Promoting Sustainable Teacher Learning: Nurturing a School-Based Technology-Enhanced Teacher Community of Practice

The goal of this research is to design and study a socio-technological infrastructure that can support sustainable teacher learning. We hypothesize that leveraging on existing teachers' social infrastructure in their real-world settings, can lead to such sustainable learning. Informed by situated learning theory, we designed an intervention to foster the development of a high school teacher department as a technology-enhanced community of practice (CoP), by engaging teachers in authentic activities as members of their local community. This longitudinal study examined the long standing effects of the intervention over a period of two years. Qualitative analysis was performed based on data from observations and semi-structured interviews. Evidence for sustainable learning was found, where members of the CoP have shown an improved collective ability to learn from one another, supported by a socio-technological infrastructure. Recommendations for professional development design that may promote sustainable teacher learning are included. (מתוך המאמר‎)