Telecollaboration: foreign language teachers (re)defining their role

Abstract

This study uses mixed methodology adapted from Nexus Analysis (Scollon & Wong Scollon, 2004) to analyse the development of in-service and pre-service foreign language teacher identity and their perception of their roles with a potential normalisation of personal digital devices (Bax, 2003) and telecollaboration (O'Dowd, 2009) in the classroom. Diverse institutional, personal, professional and informal discourses were traced to determine a nexus of practice with its constitutive discourses in place, interaction orders and historical bodies. Transgressive, conservative or transformative uses of technology or practices were noted. In an attempt to challenge current visions of possible selves (Kubanyiova, 2009), the teachers were asked to imagine alternative scenarios of technology integration and telecollaboration. Findings suggest that teacher identity results from a complex interplay of institutional, professional, and informal discourses which may be both obstacles and bridges to pedagogical transformation. Confronted by a globally connected classroom, these teachers experience difficulties to redefine their roles and to envisage a foreign language curriculum which integrates new unfamiliar literacies and skills. Telecollaboration, we suggest, should be considered in the context of a digitally mediated networked cultural revolution and may be used as a means to leverage a profound transformation of education.

Keywords

• teacher training
• community
• telecollaboration