The Motivation Of Education Professionals To Participate In Online Professional Learning Communities

Author(s):

Pascale Mompoint-Gaillard(presenting / submitting)Jón Torfi Jónasson Guðrún Ragnarsdóttir

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

10. Teacher Education Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

10 SES 11 A, Teachers as Agents of Change and Mentors

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-24

17:15-18:45

Room:

K5.18

Chair:

Jean Murray

Contribution

The aim of this paper is to investigate the characteristics of the participation of education professionals (teachers, teacher educators, school heads…) from 50 European countries in a fast developing online platform and community of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1998) seen as a practice-based organisation of learning (Barab et al., 2004) developed under the umbrella of Council of Europe Pestalozzi programme for teacher development.

The programme is based on the intention to empower education professionals to contribute to constructing a more humane, inclusive Europe, i.e., to develop democratic participation, respect for diversity and enhanced social cohesion (CoE, 2016), through their practice. Participants meet once - sometimes twice - in face-to-face workshop(s). They then continue the work online during the period of their training and beyond if they chose to integrate long-term participation in the community. It seems that such online arrangements of the genre being developed by the Pestalozzi Programme is a most sustainable mode of operation for developing the content and skills in question. This is especially interesting in the current education context in which teacher education suffers from cuts in resources (Zeichner, 2006) and in which demands on teacher competence are increasing (Ragnarsdóttir & Jóhannesson, 2014; Reynisdóttir & Jóhannesson, 2013). It is therefore of paramount theoretical and practical interest to understand the way it operates and may succeed.

The paper presents a case study of education professionals who are members within the online professional community engaged through conversation (Pask, 1976; Laurillard, 2002), and loose informal activities, with peers and moderators. Participating members share, through the daily workings on the platform, stories of what happens in the seminars, courses they attend or organise, or in the classroom they teach.

The approach is one of blended-learning (BL) (Bonk & Graham, 2006), whichrecognises the need to develop and foster collaborative professional development (Fullan and Hargreaves, 2016) in a distributed environment and international context(Hildreth et al., 2000). A particular focus will be on situations when members try out new methods in their teaching by ”transforming the training into informed and competent actions through their practice” (Mompoint-Gaillard & Rajić, 2014).

Though the case study of one discussion thread (DT) occurring on the Pestalozzi Community of Practice, we examine what are the conditions that foster the most volitional and high quality forms of motivation in members and how members’ participation relates to this. Thus the study will examine different the types of interactions, and patterns of participation occurring amongst members, and moderators in one particular discussion thread. Because moderators play a very important role in establishing helping members to manage both the navigation of the technical environment and reach and understanding of the content and activities of the platform, the analysis in this paper will involve researching some principles and strategies for maintaining activity and encouraging members to participate online.

The theoretical underpinning in our analysis is Deci & Ryan’s Self-determination theory (SDT) (2000; 1985) maintaining that: “an understanding of human motivation requires a consideration of innate psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness”.

The research questions focus on members’ activity on the platform and on discernable factors that shape, or not, its characteristics and sustainability. What can we say about the features of member's activity on the platform? What may determine the extent to which members remain active on the platform after their initial involvement in face-to-face training? Can some of the findings be related to how members evaluate the usefulness of the activity and also perhaps on emotional and personal benefits they acquire through participation that pushes them to stay active and possibly grow their collective “knowledge-in-use” (Mompoint-Gaillard & Rajic, 2014).

Method

The online platform has 2000 members, 10% of which have been exchanging and conversing regularly for now over 6 years. This represents a volume of very valuable data. In this paper, we focus on online conversations between the community members in two of 54 DTs occurring in the “Professional Development’ area of the platform. The first selected DT consists of 207 interactions of 24 members. The DT got, however, 2956 views indicating many ‘lurkers’ (members who go online, look around and read posts and resources but do not contribute to the discussions) visiting and/or following the DT. The duration of interaction in the DT went from August 2013 to October 2015, with 95% of the activity occurring in the first 2 months, period in which the moderator was active. The second DT consists of 102 interactions of 22 members. The DT got 1535 views, thus also indicating many ‘lurkers’ visiting and/or following the DT. The interaction in the DT started in November 2014 and is on-going and. The last comment was posted in July 2016. The Pestalozzi Programme’s platform offers several spaces of work, called ‘rooms’: there are invitational spaces for participants of specific workshops or projects, and other spaces, open to all members, such as the ‘Coffee Shop’, where informal communication takes place, and ‘Professional Development’ in which more practice oriented discussions take place. The DTs were selected after purpose sampling on the basis of the number of interactions (posts), the depth of conversation, and the relevance to the pedagogical approach promoted in the community. We use thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006) to understand the phenomenology of interaction between participants. We use the method to analyse the online conversation between the community members in the selected DTs. We also reflect on the data with both theoretical and epistemological underpinning, guided substantially by Deci & Ryan’s “Self determination theory” (2000), as noted above. We analyse the content from two perspectives: A. The themes that emerge in the discussions and which will be classified along several dimensions, such as the number and frequency of posts, length of posts, complexity and depth of posts. B. The nature, effect and origin of feedback, as well as the content and frequency and the nature of the moderator input.

Expected Outcomes

With a ‘focus at the psychological level within the organismic-dialectical meta-theory’ (Deci & Ryan, 2000, p.230) of SDT, the preliminary findings demonstrate that the platform provides ‘supportive circumstances’ for members, seen as ‘active growth-oriented organisms’ inclined to ‘engage in interesting activities, to exercise capacities, to pursue connectedness in social groups’ (Deci & Ryan, 2000, p.229). The environment of the platform affords conditions that sustain ‘nutriments of need satisfaction’ at the levels of autonomy, competence and relatedness creating opportunities for members to experience enjoyment and satisfaction towards a unified sense of self-integration in a wider social structure’ (Deci & Ryan, 2000, p.230) The first need. Autonomy is nurtured through the low pressure, low coercion and control environment (lack of deadlines, lack of evaluation; principles of choice, freedom and coherence). The second need. Competence is cultivated through recognition of members’ ability to perform, their effectiveness and agency (positive critical feedback, tasks providing novelty and ‘optimal challenge’, acknowledgement of members efforts, constant and consistent presence of moderators). The third need. Relatedness is fostered through inclusive discourse in ‘a context characterized by a sense of secure interaction’ (acknowledgement of members attempts to interact, equal access, warm and friendly stances, caring atmosphere). Motivation of a wider group to participate is questioned: ‘cliquishness’ and its consequences on further member involvement seem to appear in the results, and need further research. In summary, all three needs here satisfied, provide ‘a backdrop for intrinsic motivation’ and contribute to members’ volition to participate. The paper provides a basis for further research into the guiding principles and strategies, in terms of technical design and moderation of discussions, for maintaining activity and encouraging members to participate online.

References

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Author Information

Pascale Mompoint-Gaillard (presenting / submitting)

University of Iceland/Council of Europe

Bischheim

Jón Torfi Jónasson

School of Education, University of Iceland

Guðrún Ragnarsdóttir