The general purpose of this study is to examine the attitudes of teachers working in eTwinning schools towards professional cooperation and their perceptions of the contributions of EU projects to schools on various variables and to determine the relationships between them.
Research questions:
1-A) What are the attitudes of teachers working in eTwinning schools towards professional cooperation among teachers?
1-B) Do the attitudes of teachers working in eTwinning schools towards professional cooperation differ significantly according to the variables of gender, age, school type, education level, and number of eTwinning projects involved?
2-A) What are the teachers' perceptions working in eTwinning schools regarding the contributions of EU Projects to schools?
2-B) Do the perceptions of teachers working in eTwinning schools regarding the contributions of EU Projects to schools differ significantly according to gender, age, school type, education level, and number of eTwinning projects involved?
3-Is there a significant relationship between the perceptions of teachers working in eTwinning schools regarding the contributions of EU Projects to schools and their attitudes towards professional cooperation?
Theoretical framework:
With the developing technology, virtual sharing and applications are frequently encountered in teaching, as in many areas. Due to the increase in knowledge every day, teachers are expected to cope with their educational problems by keeping up with changes, owning their field knowledge, following technological developments, and acting pedagogically competently (Köşk & Berkant, 2022). A community of practice has been defined as a group of people who share their interests in a problem, a set of problems or a topic and interact continuously to increase their knowledge and specialize in this field (Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, 2002). While the main focus of practice communities is the acquisition of knowledge, they draw attention to the communal and social aspects of learning rather than individual and personal learning (Denscombe, 2008). Learning communities, which are especially preferred for professional development, are frequently used in teacher communities.
In virtual communities of practice (vCOPs), members come together in a virtual environment and work interactively, enabling group members to discuss their ideas easily and to think collaboratively in a group-owned environment (McLoughlin et al., 2018). International platforms have been created where teachers can develop their teaching practices in collaborative environments with their colleagues. One of them, eTwinning, launched in 2005 by the European Schoolnet, is a secure platform that encourages collaboration through technology, encouraging educators to share ideas, connect with colleagues and develop joint projects promoting digital literacy (Camilleri, 2016). The platform created for schools in Europe is one of the virtual practice communities since teachers and students in their schools in European countries come together to increase their knowledge in parallel with the curriculum and to use this knowledge in practice. eTwinning is an institutionalized collaborative learning environment as well as an social network where partners that make up the education community collaborate remotely, synchronously or asynchronously, using the internet to carry out projects (Papadakis, 2016). Karakaşlar Gezgin and Gökbaş Çabuk (2021) defined cooperation between partners as the key element that reflects the spirit of eTwinning projects. They require both intra-institutional, inter-institutional, and inter-country collaborations. In general, it ensures the dissemination of projects in schools and the development of teachers' cooperation skills. For this reason, since being an eTwinning school by meeting the eTwinning quality label criteria is under the responsibility of the teachers working at the school, it has been seen that the studies on the attitudes of teachers towards professional cooperation and their perceptions of the contributions of EU projects to schools are quite limited in the literature reviews that can be accessed.

Teachers working in eTwinning schools within the state in Türkiye constitute the universe of the research. For this reason, first of all, eTwinning schools in Türkiye were determined. A total of 1890 schools from 76 different cities won the eTwinning school label awards in the 2021-2022 academic year in Türkiye. (eTwinning Türkiye, 2021a).Considering the number of teachers declared on the websites of public schools where eTwinning projects are carried out, it has been determined that the universe consists of 65533 teachers. Stratified sampling in which the sample is drawn from each layer separately and independently (Çıngı, 1994 cited in Büyüköztürk et al., 2020) eTwinning schools were selected from the schools according to the regions in Türkiye, and it was tried to reach the teachers working in these schools. In order to collect data within the scope of the research, the stratified sampling method was applied based on the geographical regions of the country. Cities with the most eTwinning schools in each tier were identified as lower tiers. In the research, in which the relational survey model, one of the quantitative research models, was used, data were collected from 405 teachers by answering the online scales by the teachers working in the eTwinning schools of the provinces with the most eTwinning schools in seven regions of Türkiye. The data in the research was obtained by using “Personal Information Form” prepared by the researcher, “The Attitude scale towards professional cooperation among teachers” developed by Yılmaz and Çelik (2020), and “The Evaluation scale of EU projects in terms of their contributions to schools” by Kesik and Balcı (2016), and analysis studies were done via the SPSS 25.0 program. Descriptive statistics were used to determine the level of attitudes of teachers working in eTwinning schools towards professional cooperation and their perceptions of the contribution of EU projects to schools. Independent samples t-test , ANOVA, and Pearson correlation analyzes were performed to determine the relationships.

In this part, the attitudes of teachers working at eTwinning schools towards professional cooperation and their perceptions of the contributions of EU projects to schools are included in various variables and the results obtained by examining the relationships between them. 1. It has been concluded that the attitudes of teachers working at eTwinning schools towards professional cooperation are above average. 2. It was concluded that gender, age, working in different school types, and educational backgrounds do not affect the professional cooperation of teachers working at eTwinning schools. 3. There is a weak but significant relationship between the number of eTwinning projects undertaken and the professional cooperation of teachers. 4. Teachers working at eTwinning schools perceive that the contributions of EU projects to schools are mostly in the dimension of social development. 5. It was concluded that gender, age, and educational background do not affect the perceptions of teachers working in eTwinning schools regarding the contribution of EU projects to schools. 6. From the perceptions of the teachers in the high school group regarding the EU projects provided to schools, it was concluded that the dimensions of personal/professional development, cultural development, and foreign language learning were higher than the teachers working in other school types. 7. It has been concluded that there is a significant and weak relationship between the perceptions of teachers working at eTwinning schools regarding the contributions of EU projects to schools and the number of eTwinning projects. 8. There is a positive and the same relationship between the perceptions of the contributions of EU Projects to schools and the level of attitudes toward professional cooperation. It has been concluded that there is a positive and strong relationship in the same direction for the sub-dimensions of personal/professional development, cultural development, foreign language learning, social development, and institutional development.

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