Put Draft 1 of C2 here - 18 February 2008

6.1.2 PD should be collaborative

PD should be collaborative. As presented in Chapter 2 that PD programs should aim to promote and connect participants in learning communities and the collaboration is to produce shared understanding, shared investment, thoughtful development, and a fair, rigorous test of selected ideas (Little 1988). Therefore, the PD program should facilitate or enhance collaboration. By definition, that collaboration means.... [definition]. Here, the Internet is opening opportunities to collaborate between teachers, educators, not only in the physical site, but also in the virtual world.

Online PDs have emerged to implement the idea of the potential of the Internet for collaboration. Some example: ....[ref]. The question: how this research address the issue: the uses of the Internet for PD, which is collaborative.

In the case of Ann, the Internet enabled Ann to collaborate easily with other learners (e.g. teachers, experts, students) locally and globally and this enriched her learning. As the Internet allows Ann to connect with other teachers, she could collaborate with other teachers to have co project. At the time of this research, Ann shows an example of her collaboration to develop literacy, communicative and collaborative skills between her students and other students in overseas. Ann admitted that she did not label the project as mathematics project but she believed that this activity was including the integration of mathematics into the project.

In the case of Jack, initially, there were two meanings about the collaboration. The first was the uses of the Internet by Jack to collaborate with others through online. I intended to facilitate Jack to engage in the learning process through collaboration with other teachers or experts in the online learning communities. The second was that Jack and I should be collaborative in our attempts to use the Internet as another tool for learning and teaching mathematics.

The first intention seemed not successful. Personal situation of Jack that preferring face to face collaboration is probably the main factor that inhibiting the online collaboration of Jack with others. Direct collaboration of Jack with his colleagues could be seen. For example, when Jack collaboratively developed Year 2 teaching planning, or when Jack shared websites in a workshop. or when Jack sent me to his colleague’s class to introduce a similar help for students’ learning using mathematical websites.

While this ethnographic study discovered many events showing that Jack was collaborative with other teachers, this research fails in indicating that Jack was able to conduct an online collaboration with others. Other studies also presents the similar challenges in engaging teachers in online collaboration with other teachers. In fact, that expecting teachers to engage in online collaboration should meet many requirements such as …….. [ref] and in this research, these aspects were not the main considerations.

In terms of the second meaning, generally, Jack and the researcher are collaborative. Direct collaboration between Jack and the researchers was varied and it was reflected on many steps of this study but in different levels of intensity. From the first period of my presence in Jack’s classroom, I told him of my willingness to collaborate with him in order to optimise the educational potential of the Internet. I was trying to continually support Jack such as e-mail him mathematical websites, organising websites into blogs, working with his students as Jack required. Jack told me on several occasions that he also was happy to collaborate with me. He provided many opportunities for me to conduct my research plan. The investigation project is another example of our collaboration.

I discovered that collaboration with Jack using an Internet approach is more difficult than face-to-face collaboration. The efforts such as emailing Jack the online resources, organising the resources into blog often led to uncertain results, in particular when Jack neither replied my emails nor commented the online resources I have provided for him. In fact, that expecting teachers to engage in online collaboration should meet many requirements such as …….. [ref] and in this research, these aspects were not the main considerations.

Another important finding is that Jack was more responsive when my efforts flowed from his suggested ideas e.g. planning mathematical investigation and linking selected websites to Jack’s teaching program or when Jack saw a direct impact to his student’s learning process. However, personal context, different beliefs, or different directions of us often led to unexpected results and this aspect will be discussed using zone theory in Section 6.2.