The challenges and potential value of partnership and collaborative approaches to knowledge generation in so-called learning communities and other applied educational contexts are well recognised (e.g. James and Worrall, 2000; Bolam, et al., 2004). Cassidy et al. (2007) have proposed the concept ‘community of enquiry’ as a model of collaborative engagement in educational research potentially involving all stakeholders. The use of Virtual spaces to support such activity is also well documented (Hakkarainen, et al., 2004; WiIson, et al., 2007). This paper is based on a small research development study that aims to answer questions on: • How do teachers engage in virtual collaboration? • What factors impacted on their engagement and how? The paper will discuss the web of issues relating to the barriers of teacher engagement in virtual collaboration and suggests a number of considerations when setting up further initiatives in similar contexts. In the autumn of 2006 a virtual collaboration space was set up for teachers in one local authority in Scotland to enable the school-based policy coordinators to share and develop examples of ‘good practice’ evidenced in their schools among the wider teacher community. This was initiated by the local authority representatives responsible for implementing the nationwide policy in all schools in the area by end of 2007. The idea of the virtual collaboration space for teachers was met up with a show of initial enthusiasm with ca 90 schools responding positively to the email inviting expressions of interest in this opportunity for cross-school communication and knowledge sharing. The space, secure and private with login access and equipped with various communications and knowledge sharing tools (Rimpilainen et al 2006), was set up and populated by the research team at the University of Strathclyde, with running and maintenance of the forum left to the local authority representatives. In order to sustain a degree of anonymity among teachers providing examples of their practice, and to monitor the quality of the input, only the designated policy coordinators from each school were invited to join the forum. The idea was that the coordinators would go round their schools gathering examples of ‘good practice’, sharing these with others on the forum. A few members of the Higher Education staff with specific interest in the policy initiative in question were also invited to join the forum to support and contribute to the dialogue. Once the forum was launched the level of activity fell significantly short of the organizers’ expectations. Initial activity was limited to a small number of contributions made by 11 participants. To improve the situation, the council allocated funding for five teacher volunteers to facilitate the key discussion areas in the virtual space. However, this did not markedly improve the participation. Using data from the virtual forum and by interviewing a number of participants from all sectors involved in the initiative, a picture started to emerge as to why this enthusiastically received idea did not meet its potential. The issues included ‘technical difficulties’ and ‘lack of time’, the type and number of participants; preference for face-to-face working and lack of experience in virtual working; issues with facilitation; no recognition of potential of virtual working in teachers’ time-tables among other things to be discussed in the paper.

Phase 1: designing, setting up and populating the virtual forum with invited volunteers; designing a framework for monitoring the activity on the site. Data consisted of the statistical user logs on the site and the actual contributions to the site. Phase 2: a number of semi-structured key informant interviews with participants from each sector involved in the initiative: the local authority policy makers; a number of ordinary forum participants from schools; a number of coordinators paid for leading the discussion; a number of the Higher Education staff volunteered on the forum; members of the research team involved.

Emerging conclusions from the study suggest that in order for teachers to engage in virtual collaboration, it has to have direct relevance to their day-to-day practice, be technologically simple and easily accessible, and that they should have a recognised time allocation for engaging in innovative ways of working during their working week.