A Case Study Of EFL Teachers' Online Collaboration Based On Community Of Practice

With the rapid progress of computer-mediated-communication technology, more and more English teachers are making attempts to develop their teaching and academic abilities through online collaboration, which attracts increasing studies in the area of online teacher professional development. Compared with the plentiful resources and research achievements abroad, domestic Web sites for English as a foreign language teachers are limited, and research methods in this area are relatively single, which mainly rely on theories. Therefore, the present study adopts both qualitative and quantitative methodology, giving analysis to the contents and patterns of English teachers' online collaboration as well as their attitudes toward it, which aims at providing a reference and enlightment in this area.The present study consists of six chapters. Chapter One mainly introduces the research background, and Chapter Two literature review. Chapter Three is the theoretical framework, including the Constructivism Theory based on the concept of community of practice and the Adult Learning Theory. Chapter Four describes research design with three research questions, that is, what are English teachers' collaborative contents and patterns, and what are their attitudes toward online collaboration. English teachers collaborate in Forum of Oxford English Teaching and Research are selected as the case community of practice. The researcher adopts Framework of a Community of Inquiry developed by Garrison et al. (2001) to analyse English teachers' collaborative contents, using softwares of social network analysis, Ucinet 6.0 and Netminer 2.6, to analyse their collaborative patterns, and surveys their attitudes based on The Adult Learning Theory, employing questionnaire and interview protocols of Arnold et al. (2006) and Hays et al. (2009). Research procedure covers four steps of posting collection and selection, data transcription and analysis. In Chapter Five, the researcher detailedly discusses teachers' collaborative contents and patterns with the Constructivism Theory, and their attitudes with the Adult Learning Theory. At last, Chapter Six concludes the findings, illuminations and limitations of the present study.Results of the present study find that teachers' online collaboration is virtually an interpersonal learning process. Specifically speaking,⑴collaborative contents: both social and cognitive presence exist, while the former occurred more frequent than the latter. Each type of collaborative contents of special functions could be best embodied in different collaboration stages, which is influenced by the teaching schedule to some extent;⑵collaborative pattens: the manifestations of SNA proves the existence of teachers' social network in the community of practice, however, most teachers were guided by the minority, who had more mastery over information. Teachers had apparent tendency toward collaborative topics as well as collaborators. Only several hot topics could stimulate teachers' great interests, and most teachers were on the edge of collaboration scope;⑶teachers' attitudes: teachers held optimistic attitudes toward online collaboration as a whole, and they put more emphasis on making connections with professionals rather than pursuing a perfect result; most teachers asked for a combination of virtual and textual collaboration, especially in later stage. Teachers' individual characteristics of being adult learners make their persistent collaboration online possible.All in all, the findings mentioned above can enlighten the future designers of online collaboration as to pay more attention to the arrangement among participants, applying more Internet technologies into collaboration to strengthen social contacts, combining asynchronous communication with synchronous one if necessary, and lay emphasis on the roles played by "instructors" and "leaders". The present research is limited to teachers' collaborative activity in asynchronous context, more relevant online activities, such as teachers' reflection and instruction in synchronous environment are worth studying in the future.