as importantly, in the workplace.
I like to avoid absolutes, which is why I said above, "perhaps only then." I note however, that the word 'only' is used in much the same way in Mark Schlager and Judith Fusco's Teacher Professional Development, Technology, and Communities of Practice: Are We Putting the Cart before the Horse? (SRI International, 2002) http://ti2.sri.com/tappedin/web/papers/2003/TPDBarab.pdf. I am prohibited from citing this version here (their 9th prior to publication) but the word appears in the first paragraph and the gyst is that practitioners become competent only by engaging in the work of the practice from within the practice itself. And in this contention they in turn cite Brown, J. and Duguid, P. (2000). The Social Life of Information. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Thank you!
(C)opyright 2003
by
Vance Stevens, click here for
contact info
Computing Lecturer, Petroleum
Institute, Abu Dhabi, UAE
From a
presentation given Thursday,
May 8, 2003 at the
MLI Teacher to
Teacher Conference, Abu Dhabi, UAE
This site features in an
article in the On the Internet
column of the Dec 2003 issue of the Online TESL-EJ
Last updated May 6, 2004