Contributions to Science Teaching Practice of an Online Community of Practice of Teachers and Researchers

• Autor(a) principal: Marques, Margarida Morais
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Outros Autores: Loureiro, Maria João, Marques, Luís
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/26722
• topic: Online communities of practice; Teacher’s professional development; Interconnected Model of Teacher Professional Growth; Science teaching practices; Curricular development; Innovation

Communities of practice (CoP) can promote teachers’ professional development (TPD) and change their practices. However, empirical evidence is still scarce. To contribute to address this shortcoming, a single case study was carried out aiming the analysis of an online CoP involving teachers and researchers. Data collection included the used platform statistic data and posts automatically recorded, as well as the CoP’s documents. Content analysis took into account Clarke and Hollingsworth’s (2002) Interconnected Model of Teacher Professional Growth (IMTPG) and was centred in (a) the external domain and the curricular development (CD) practices; (b) the domain of the consequences of the work carried out regarding the developed science teaching strategies; (c) the evidence of their innovative nature; and (d) the CD principles enacted. The results show that (a) the members’ participation varied during the interaction period and their dynamic fits an adaptation of Wenger et al.’s (2002) stages of development of a CoP, with two action-research cycles; (b) the CoP developed diverse teaching strategies coherent with recommendations from the literature; (c) the teaching practices were innovative and challenging; and (d) the CoP enacted several principles of CD suggested in the literature. Moreover, the empirical results validated the dimensions of the IMTPG.