Description

In this paper I explore how online com­mu­ni­ties of prac­tice can help ease the tran­si­tion from pre­ser­vice to inser­vice teach­ing by offer­ing sup­port on an as-needed basis as a sup­ple­ment to tra­di­tional face-to-face men­tor­ing, what I refer to as “blended men­tor­ing.” This sort of on-demand sup­port is sorely missed by new teach­ers. Online teach­ing com­mu­ni­ties can also help improve reten­tion rates of new teach­ers in because par­tic­i­pa­tion in a the vibrant online com­mu­nity cre­ates a sense of col­le­gial­ity often miss­ing from teach­ers’ phys­i­cal work envi­ron­ments. Indeed, nearly fifty per­cent of new teach­ers quit within the first five years, typ­i­cally cit­ing insuf­fi­cient sup­port and the indi­vid­u­al­is­tic and iso­lat­ing work cul­ture as the pri­mary com­plaints. The suc­cess of online community-building ini­tia­tives, how­ever, will depend on uni­ver­si­ties accept­ing joint respon­si­bil­ity, along with local school dis­tricts, for pro­vid­ing high qual­ity and ongo­ing pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties to the teach­ers who pass through their sys­tem. This analy­sis is framed by the notion of teach­ing as a clin­i­cal prac­tice pro­fes­sion — much like med­i­cine — which implies that real learn­ing occurs at the inter­sec­tion of aca­d­e­mic knowl­edge and applied prac­tice.