Blended learning environments to support teacher professional development communities

Abstract

With the prevalence of online communication in recent years, many teacher professional development (TPD) activities occur in blended learning environments which combine face-to-face (FTF) co-located experiences with online experiences. However, many scholars point out that blended learning environments need to be thoughtfully designed in order to integrate FTF learning with online learning experiences, and that there seems to be a lack of designs that pertain specifically to in-service teachers. Professional development is crucial for inservice teachers who are at the forefront of learning and teaching in the classroom. To impact student learning, deepening content knowledge and upgrading pedagogical skills are pivotal to teachers’ professionalism. Building professional development communities through blended learning environments is a core strategy for teachers to grow their professionalism, considering the multitude of demands faced by teachers, especially in Singapore. With the aim of designing more supportive and sustained TPD communities through blended learning environments, we undertook a review of the literature. This review has resulted in a five R conceptual framework. We synthesised from the literature the observation that the design and development of sustained blended TPD communities involve multifaceted and complex issues. Such communities would need to hold strong relevance for their members, encourage close relations between members, enable rich reifications of artefacts, be well recognised by important stakeholders, and lastly, be equipped with structural, digital, and human resources.