Higher education plays a key role for the development of professional identities (Trede, Macklin, & Bridges, 2012). This also applies to the development of teacher identities in the present and digital world. The relevance of digital forms of communication and cooperation for teaching and learning has recently been highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The necessity of preparing teachers for education in a digital world leads to the question of how fruitful experiences with digital media can be brought about in teacher education programmes. Aiming at those experiences, this international study focuses on asynchronous digital communication with weblogs and explores the relation between agency learning and experiencing online communities of inquiry in teacher education programmes. The study draws on a quantitative methodology in three teacher education programmes in Germany, Israel and Spain including teacher education for primary and secondary education as well as general and vocational education.

Weblogs offer interesting kinds of digital expressions and participation for education in a digital world. In relation with restrictions to prevent the dispersion of COVID-19, synchronous digital communication using video conferencing systems are widely used by teachers to interact with learners. But besides synchronous communication, research in blended learning highlights the importance of asynchronous digital communication for learners’ reflection and sustainable communities (Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes, & Garrison, 2013). Encouraging open dialogues and participation with weblogs among pre-service teachers offer potentials and opportunities for reflection and critical engagement in an online community (Eutsler & Curcio, 2019).

Social presence in computer-mediated communication has emerged as an influential concept to approach experiences of online communities. This has recently been underlined by studies of online communication during the COVID-19 pandemic (Nguyen et al., 2020). The Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework draws on social presence and combines the experience of the salience of other persons in online environments with the experience of a teaching presence as well as a cognitive learning presence. This combination shapes dimensions of online learning communities in blended learning environments (Vaughan et al., 2013).

The concept of agency learning refers to the development of a personal capacity to act autonomously as well as to exploration of the social constitution, relational nature and institutional embeddedness of professional agency (Biesta & Tedder, 2007; Edwards & Carmen, 2004; Engeström, 2005). For teachers, agency consists of interaction in complex situations like collective discussions aiming at the participation of learners (Lipponen & Kumpulainen, 2011). Digital environments like PLE (Personal Learning Environment) have been analyzed as pedagogic experiences allowing students developing abilities to enact agency (Castañeda & Tur, 2020).

In order to investigate the learning experience of weblogs in teacher education, the present study focuses on the following research questions:

1. To what extend do different learning designs with weblogs in higher teacher education affect the experience of agency and online community?
2. Are there structural relations between the concepts of agency and online community that become apparent in applying weblogs?

To explore those aspects of agency learning and online learning communities with weblogs, the study investigates three courses with different learning designs in higher teacher education. The fundamental learning activity in all investigated learning designs is to write weblog entries. The designs vary in the social structure of writing and posting those blogs (individual or in group) but require to write 3 to 6 weblog entries during the course. All learning designs combine the weblog activity with peer comment activities. While all involved higher education institutions offer a learning management system (LMS) with a weblog feature, the study varies the use of a separate weblog platform to address different kinds of open communications.

To unveil relations between agency learning and learning communities in higher teacher education with weblogs, the study follows a quantitative research design. It draws on three blended learning courses in higher teacher education in Germany (n=56), Spain (n=21) and Israel (n=37) with different learning designs, held between September 2021 and January 2022. The learning designs span kinds of open communication with weblogs as well as peer activities and used platforms. In applying validated instruments for agency of university students (Jääskelä, Poikkeus, Vasalampi, Valleala, & Rasku-Puttonen, 2017, AUS) and online community of inquiry (Caskurlu, 2018; Kozan & Richardson, 2014, COI), the study explores characteristics of the learning designs in the context of agency and online communities. Further, correlations between aspects of online community learning and agency are calculated to unveil structural relations between these constructs. All calculations have been performed using R. To summarizns of the applied instruments, the results show that the experience of social presence within the different learning designs is comparable high and similar (Germany m=3.94, sd=0.53; Spain m=4.10, sd=0.50; Israel m=3.86, sd=0.39), which also holds for agency dimensions like opportunities to make choice, participatory activities, self-efficacy and competence beliefs. More differences can be observed in interest and motivation (Germany m=3.43, sd=0.59; Spain m=2.63, sd=0.54; Israel m=2.21, sd=0.52) as well as opportunities to influence the course. Further, also the amount of experienced teaching presence and cognitive presence varies between the courses, but clearly stays at a positive level. These characteristics are underlined by an analysis of variance (ANOVA) unveiling equal means in the groups for the dimension of social presence, whereas teaching presence and cognitive presence differs among the groups. Focussing on structural relations between agency learning and learning communities, the data show slight but significant (p<0.05) correlations between social presence as a subscale of COI and trust (r= 0.36), participatory activity (r= 0.33), equal treatment (r= 0.3), peer support (r= 0.31), self-efficacy (r= 0.23), and opportunities to make a choice (r= 0.24) as subscales of AUS. The correlations between agency and community become stronger if the social presence scale is focused on items of open communication.

This study underlines that weblogs in higher teacher education hold the potential to frame fruitful online experiences with asynchronous communication. They enrich online learning environments in blended learning courses with opportunities to participate, to make choices as well as to experience self-efficacy and competence beliefs. At the same time, they contribute to an impression of social presence in online learning communities. This result holds for a large spectrum of weblog usage with peer commenting activity in blended learning courses, ranging from group-based to individual weblog usage. It also holds independent from the actual weblog platform that is used and for different kinds of openness and accessibility of the weblog platform. Nonetheless, leaving the weblog feature of the institutional LMS and turning towards a generic weblog platform on the internet goes along with higher degrees of experienced motivation in the observed cases. Beside those general characteristics of using weblogs in teacher education, a more relational exploration of the investigated cases show a certain structural connectedness of the experience of social presence and open communication in the courses with the experience of participation, equality, trust, support and self-efficacy. This structure frames the abilities of weblogs to support online learning communities drawing on openness and social support. But this approach to the potential of online learning communities with weblogs is limited by comparable weak relations among the different observed cases and learning designs, indicating that other influences and variables are of importance, like cultural differences, expectations from the course etc.

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