| With the turn to the 21st century, online schools have received a great deal of attention in that they provide students with another type of learning beyond traditional brick and mortar classrooms. Even though brick and mortar schools are still the major school system in the U.S., the number of students who enroll online schools has been growing remarkably during the past decade. Given that cyberspace is a cultural space, online schools can build online learning communities and provide students and teachers with social interactions. In this light, situated learning is an appropriate lens for investigating learning in cyberspace.; Based on interpretive paradigm, this study was designed to explore how online school students become part of an online learning community through legitimate peripheral participation in the community of practice. A qualitative research in cyberspace was conducted in an online school over four and half months. My participants were sixteen 8th grade students and four 8th grade teachers. Participant observation, interviews, and document analysis were conducted for data collection. Using an inductive analytical approach, qualitative data analysis software, NUD*IST Version 6, was employed for data analysis.; The primary finding of this study is that the online school had a very weak online learning community where participants rarely had social interactions with other students. This meaningful finding seemed to be related with many other important findings about the school system and its purpose and students' expectations to the school. The finding not only has several pedagogical implications but also raises a question of what schools' role should be. Some other important findings of the study include: (a) factors that influenced my participants' transfer into the online school, (b) not making students be engaged in situated practice in online textbooks, (c) participants or their parents' active choice of online schools, (d) participants' fluid personality and consistent representation of their appearance between cyberspace and real life, and (e) positive influences of invisibility on teaching and learning in cyberspace. The findings of the study offer a few recommendations to improve online learning environments and future research for further understanding of online school students' learning. |
