BEGINNING TEACHERS FINDING SUPPORT THROUGH AN ONLINE TEACHER NETWORK: AFFINITY LEARNING
ABSTRACT
Teacher attrition remains a concern in the field of education; while this is not a new problem, the reasons why teachers tend to leave the profession are concerning. Recently, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
(2014) found that nearly one third of all teachers leave the profession within their first three years; many cited a lack of administrative and professional support as a major factor in their decision to seek alternative employment. “The problem takes many forms, including the feeling of being isolated from colleagues, scant feedback on performance, poor professional development, and insufficient emotional backing by administrators” (p.7). While there is no replacement for a solid teacher induction program, it is clear that teacher educators need to find alternative and expansive ways to provide intellectual and emotional support to new teachers as they enter the profession, helping them focus not only on their pedagogical and content knowledge skills, but also on nurturing their emerging and constantly evolving teacher identifications. One way that teachers are able to achieve this level of additional support on their own, bridging the gap from the University to their initial in service positions (supplementing what can sometimes be less than ideal professional development), is to turn to online teacher communities, or what I term online teacher affinity spaces.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the types of support beginning teachers perceive they obtain from voluntary membership within a particular online
teacher affinity space called The English Companion Ning (EC Ning). Using a qualitative ethnographic approach, I sought to identify the types of discursive practices that emerge as beginning teachers participate in the content-‐specific online space. It incorporates sociocultural and social learning theories (Gee, 2006; Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger 1998) to explore how beginning teachers, often considered legitimate peripheral participants, display patterns of membership and
interaction, as well as how they position and identify themselves as beginning teachers within the discussions they engage in.
The results of this study suggest the potential of online teacher affinity spaces to support beginning teachers, both professionally and emotionally. A salient finding is that beginning teachers tend to take up various degrees of participation in the EC Ning and this can be closely tied to the levels of support they experience at their schools of employment. In addition, the EC Ning displayed elements of affinity space that provided beginning teachers the opportunity to conduct important identity formation and experimentation. The utilization and implementation of these types of spaces as supplemental support, as early on as in teacher education programs, have the potential to provide beginning teachers with the reinforcements
they need in order to survive and thrive during their first years of teaching. TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES …………………………………………………………………………………………………….. vii LIST OF TABLES ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS …………………………………………………………………………………………… ix
Chapter 1 Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………………… 1
Autobiographical beginnings …………………………………………………………………………………………. 2
Digital Context of the Study …………………………………………………………………………………………….. 6
Web 2.0 Tools ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 6
Ning ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 8
The English Companion Ning ………………………………………………………………………………………….. 9
Purpose of Study …………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 12
Significance of the Study ……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 13
Research Questions ……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 14
Glossary of Terms …………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 15
Chapter 2 Literature Review ……………………………………………………………………………….. 17
Supporting Beginning Teachers …………………………………………………………………………………… 17
Supporting Beginning Teachers in the Digital Age ……………………………………………………. 18
Review of Online Teacher Learning …………………………………………………………………………….. 22
Making Practice Public ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 24
Leveraging Mentoring and Mediation ……………………………………………………………………………………. 24
Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 30
Chapter 3 Theoretical Frameworks ……………………………………………………………………. 32
Situated Learning Theory ……………………………………………………………………………………………… 32
Distributed Intelligence ………………………………………………………………………………………………… 33
Identity …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 33
Legitimate Peripheral Participation ……………………………………………………………………………. 34
Teacher Learning Communities …………………………………………………………………………………… 36
Communities of Practice …………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 37
Affinity Spaces …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 38
Social Nature of Language ……………………………………………………………………………………………… 41
Heteroglossia ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 43
Big “D” Discourse ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 45
Chapter 4 Methods and Approaches …………………………………………………………………… 48
Background Information ………………………………………………………………………………………………. 49
Researcher Positionality ……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 50
Methods of Gathering Data ……………………………………………………………………………………………. 52
Observation and Fieldnotes ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 52
Interviewing ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 53
Iterative Data Analysis …………………………………………………………………………………………………… 57
Bricolage Interpretation of Text ……………………………………………………………………………………………… 57
Additional consideration: Ethics in a Digital Study …………………………………………………… 60
Chapter 5 Four Unique Cases ………………………………………………………………………………. 63
Cecilia: Predominantly Peripheral ………………………………………………………………………………. 66
Leia: Gaining Ground ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 71
Jolene: Balance Believer ………………………………………………………………………………………………… 76
Roxanne: Newbie Nourisher …………………………………………………………………………………………. 81
Chapter 6 Ethnography of EC Ning: Patterns and Practices …………………………….. 88
General Ethnographic Description ………………………………………………………………………………. 88
Major Topics ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 91
Degrees of Participation ………………………………………………………………………………………………… 97
Degree #1: Reading Posts ……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 100
Degree #2 : Seeking Support ………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 103
Degree #3: Extending Support ………………………………………………………………………………………………. 112
Degree #4: Externally Collaborating ……………………………………………………………………………………. 118
Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 119
Chapter 7 Discussion, Implications, and Future Study ………………………………….. 121
Discussion …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 121
Impact on Teacher Learning and Retention ……………………………………………………………………….. 122
Teacher Identity Formation …………………………………………………………………………………………………… 125
Additional Considerations ………………………………………………………………………………………….. 126
Scaffolding and Digital Criticality ………………………………………………………………………………………….. 126
Time and Access ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 128
School Culture ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 130
Future Studies ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 131 References ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 133 APPENDIX A: Recruitment Script ………………………………………………………………………. 141 APPENDIX B: Initial Interview Question Guide ……………………………………………….. 142 APPENDIX C: Expanded Ethnographic Coding Manual …………………………………… 143
Chapter 1
Introduction
“To educate as the practice of freedom is a way of teaching that anyone can learn. That learning process comes easiest to those of us who teach who also believe that there is an aspect of our vocation that is sacred; who believe that our work is not merely to share information but to share in the intellectual and spiritual growth of our students. To teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately begin” – bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (1994, p. 13)
As hooks states, the work that teachers do alongside students is powerful
and important; the teaching profession is “sacred”. However, today’s beginning teachers are often given contradictory messages in this regard. In today’s political and social climate, teachers are often the first to suffer the burden of blame for the many perceived failings of schools. In the midst of pervasive discourse on
standardized testing, value-‐added assessment and achievement gaps, teacher attrition is a focus of teacher education and educational policy. Recently, the
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (2014) found that nearly one
third of all teachers leave the profession within their first three years. When researchers interviewed teachers, their main reasons for leaving the profession weren’t low pay or difficult students; rather, many cited a lack of administrative and professional support as a major factor in their attrition. “The problem takes many forms, including the feeling of being isolated from colleagues, scant feedback on
performance, poor professional development, and insufficient emotional backing by administrators” (p.7). This sentiment is old news to teacher educators and scholars that cite a lack of support from colleagues and administrators as a detriment to
beginning teacher development (Darling-‐Hammond, 2001; Strong, 2009; Connelly,
2000; and Ingersoll, 2003). It is clear that the field needs to continue to find alternative and expansive ways to provide intellectual and emotional support to new teachers as they enter the profession, helping them focus not only on their pedagogical and content knowledge skills, but also their emerging and evolving teacher identities. We have a responsibility as teacher educators to provide beginning teachers with the support that they need to fully “share in the intellectual and spiritual growth of our students” (hooks, p. 13).
Autobiographical beginnings
Sonia Nieto (2003) points out that, “all teaching is ultimately
autobiographical” (p. 9), and the reasons why I am approaching my work as a teacher educator on the support of new teachers are deeply enmeshed in my own journey as a secondary teacher. I began my own work as a secondary English Language Arts teacher in a dream-‐like atmosphere, one devoid of explicit neoliberal pedagogy or a hidden curriculum of making sure that teacher education students were seen but not heard. As a Professional Development School intern pursuing certification in Secondary English Language Arts, I had the opportunity to begin my teaching career amidst a community of educators that valued teacher inquiry, peer observation, and an open door policy; it was a local professional community that was both inviting and constructive. In addition to co-‐teaching for the duration of a year, I also had the opportunity to belong to a teacher inquiry group that met once a week and discussed educational philosophies, teaching strategies, and approaches to supporting diverse students. I conducted my own action research project on how teachers could transform the classroom by creating a space for authentic student presentation. I visited and was invited to teach in peers’ and other faculty members’ classrooms. I presented my academic work at a professional conference at the end
of the year. In short, my first year as a member of a professional education
community was both dynamic and rewarding.
When I moved on to my first year of teaching at a secondary school in Brooklyn, N.Y., I found an equally stimulating and responsive community. The administrators made sure that the teachers in our small staff (there were fourteen of us) had the chance to pursue professional development in a variety of capacities, both relevant to our individual teaching practices and the larger context of the urban student population that we served. For example, our principal provided full funding for the entire staff to travel to Connecticut for a weeklong summer workshop focused on how to support gifted students. During the school year, we were encouraged to work with local artists, musicians, and professionals to develop unique and engaging elective classes, like the Healthy Living enrichment cluster that paired with a local nutritionist trained by Dr. Oz and the television production club that utilized the studio facilities of the nearby community college. I was faculty advisor for our school’s newspaper and was given the privilege to work with a local NYC journalist as my co-‐mentor. For a New York City public school with a declining budget threatened by a “meet AYP or close your doors in six months” ultimatum, we all did the best we could to keep our students and our developing pedagogical
philosophies at the forefront of our practice.
Even though I felt supported by my administration and colleagues and
experienced significant growth as a young teacher in a variety of ways, I couldn’t help but still feel shameful in my newness. As a first year teacher with a room
between two seasoned educators that had been working with students for a
combined total of 40 years, I felt a pressure to project myself as the expert teacher that I perceived them to be. While I was given plenty of opportunities to talk about students and pedagogy with my colleagues, as a teacher without tenure, I felt uncomfortable admitting that I was having anxieties, insecurities, and even failures, too. For example, not only had I never taught students as young as the 6th grade class I was assigned, but I was not yet confident in what I then perceived as my classroom management skills. In addition, I struggled to find my voice with other school stakeholders, like parents, school psychologists, and special education
teachers.
During that first difficult and rewarding year, I found solace outside of my
local school community through my interactions with my teacher education peers, many of whom had moved on to teaching positions in demographically diverse assignments. Because we were all teaching in different contexts, hours away from one another, we relied on social networking to maintain contact and to engage in supportive talk about the journey of being and becoming teachers of English
Language Arts. While emails were frequently sent back and forth, we also utilized Facebook to exchange messages of advice, comfort, and support with one another. When I didn’t feel quite comfortable sharing a disastrous lesson or a scary parent interaction with my school colleagues, I looked forward to signing onto my computer to seek advice and resources, and, often, read words of sympathy, comfort
or pity from my teacher education peers.
It wasn’t until I started working at another secondary school, this time in
rural Pennsylvania, that I realized just how much I depended on my outside teacher networks to keep me afloat. The summer before I started, my new principal took me on a tour throughout the high school building that I was now to call home. After a long walk down the hallways, shining from floor wax, but scented with the remnants of broken pencils and neglected gym clothes, he finally introduced me to my classroom. After pointing proudly to the newly paint walls and just-‐installed carpet, he demonstrated, with wide arm gestures, exactly where my desk should go (at the “front” of the classroom) and where the students’ desks should go (in careful, neat rows facing the chalkboard at the “front” of the room). He admonished me to resist the temptation to apply masking tape lines to make sure students knew where to keep their desks or for rearranging the desks in any way, so as to avoid marking up the fresh carpet. He also emphasized how important it was for me to keep posters and other “wall ornaments” to a minimum, for fear that I might sully the new paint job. I was crestfallen. How would I hold Socratic seminars if the desks were figuratively chained to the floor? Where would I hang and display student work?
How would I negotiate my position as new teacher in the district with the feelings of resistance I felt about the implicit pedagogical and epistemological values of my new school community? The teaching philosophies and ideologies that undergirded the
simple event of my first school tour became even clearer as I started the school year. Feeling the theme of isolation wrapped in dissent, I once again turned to my trusted community of beginning teachers. Again, the support and camaraderie I felt as a member of my informal community was beneficial, both to my evolution as a teacher and as an individual working out what I believed about pedagogy and instruction. I remember the elation I felt when a peer described the same uncertainties about teaching grammar rules and the pride I experienced when I told
about my positive Friday phone call home to the parents of a struggling student.
The description above from my own early years of teaching is not unlike
what many beginning teachers face – uncertainty about job security, lack of confidence in student and stakeholder interactions, and myriad philosophical and pedagogical contradictions that pass their way. I came to develop an interest in how new teachers find support like I did and what that meant for the profession.
Particularly interested in technology, and a millennial myself (Howe & Strauss,
2000), I was intrigued by the types of interactions and collaborations afforded by Web 2.0 tool for teachers.
Digital Context of the Study
Web 2.0 Tools
Web 2.0 has been considered a major factor in the way that communication
has changed over the last decade. The Internet has moved from being a primarily consumption oriented space to a more creation-‐based arena, where users of all types can establish and share their original material. In addition, Web 2.0 has
broken down barriers of communication. The implementation of digital technologies in education has allowed users to collaborate without temporal or geographic hurdles and has become quite ubiquitous. While many platforms for interactivity have cropped up since the advent of Web 2.0 technology, there remain a few major outlets for individuals to communicate, collaborate, and create content on the web. Most notably are blogs, micro blogs, wikis, social network sites, and
social network platforms (See Table 1.1).
| Web 2.0 Tool | Affordances/Examples | Social Interaction Depiction |
| Blog/Micro Blog | Created by an individual and then read by an audience. The readers are able to comment on the blog post. Micro blogs take up the same framework as traditional
blogs, but require users to limit themselves to a certain amount of characters.
Example: Twitter |
Focus on individual blog |
| Wiki | Web-‐based documents or pages that can be edited and collaborated on by multiple people at one time or asynchronously.
Example: Wikipedia |
Focus on specific content |
| Social Network Site | “Web-‐based services that allow
individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-‐public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system” (boyd & Ellison, 2007)
Example: Facebook or LinkedIn |
Focused on individuals who then cohort with other individuals |
| Social Network Platform | Individuals work on their own to interact with other individuals or just
communicate within the larger format of an interest group. Groups align and organize themselves, but cross paths with other interests and groups within a shared space. Individuals can be members of multiple groups.
Example: Ning |
Focus on group interactions, with affordance of individual interactions |
Table 1: Examples of Web 2.0 tools
Ning
Ning (www.ning.com) is a platform introduced in 2005 that allows users to create their own, independent social networks. These networks, ranging from communities of skateboard enthusiasts to diabetes sufferers, function similarly to popular social networking media like Facebook and LinkedIn; they allow users to build personal profiles while also belonging to groups of their interest. In addition, Ning offers affordances like personal blogging, video uploading, real-‐time chatting, and image sharing capabilities. However, the Ning platform is unique because it fosters an environment of community, not individuality. The developers of Ning
describe this aspect: The first major difference between a Facebook group and a social network on Ning is that a social network on Ning is its own social network. It’s not a group. It’s not a club. It’s your own MySpace or Facebook for your own particular passion, interest, cause, location, or community (Bianchini, 2007).
The English Companion Ning
The English Companion Ning (EC Ning) exemplifies one such community on
the Ning platform and is the site of this digital ethnographic qualitative study. Membership requires obtaining a username and a password, but is open to the public. When members sign onto the main page, they are greeted by the EC Ning logo, which displays a group of teachers holding a book with the motto: “English Companion: Where English teachers go to help each other”[1] . Created by Jim Burke, a well-‐known author, researcher and practitioner in the field, the EC Ning offers an online space for teachers to come together around the practice of teaching English Language Arts. Burke, whose commercial success has led to his book being utilized in English teacher methods courses, capitalized on already existing communities of educators from organizations like the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the National Writing Project (NWP). He has worked to keep the EC Ning non-‐commercial by asking for members to fill in applications to join and by having moderators greet and interact with new members. When Ning began charging for its website hosting in 2010, Burke initiated a movement to have members of the group
donate to keep it running; it is still in effect today.
Educators of various experience levels and geographic locations can discuss
topics from assessment to classroom management, share ideas about planning a
novel unit based on A Tale of Two Cities, engage in book club discussions, and exchange advice and best practice ponderings. The main source of conversation and dialogue revolves around the site’s various discussion groups, of which there are 272. After signing into the English Companion Ning with their login information, members can gain access to the different groups through a link on the homepage. The groups are arranged by topics or themes of inquiry and invite members to engage in discussion around specific interests underneath the umbrella of the teaching of English Language Arts. Examples of groups within the space range from “Teaching Shakespeare” to “Common Core Reading Strategies” to “Classroom Management” to, finally, “New Teachers,” which is the primary focus of observation in this study. What happens in the EC Ning space is, essentially, a sharing of the knowledge of the teaching of English Language Arts. As of April 2014, there are over forty thousand members.[2]
While teaching English Language Arts methods courses for the past five
semesters, I’ve asked my own teacher education students to become members of EC Ning. I’ve also become a member and have gained insight into the way that the online network functions, both semiotically and socially. When a previous student of
mine, then in her first year of full-‐time teaching, emailed me to thank me for showing her the space, I began to think about the impact of EC Ning on new teachers. I wondered how other beginning teachers like my student would progress as they exited the safety and theoretically dense atmosphere of the university and entered the often-‐unstable teacher workforce awaiting them. I began to develop questions about its function and the practices that other members take up within the environment, like what are the benefits to beginning teachers of having asynchronous spaces in which to engage in discussion and sharing resources of the teaching of English? How might participation in the EC Ning site extend what beginning teachers can do and how they develop as educators? How might online teacher networks foster a sense of collaboration and non-‐contrived collegiality?
How might these settings provide induction phase teachers with the support they need to feel successful in their first few years of teaching? It is because of these questions that I decided to conduct a digital ethnography within the EC Ning space and formulate more refined research questions.
Purpose of Study
The purpose of this study is to understand the types of support beginning
teachers acquire from membership within a particular online teacher affinity space called The English Companion Ning (EC Ning). Using a qualitative ethnographic approach, it seeks to identify the types of discursive practices new teachers take up the content-‐specific online setting. It incorporates sociocultural and social learning theories (Gee, 2006; Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) to explore how beginning teachers, traversing the realm of student to teacher, display patterns of membership and interaction, as well as how they position and identify themselves as beginning teachers. As a former high school English teacher and doctoral student working with beginning educators, I have become interested in the ways in which they obtain pedagogical understandings and nourish their evolving teacher
identifications. In addition, because of my experiences with digital tools, I seek to understand how they form and take up practices within online teacher networks around these understandings. Connected to these inquiries are the ways in which beginning teachers utilize Web 2.0 tools to publically work through their initiations into the field of education. As Lieberman and Pointer Mace (2010) maintain, the practice of making teaching public: …facilitates improved teaching and that all teachers can benefit from making
their practices public and sharing them with each other. ‘Public’ in this sense,
means making artifacts and events of practice, and reflections on practice,
available to interested educational audiences (p. 78).
The social and public nature of online teacher networks provides a
conceptual foundation for this study, as it highlights means for an alternative venue for new teachers to share stories, increase their knowledge about teaching, and express themselves through publically accessible discursive practice.
Significance of the Study
This study is significant because it adds to the body of research on virtual teacher learning spaces. While scholars have explored the structures and practices
of these environments before, it is important to note that there is very little to account for teachers’ own perceptions about why they are helpful. While there are many studies on how formal professional development can be moved onto online spaces, the study of non-‐formal, voluntary participation in an online teacher learning space is rarely mentioned in the scholarship. This study seeks to fill a gap in the literature by exploring the reasons why beginning teachers voluntarily seek membership within the EC Ning and what they perceive they obtain through membership. In addition, it provides insight into the patterns of membership and
degrees of participation that are taken up in the EC Ning.
Research Questions
Based on my initial questions embedded in my experience as a methods
course instructor and a secondary English Language Arts teacher myself, I decided to focus on the following research questions:
- What motivates beginning teachers to voluntarily utilize the EC Ning space for
support?
- How do they perceive and describe the support that they find on the EC Ning space?
- What discursive and participatory practices unfold in the EC Ning, particularly the New Teachers group? How do these practices work to serve beginning teachers in
the process of identification and belonging to a community?
Glossary of Terms
Affinity space: a space that allows groups of people to come together with a central
purpose and goal, sharing common interests and agreeing on modes of
participation (Gee, 2006).
Beginning teachers: Both pre service and induction-‐phase teachers (Fessler, 1995).
Community of practice (COP): a group of people that come together with a central
purpose and goal, sharing a common interest and agreeing on modes of
participation and community and cultural reifications (Wenger, 1998).
Computer mediated communication (CMC): textual or multimodal
communication that is afforded by digital tools like computers.
Legitimate peripheral participant (LPP): A newcomer to a community or space.
Established by Lave and Wenger (1991) but also appropriated in connection
with Gee’s (2006) affinity spaces for the purpose of this study.
Lurker (reader): preferably referred to as “reader” in this study. A participant in an
online community that reads communications and content rather than
posting or creating content. Participants can move fluidly within and out of
this category.
Online teacher learning space: another term used to describe a web-‐based
community where teachers come together to share and learn about teaching.
Participation: for the purposes of this study, there are two main types of
participation, active and passive. Active refers to when members of an online learning community create and respond to messages and interactions within that community. Passive refers to when members of an online learning community consume or read within a space. Participation is fluid and can
shift.
Professional learning: Easton (2008) defines this as learning that puts the onus on
the learner and is embedded in context of their classrooms. Used here as a
replacement for professional development.
Social networking site: Defined by boyd & Ellison (2007) as “…a web-‐based service
that allows individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-‐public profile within
a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a
connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those
made by others within the system” (p. 10).
Teacher identity: a fluid and recursive, socially constituted process of being and
becoming a certain kind of teacher.
Teacher identification: the way that a teacher describes or refers to him or herself
Teacher learning: can refer to the development of teachers, either in formal
settings like teacher education and professional development programs, or
informal settings like through Web 2.0 tools.
Web 2.0: the progression of digital tools from static website consumption to more
dynamic creation and collaboration.
[1] Image and motto retrieved from http://englishcompanion.ning.com/
[2] This number is up 10,000 members since this study began in 2012