Developing a community of practitioners via advanced technologies:
The case studies of CTER Online

Abstract

For K-12 teachers to successfully integrate technology into their classrooms and reform their teaching practices, they need high quality professional development opportunities. This process of development is often difficult for teachers requiring them to change their long held practices and beliefs. Teacher educators have begun to utilize the Internet and communication technologies as a medium to facilitate in-service training and K-12 teacher development. Among them is the Curriculum, Technology and Education Reform (CTER) master of education program at the University of Illinois. This paper reports on in-depth case studies of K-12 teachers as they participate in the CTER program with a particular emphasis on the relationship between the formation of practitioner identities and learning. The working hypothesis guiding this research is that as teachers participate within the electronic worlds of the CTER Online program, they produce, maintain, and transform their practitioner identities and this identity formation process influences their ongoing participation in online learning activities.

This analysis has identified key dimensions of these learning activities including instructional goals, instructional procedures and tools, identities relevant to a particular learning activity, and the cultural and conceptual knowledge embedded in the learning activity. These public dimensions of the CTER electronic world have personal realizations in the lives of students in the form of personal goals, competence with procedures and tools, personal identities, and personal mental models. The case study analysis identifies how various alignments between these public and personal dimensions result in K-12 practitioners extending their existing practitioner identities, adopting new practitioner identities, and defending their practitioner identities through resistance. In addition, this analysis points to ways to provide quality online education and professional development for K-12 practitioners given these powerful processes of identity formation. The research also identifies the power of using online technology to provide K-12 teachers with contexts for learning, application, and discussion.

Introduction

To meet the professional development needs of K-12 practitioners, colleges and universities have begun to provide online graduate education for teachers interested in learning to integrate technology and reform their educational practice. One such program, the Curriculum, Technology, and Education Reform (CTER) masters degree program offered through the College of Education at the University of Illinois, serves as the context for the research reported here. The CTER program is thematically focused on helping teachers learn information related to integrating technology in the context of curriculum reform.

The CTER Online masters degree program was developed by faculty members in the College of Education as a way for practicing K-12 teachers to learn how to use advanced learning technologies and to reform their teaching practice. The question motivating the analysis of this online program is to determine what kinds of contexts for professional development can be constructed online and what processes are associated with teachers participating and learning in online contexts.

This program is an extension of early efforts by Levin and Waugh (1998) and colleagues (Levin, Waugh, Brown, and Clift, 1994) to develop tele-apprenticeships between College of Education faculty members and in-service and pre-service teachers. The tele-apprenticeship model focused on "developing interaction frameworks to support learning in the context of remote practice" (Levin and Waugh, 1998; Thurston, Secaras, and Levin, 1996). This framework has been elaborated into a model for instruction in the CTER Online program that includes: (1) a project oriented approach to teaching and learning, (2) the use of multiple technologies to facilitate collaboration, (3) the use of multiple assessment techniques, (4) the use of multiple instructional formats including case studies, simulations, and class projects, and (5) providing multiple instructional contexts (Levin, Levin, and Waddoups, 1999).

Because the pedagogical model is based on multiple technologies, instructional frameworks, and interactions, the CTER Online program is a rich site for examining the ways in which K-12 practitioners extend, adopt, and defend their practitioner identities. The working hypothesis guiding this research is that as teachers participate within these contexts they produce, maintain, and transform their practitioner identities and this identity formation process influences their participation and learning.

Twenty-six students were accepted into the CTER program in the Spring of 1998. All are either practicing teachers or district technology coordinators. These students come from eight different school districts and 15 schools in the state of Illinois and one in the state of Louisiana. These CTER students also teach in primary and secondary schools and teach subjects ranging from mathematics, language arts, music, special education, and science. In addition, five of these students are technology coordinators for their school districts. There is a great deal of diversity among these students in terms of their teaching experience, their technology background, and their reasons for entering the online program. Although students have moved, changed jobs, and had major life changes, all twenty-six students who were admitted remain active in the CTER program and will be graduating in May, 2000. The studies reported here will focus on this first cohort of 26 students, even though more students have subsequently been admitted for later cohorts of CTER Online.

Within the CTER program there have been courses focusing on learning to use instructional technology, evaluation, policy and philosophy, curriculum, law, and the psychology of student learning. Each CTER course has a series of course web pages that include course overviews, important course resources, a weekly syllabus, assignment pages, and online readings. In addition, there are links to synchronous and asynchronous communication tools that provide the interactive medium for students to participate. Although there is some variation among the course web pages, the CTER program has tried to maintain a degree of uniformity to allow for ease of navigation and ease of use for students.

Data Collected

Selecting Case Study Participants

The case study students were selected purposefully to reflect the diversity of students participating in the CTER program. To select the case study students we used their application material and their participation in the first online class (i.e. C&I 335) to divide them according to (1) their skill in using online learning technology, (2) their experience integrating technology into their K-12 schools and classrooms, and (3) demographics such as years teaching and the grade they teach. Using these categories, we created a grid to divide students according to these factors and selected case study students to represent the diversity along these lines. Two of the four case study participants and their backgrounds are described below.

Case study data collection

The data collection procedures for developing the case studies included an in-depth interview early in the program. The students were asked about their background as learners, their experience using technology in the classroom, their reasons for entering the online program, and their expectations. Routine interviews were conducted near the middle and end of each semester asking them about their experiences in each course. In the case studies reported here, pseudonyms are used for the participants except for Michele Jacobs, from Tri-City Elementary School in Buffalo, Illinois, and Lynn Gilmore from Springfield District #186 in Springfield, Illinois, who wanted their names and affiliations to be used.

Three identity processes observed in CTER Online

We have observed three types of practitioner identity processes that were evident in the context of participating in CTER Online. The types of practitioner identity processes include: (1) the extension of existing practitioner identities, (2) the adoption of new practitioner identities, and (3) defense of existing practitioner identities through processes of resistance. These three types of identity processes are not necessarily tied to a particular kind of activity but are located in a transactional relationship between the people participating in the activity, the socio-cultural dimensions of the learning activity, and the wider political forces impinging on the activity. For example, if a person has experience as an evaluator and is asked to participate in an evaluation as part of her participation in an online course, then she engages in this activity by extending this existing identity. In contrast, if a student has no experience, then she may either adopt a new practitioner identity and align herself to the learning activity or deploy resistance strategies as a participant in the activity and thereby defend her existing practitioner identity. In this way, identities for learning are dynamically constructed by bringing into alignment certain dimensions of personal development and the dimensions of learning activities. We will support these conclusions about the relationship between practitioner identities and learning in the online interaction through detailed case studies analysis of each type of identity formation and its realization in the context of CTER Online.

Extending practitioner identities

The "extension of existing practitioner identities" is a common identity formation process in CTER Online. This takes place when a student is engaged in learning activities in which their personal goals and the instructional goals are in alignment. For example, if a student's goals are to learn to integrate technology into his classroom and the instructional goals of the learning activity are similar, then through his participation he is more likely to be aligned with the learning activity. In addition, as students extend "existing practitioner identities" there is an alignment between their personal competence and the instructional procedures. The student has developed competence from previous experience with at least some of the procedures that they need to participate in the learning activity and is willing to engage in whatever learning is necessary to reach new levels of competence. Indeed, because their goals are aligned with the instructional goals, students are often motivated to "do whatever it takes" to develop the needed competence to facilitate their participation.

Michele’s teaching and learning background

Michele Jacobs has eight years experience teaching first and second grade students. She voiced deep commitment to providing her young students with the opportunity to develop competence in core subjects such as reading, writing, and mathematics. However, in the recent past she has become increasingly aware of the ways in which computer technology can "increase student’s interest in the core subjects" by "making learning fun". In her communications with her students and parents she exudes a passion for teaching and care for her students as both people and pupils. On many occasions, Michele has said that she is taking the CTER Online program to improve herself as a teacher and to improve the quality of teaching in her classroom.

Although Michele was trained as a middle school teacher, she has spent the last seven years teaching first and second-grade students in a small rural school district in central Illinois. Michele reported that prior to entering the CTER Online program she had provided her students with minimal exposure to the Internet by taking them to the computer lab where there was Internet connectivity and students had limited access to the Web. In addition, Michele used CD-ROM programs that provided students with "drill and practice" opportunities for mathematics, writing, and reading in her classroom. She said that using computer programs to help her first grade students to write is "amazing" because the program can help her spell check the students writing. She explained one activity in which students developed books using word processors and that the students often would check them out and take them home. For reading, she said that "interactive books" helped her students who are not very interested in reading to gain an interest because they can "interact with the story". However, she did say that technology "costs money" making it difficult for her to get the kinds of software that she would like.

During the initial CTER orientation, each new student developed a personal web page that would function as an electronic portfolio so that each student could post their completed work from the first two CTER classes. In her electronic portfolio, Michele described her experiences as an educator and an evaluator and said that she was hoping to learn through her participation in the online program.

Each CTER student was required in their first two classes to conduct a major curriculum project using technology which she could implement in their own work setting. Michele decided to have her first grade students develop a PowerPoint ePortfolio that they would present to their parents at the first "parent-teacher conference" of the school year. In a class web conference posting, Michele described her project in the following way:

The message was read 35 times and the professor responded to this message by providing Michele with a URL specifically relevant to the issue of assessment criteria in portfolios. Another student responded by saying that she liked the idea and was sure that her daughter would love to create a portfolio and she felt that parents would like viewing the portfolios.

Michele’s posting is interesting especially with regards to what it demonstrates about the extension of her practitioner identity. Michele is clearly mustering enthusiasm for this project. She specifically states her enthusiasm "I am excited". One of the important elements of the extension of her practitioner identity is the use of her knowledge about the kinds of scaffolds first grade children need to participate in learning activities and to utilize this knowledge as she develops her electronic portfolios. As mentioned before, the creation and refinement of templates allows her students to use a relatively sophisticated technology with guidance from the technology.

In all of these instances, she is using what she knows about teaching first graders and extending it to her e-portfolio project and using what she is learning about electronic portfolios to transform how she teaches her students. This movement of knowledge and practice between these two contexts is central to the extension of her existing practitioner identity through her participation in this learning activity.

The following is the text of Michele’s presentation that she gave in a synchronous chat found within the CTER Room in TAPPED IN:

Michele went from someone who used very little technology in her first grade classroom to someone who was able to learn a new technology and create an innovative application that her first grade students could use. This required her to translate knowledge from the online program into the context of her first grade classroom a skill that many of her colleagues were impressed that she had developed. Michele started the CTER Online program with the goal of learning to use technology in her classroom and immediately aligned herself with this goal in the first class. Through the process of developing the electronic portfolios, she developed competence using new learning technologies such as PowerPoint and the Internet, she utilized her existing knowledge as a teacher and a mother to create age appropriate lesson plans, and she is beginning to receive praise from her classmates. As should be clear, most of her learning took place within the supportive environment of the CTER Online program where the faculty and classmates provided her with direction and positive reinforcement. Michele continues to extend her practitioner identity as she implements this project in her classroom. During her process of implementation she begins to participate in wider networks which facilitated her learning and the extension of her practitioner identity.

The key features associated with K-12 teachers extending their practitioner identities includes teachers utilizing their existing knowledge in the context of new practices. In Michele’s case, she had extensive knowledge of teaching first graders and utilized this knowledge as she extended her practice into the use of advanced learning technologies. This connection between old and new knowledge is crucial as K-12 teachers extend their practitioner identities. Additionally, there must be an alignment between the instructional goals and the personal goals. In Michele’s case, this alignment led her to reject the suggestions that she use KidPix and motivated her to learn a more advanced technology like PowerPoint. Her decision to use PowerPoint helped facilitate the positive reactions she received from her classmates, colleagues, political figures, and others interested in using technology for primary age children. Finally, there was clearly an alignment between her existing practitioner identity, her sense of self as a teacher, and the identity she was developing through her participation in the developing curriculum project. By extending her existing practitioner identity, Michele was able to become a more central participant in the CTER Online community of practice as evidenced by the recognition and praise she received. In addition, developing this project extended her practitioner identity in the context of her school, district, and among a wider community of practitioners. Although we provide here only one example of extending an existing practitioner identity, we observed many instances of this process among the 26 CTER students. Next we will discuss the processes associated with adopting a new practitioner identity.

Creating new practitioner identities

Similar to the extension of existing practitioner identities, when a student adopts a new practitioner identity through participating in the online program the student’s personal goals and the instructional goals must be in alignment. That is, if the instructional goals focus on learning how to conduct program evaluation, the students need to be convinced that they will benefit from participating in the learning activity before they will align themselves. In addition, they may or may not have the competence necessary to participate, but are willing to develop the competence if it aligns with their personal and professional goals. Unlike the extension of existent practitioner identities, when a student is adopting new practitioner identities they may not have personal mental models or knowledge that is directly relevant to their participation. Through participation, the student’s must "lay down" new knowledge structures often derived from readings or interactions with others. In addition, students will often construct analogies from what is known to what is not known. In this way, students do not have a stock of knowledge to draw from or extend. In a similar way, they do not have practitioner identities that are relevant to their participation, but may analogically deploy other identities such as that of a friend, church member, or parent. As a result, adopting new practitioner identities requires a great deal of work both in terms of the cognitive and material practices necessary to develop new knowledge and learn new skills and procedures.

An example of this type of identity formation is the case of a student who has never participated in a particular activity such as program evaluation, but through her experience as a teacher, reading assigned texts, and participation in class discussions, comes to see the relevance of program evaluation to her practice as K-12 teacher. In this way, the student develops new personal goals that are aligned with the instructional goals. For example, after reading and participating in classroom discussion, they can see the connections between the practice of evaluation and their work as teachers. In addition, the student may not have the competence initially to fully participate, but because they are aligned with the activity they are willing to develop the competence necessary for participation. For example, they may learn statistics, research methodologies, and develop proficiency with a new software program through their participation. Due to their lack of experience as evaluators they may conflate distinct terms such as assessment and evaluation, but through reading and participating in their reading groups and whole group discussions develop new personal mental models and discourses. They also may construct analogies from other kinds of experience and activities as they participate in learning activities and therefore schematize knowledge and utilize it to scaffold their participation. Some analogies are helpful and some lead them in the wrong direction. The process of adopting a new practitioner identity takes an incredible amount of cognitive effort on the student’s part as they develop new goals, construct new knowledge, and develop new identities.

Lynn Gilmore is another participant in the CTER Online program. She developed a new practitioner identity during her participation in a learning activity in which she was asked to conduct a systematic program evaluation for the first time. In this section, we address a simple question: What happens if K-12 teachers are participating in a learning activity that is not an extension of their existing practitioner identity, but requires them to adopt a new practitioner identity? We are particularly interested in how the adoption of a new practitioner identity influences Lynn’s participation in the learning activity and what implications this has for her professional development. We will demonstrate the social, cultural, and personal dimensions of adopting new practitioner identities by analyzing her experiences as she conducts a formal evaluation as part of her participation in the Evaluation of Information Technology (CI 490 EIT) class in the CTER Online program.

The Class on the Evaluation of Information Technologies

The context for this analysis is the third class the CTER Online students took, CI 490 EIT. The stated goal of the CTER Online program is to help teachers become leaders in their schools and districts in the area of technology integration and curriculum reform. This class was designed to assist students to develop the skills for systematically evaluating the value of a particular technology and an educational reform initiative in their classrooms, schools, districts, and beyond. For many teachers, program evaluation is a new activity. Most have experiences with assessing a student's development or learning, but few have had the experience of systematically evaluating a program, technology, or innovation. Although assessment and evaluation are related, they are very different practices that rely on different kinds of knowledge, skills, and abilities. Because evaluation is a new activity for many students in the CTER Online program, as they participated in this course, they are in the process of developing new practitioner identities. If extending a practitioner identity is similar to building an addition on a house, then adopting a new identity is like building a new structure altogether.

This case study analysis will focus on Lynn Gilmore and to a lesser extent Michele Jacobs as they participated in the evaluation project in this class. Each team conducted a program evaluation of technology implementation in a simulated junior high school. Both of these students were participants in the same "team" in this class and thus collaborated in the activity. Lynn has been an elementary school teacher for fourteen years and is a music specialist who teaches in grades 1-4. She has been an elementary music teacher with ten years prior experience as a vocal music teacher. In an initial interview, Lynn said that she felt that technology could open up new kinds of opportunities for her and her students. In her district, she is an expert in the area of music benchmarks and standards and sits on a district committee for this purpose. However, she did not have experience as an evaluator. In her words, she did not have experience evaluating and "didn’t know where to start" when it came to this process. Through her participation in the CI 490 EIT course, Lynn began to learn new practices and began the process of adopting this new practitioner identity. In this analysis, Lynn’s experience is contrasted with Michele Jacobs who has had experience as a senior evaluator for the State of Illinois Quality Assurance Division. Michele’s participation is much more indicative of extending an existing practitioner identity and stands in contrast to Lynn’s experience.

In the first major synchronous discussion, two of the class evaluation teams joined together in a WebBoard synchronous chat space to discuss the assigned readings. The focus of these readings included issues of "context" and "people" in the evaluation process and the synchronous chat focused on these two issues. Lynn’s first contribution to this synchronous discussion expressed her confusion with applying what she is learning from the readings to the evaluation of the simulated school project, a theme that re-occurs repeatedly for Lynn as she tries to develop an understanding of the evaluation process.

The members of Lynn's team worked together for fourteen weeks as they conducted their evaluation of the simulated junior high school. All of their group collaboration was facilitated through synchronous and asynchronous media. As previously mentioned, Lynn’s participation in this group is particularly interesting for what it demonstrates about the adoption of a new practitioner identity.

Lynn’s contribution to this discussion could best be described as supportive, complimenting and encouraging her teammates, but not making original or substantive contributions. This supportive participant role is consistent with Lynn’s self-attribution that she had little experience as an evaluator and therefore was a peripheral member of the evaluation community of practice.

The reading discussion took place on both the synchronous and asynchronous WebBoard and focused on the different orientations for evaluation. On the asynchronous medium, Lynn said that the reading was an "eye opening" experience. She said that she never knew that there "could be so many different ways to evaluate something." She concluded by saying that as a "teacher who is constantly evaluating, I never stopped to think about the different ways to approach the subject." Lynn is still using the cognitive framework of assessment or informal evaluation to organize her thoughts about evaluation. However, she does mention that her "eyes are being opened" which points to the possibility that her conceptual understanding is being altered by her participation in this course. Throughout her participation in the 490 EIT class there is evidence that Lynn changes her conceptual organization of the evaluation activity away from this familiar practice of assessment or informal evaluation and constructs a new frame, adopting a new practitioner identity of a systematic program evaluator.

Lynn’s participation in the learning activities in a later section of her team's program evaluation represents an important turning point for the team and for Lynn’s developing sense of self as an evaluator. During this section, the students were asked to define their evaluation plan and begin collecting data consistent with this plan. As the person responsible for completing both the summary of readings and the case study report, Lynn needed to step forward and play a more significant role as a member of her team.

In an interview after this interaction, Lynn gave more detail about her feelings about this process of learning from the course textbook that seems to be associated with her adoption of a new practitioner identity. She said that the "Wildwood thing [the simulated school] at the beginning was overwhelming and just the fact that some of us don’t have a big background in evaluation and so you’re reading about it and doing it right then. Whereas if we read everything maybe and then tried to do it, we might have a better idea because sometimes after reading then you’d backtrack and change something. Which is ok to see your mistake, but I don’t know. If it would be better to have a lot of information about evaluation and maybe do some smaller scale case studies and then jump into something huge" (interview with Lynn, p. 16 11/03/98).

Lynn was clearly struggling to understand the process of program evaluation and the process of defining the evaluation questions. She proposed to focus on building trusting relationships, rather than focusing on evaluation questions and having these questions guide who they establish relationships with and the type of data needed. In this interaction, she also has failed to see the importance of limiting the number of interactions with the staff members from the simulated school being evaluated. This is not a personal failing on her part, but can be attributed to her lack of experience in the practice of program evaluation. As she previously mentioned, she was being asked to read something at the same time she is expected to do the learning activity—a difficult task for anyone. Fortunately for Lynn, she was a member of a group, so that when she diverged and needed help, they could bring her back. Michele, another member of the group, was able to extend her existing identity as evaluator, and so provided leadership for the team and support for Lynn.

Lynn was still in the early stages of adopting this new practitioner identity, so this process for her was often confusing and difficult. She did not have background knowledge to rely on, so she often re-framed the evaluation activity into something she was familiar with. These conceptual frames (assessment or building friendships) were related but did not necessarily match the activity of program evaluation and often led to Lynn experiencing frustration and, in her words, a process of "muddling through". In addition, there was a degree of frustration because she was conducting an evaluation while simultaneously learning about the evaluation process through readings and discussions.

In this analysis, we have described the process of Lynn adopting a new practitioner identity, that of a program evaluator. We have contrasted her experience with Michele who had professional experience conducting quality assurance evaluations for the state of Illinois. In this comparison, we have identified the differences between the processes of expanding on an existing practitioner identity versus the process of adopting a new identity. Indeed, without a well-developed practitioner identity and limited background knowledge in evaluation, Lynn was left to rely heavily on the readings and her classmates to give her guidance. This scaffolding was crucial for her participation and assisted her performance and helped her to become a more central participant in her team and in the wider community of program evaluators. In contrast, Michele had fairly strong personal mental models about evaluation and thus was able to provide substantive contributions early in the progress. She relied on readings, but often tied these readings to her past experience and discussed how they might apply to the current task of participating in the simulated school study. Given her experience and background, she was able to immediately position herself as a central participant in her team and the wider community of evaluators. In the next section, we discuss a situation when this process of adopting and extending existing identities is derailed leading to the deployment of resistance as a method to defend practitioner identities.

Defending practitioner identities through resistance

The enactment of resistance to defend their practitioner identities can be contrasted to the extension of existing practitioner identities and the adoption of new practitioner identities on many levels. These differences can be described in terms of a lack of alignment or symmetry between the dimensions of a learning activity and the development of the practitioner. For example, the goals of the student and the goals inherent in the instructional activity may be in conflict and as an individual participates they either must alter their personal goals and "go along" with the activity, or they develop a level of resistance to the activity and do not align themselves with the learning activity. In addition, the students may or may not have the competence, but are unwilling to align themselves with the activity and develop the competence. Another layer of conflict that is often associated with the enactment of a resistant identity is a conflict of personal knowledge structures and the cultural knowledge implicit within the learning activity. Indeed, participation in the learning activity could invite a student to transgress long held concepts of self that may create dissonance in which an individual must adopt the new identity, rework one or more existing identities, or keep their identities separate.

This type of identity formation is fundamentally about a lack of alignment or connection between the development of the practitioner and the dimensions of the learning activity. For example, a person who has a well-developed Christian identity and is asked to engage in a discussion that subverts these strongly held beliefs would often deploy a resistant identity. In addition, they have a strong practitioner identity as a teacher and the activity asks them to engage in hypothetical exercises that do not match---or resemble what happens in their classrooms, schools, or districts. This lack of connection leads a student to deploy a resistance. Indeed, if the student entered the online class to learn about being a better K-12 teacher and the dimensions of the learning activity asks them to engage in activities unrelated to teaching, and the instructor is unable to convince them otherwise, then there is a high probability that an individual will construct a resistant identity to guide their participation in this activity.

These patterns of resistance are most obvious in situations in which their participation requires students to question deeply held beliefs and personal structures of meaning, to challenge existing professional identities and practices, and to engage in discussion that is politically charged and deemed dangerous for one’s career. The following analysis will provide insight into how teachers defend their practitioner identities and define themselves in the information age and how resistance is an important part of the process of participating and learning. This analysis will focus specifically on students in the CTER Online program participating in a simulation that was designed to help them develop critical sensibilities and how, as they participated in this activity, they developed patterns of resistance. These patterns of resistance function to defend and reassert their practitioner identities.

The fourth course the CTER Online students took was Educational Policy Studies 304 "Ethical & Policy Issues in Information Technologies." In this course, the CTER students participated in several activities that required thinking critically about the use of technology by students. In one of those activities, the analysis of problematic web pages created by a virtual junior high school girl, the students developed a strong pattern of resistance. These tactics and strategies of resistance functioned to maintain their practitioner identities, guided their ongoing participation in this online course, and influenced their learning in the activity.

Suzie pages: A simulated learning context

Suzie is a simulated junior high school student who created a series of web pages for an assignment in an imaginary class in which she is learning the HTML programming language. In realty, these web pages were created by an EPS 304 teaching assistant and functioned as a simulation that the instructor hoped would serve as "discussion starters" for issues central to the course such as access; privacy; credibility of web information; free speech and censorship; privacy; commercialization; intellectual property and plagiarism.

As a rather precocious and somewhat rebellious junior high school student, virtual Suzie, constructed several versions of her web pages. Many of these pages had questionable moral and ethical content. After creating these pages, Suzie placed them on the school server. As one might imagine, these web pages brought up many topics relevant for discussion in the EPS 304 class including issues of appropriate use of educational technology in K-12 classrooms, schools, and districts. It is important to note, that the Suzie simulation was framed as a "classroom" assignment and her web pages were located on the "school web server". This framing is important to how CTER students participated in this activity and eventually deployed resistance. Indeed, this resistance is wielded like a weapon to protect their personal beliefs and practices as teacher from perceived threats.

One of the frustrations voiced by the faculty member teaching this class was the fact that students were either unwilling or unable to step out of their experience as practitioners and therefore were unable to analyze the Suzie pages from "multiple perspectives". The fact that students utilized their practitioner identities to guide their participation is not surprising. Also, it is not surprising, due to the politically charged environment in their schools concerning the use of the Internet, that teachers resisted many of the topics discussed rather than simply "going along".

The first posting for the Suzie pages assignment was by the faculty member teaching EPS 304. He said that "one of the class participants wondered about getting in trouble for accessing naked pictures via a school server". He continued: "This raises some good questions: Should a teacher get in trouble for that? How would anyone find out? Does it matter if it is part of a class assignment?" One student responded that "a teacher should get in trouble for going to such a site if there is a district policy forbidding it". The instructor immediately responded by asking if it matters "why one is visiting such a site" and wondered if there can be "different reasons for visiting a site with a controversial topic". One student responded that the nature of the web often results in students "accidentally" coming upon inappropriate content while searching for more appropriate content. She then concluded that "politically, it is best as a teacher to stay as far away from such sites as possible. You are asking for complaints, phone calls, and job loss with an activity that finds these sites appropriate". Immediately, in the first discussion strand, students identify the danger of teaching children to use the Internet. It is also interesting to note, that two early strategies students utilized here include deferring to a higher authority (the school district) or to filtering software to make these choices and avoidance of the problem all together by staying as "far away" from controversy as possible.

After this first discussion strand, CTER students began questioning the relevance of the Suzie Pages assignment by wondering whether this activity was relevant to their practice as K-12 professionals. By downplaying the relevance of this activity, the CTER students mitigated the effect that participation in this activity would have on their practice as teachers and their professional identities. After all, according to many teachers, if the activity is not relevant, then the possibility or even desirability of transferring knowledge into their teaching practice is decreased. One student wrote that she didn’t see much educational value to reading the Suzie pages. She writes: "The things that she has chosen to include are for the most part OBVIOUS no-no’s. Call it my Southern Baptist background, but I was offended at most of the links that I followed. I am quite glad that my daughter was not in the office when I was visiting Suzie’s site." Another student followed this statement by saying: "I agree with the questionable value of Suzie’s sites. What are the parameters for the assignment? As a teacher, I need a reason for every link she includes. Then she can justify to me why they must be included on her school site. All assignments have rules and guidelines. Has she gone too far with this one?". Asking the relevance of the Suzie pages and asking the professor to articulate more completely the specifics of the hypothetical assignment both functioned as resistance strategies. Indeed, these discursive strategies changed the subject away from the difficult topics associated with using the Internet in their classrooms and turned the focus on the basis for the assignment and whether it "would happen" in their schools or districts.

As students were pushed by the faculty member to define what they think is appropriate, they pushed back by asking for a more specific explanation of the Suzie pages assignment. In essence, they wanted more details about the hypothetical classroom situation that led to Suzie creating her web page. The question of the hypothetical context of the Suzie pages is raised again as the students try to make more informed judgments about how to interpret these web pages. On February 2, 1999, another student asked the instructor to further define the nature of the assignment for Suzie so she can interpret the appropriateness of Suzie’s web page. She said: "I understand the pushing the buttons. I guess I still want to know what is the objective to the web site. Was it for fun, or was it a class assignment? If it were a class assignment, what was the requirement?" This move to define more specifically the nature of the assignment in which Suzie is creating her web page for, is yet another attempt by students to resist participating in the Suzie pages by changing the subject.

The Suzie Crisis

As documented above, there was resistance to the Suzie pages activity on many different levels by most students in the EPS 304 course. However, this resistance became much more overt when one of Suzie’s links was inadvertently connected to a page with hardcore pornographic content. We describe this event as the Suzie Crisis, because in many ways it threatened to disrupt the simulation to such a degree that students were almost unwilling to engage in further dialogue. Indeed, the boundaries of what was personally acceptable and professionally relevant had been so badly transgressed for many of the participants that it resulted in a crisis and disrupted the simulation.

The crisis in the Suzie pages assignment came when one of the links in Suzie’s web page was linked to a tattoo site that had a banner with hardcore pornographic material. As students were checking the links so they could make comments about the Suzie page assignment, they found the pornographic link. The ensuing discussion led to a discussion that heightened the urgency of students to deploy resistance to defend their practitioner and personal identities. What is so interesting and important about this example, is the ways in which these students deployed resistance and how this functioned to reinforce their personal and practitioner identities.

CTER students resisted participation through questioning the relevance of the simulation or learning activity to their practice. This was often manifested by the students asking for more details about the simulation and rejecting the plausibility of this hypothetical situation occurring in their schools or districts. CTER students also deferred to third party mediators such as Acceptable Use Policies (AUPs) or screening software to defer the decision making process. This deferral of responsibility is significant and relates to the politically tenuous situation many teachers find themselves in as they try to integrate technology into their classrooms. These third party mediators function as cover, to distance students from the intense political problems associated with using the Internet in their classrooms. Finally, students also used moral outrage as a tactic against what they deemed immoral content. This kind of outrage was expressed throughout the semester, but became more intense during the Suzie page crisis. This resistance functioned to protect their personal and professional identities and guided how students participated and how they learned in the Suzie page simulation.

If we consider the EPS 304 class a community of practice, then the professor was attempting with the Suzie pages to get students to embrace the practitioner identity of "philosophers" or "cultural critics." The CTER students resisted this new identity by refusing to align themselves with the goals of the instructional activity. As a result, they had very little motivation to learn the techniques of philosophical and critical inquiry. Instead, they reasserted their experience and personal models of the "reality" of teaching and rejected the hypothetical situation presented to them by the Suzie simulation. CTER students’ resistance was heightened when their personal and moral codes were offended by the Suzie crisis. Simply put, they resisted developing this new identity (e.g., critic) and rejected participation in this community of practice because it threatened their practice and identities as K-12 professionals.

However, this resistance was not a general rejection of the roles of "philosopher" or "critic" for the entire course. In another activity in this class, each student participated in a team that focused on one of the seven major topics of the class. Each team produced a "white paper", a report which outlined the nature of important problems and provided advice on how to deal with the problems. These white papers required an in-depth critical analysis of the problems. The EPS 304 instructors described these white papers in this way: "Each of these white papers addresses how these issues present educators with a number of difficult challenges and dilemmas in deciding how to incorporate these new technologies wisely and to good educational effect. To our knowledge, these resources represent the best overview of these issues, written by and for educators and their particular concerns, available on the Web." (CTER White Papers on Technology Issues for Educators, http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/wp/ ). This new identity, that of educators presenting critical analyses of important problems to other educators, was more compatible with their identity as K-12 professionals, and so was much easier for the CTER students to adopt.

Extending, adopting, and defending practitioner identities: Implications for online teacher professional development

A close analysis of K-12 teachers in CTER Online has identified connections between the development of practitioner identities and participation in the online program. The extension of existing practitioner identities describes a process in which CTER students, who are also K-12 professionals, identify connections between the instructional activity in the online courses and their practice as K-12 professionals. As they participate in learning activities, CTER students are able to draw on the stock of knowledge gathered from their experience as K-12 practitioners. Another important element of this type of identity formation is the alignment between their personal goals and the instructional goals. This alignment motivates students to learn new technologies and new kinds of instructional practices. The case study analysis of Michele Jacobs provides a detailed explanation of the ways in which her knowledge of teaching young children came into dialogue with the new practices of technology integration as she developed her e-portfolio. Her ongoing development of this curriculum project functioned to extend her existing practitioner identity and positioned her more centrally in the multiple communities of practice in which she participated (e.g., online class, school, district, wider community of teachers).

The second type of identity formation process included the adoption of new practitioner identities. This adoption process requires that students develop new knowledge and learn new practices and it is often problematic potentially leading to frustration and false starts. In this instance, the student does not have a set of personal models and must construct them through their participation in the online community of practices. In the words of Lave and Wenger (1991), the student is located within the periphery of the community and through participation attempts to attain a more central status. As a result, students are more likely to rely on textbooks, interactions with classmates, and other scaffolds from their instructor to guide their participation. We described Lynn's process of developing the new practitioner identity of a program evaluator. She initially conflated the related but distinct terms of assessment and evaluation. Her experience was marked by these kinds of difficulties and confusions, but because of her participation in a highly functioning and supportive team, she continued to do the hard work of adopting a new practitioner identity.

The third identity process is the development of resistance as a mechanism for protecting their practitioner identities. Students deploy these resistant identities when they are asked to transgress previously held beliefs rooted in existing identities or asked to transgress boundaries they find important to their teaching practice. As research in teacher autobiography demonstrates (Grimmett & Neufeld, 1994), teachers often utilize principles of morality and ethics gathered from their personal lives to guide their teaching practice. So it is not surprising that they deploy resistance in activities that ask them to transgress their personal, moral, and ethical beliefs. When teachers resist, their personal goals and the instructional goals are often not in alignment motivating them to not "go along" with the instructor. The analysis of the Suzie pages discussion shows that the teachers resisted most attempts by the professor to get them to think critically and extend their thinking beyond their usual teaching practice in this activity. This resistance is explained by the organization of the classroom discourses, contemporary conditions of teaching and these teachers’ unwillingness to transgress important personal and moral beliefs.

Implications of this research

Implications for in-service training of K-12 educators via online technologies

The emergence of the information age has led to an increased need for teachers to be trained to integrate educational technologies into their classroom and to reform their teaching practice. Some have argued that the Internet and communication technologies provide one context for this training. In this section, we discuss the implications this research has for providing professional development online with a particular focus on teaching teachers to integrate technology into the context of a reformed curriculum.

What is unique about these technologies is they allow students to bridge the boundaries between taking graduate level course work and their practice as K-12 practitioners. This flexibility allows them to remain in their classrooms and districts and to apply the knowledge. Many of the CTER students have said that they participate in the class's message board interaction during their lunch breaks or preparation times at school. For example, Michele Jacobs’ experience highlights the ways in which teachers can learn to build upon their existing knowledge and develop a curriculum project that had effects in her classroom and beyond.

Another important finding is the extent to which teachers can collaborate completely online. Indeed, Michele and Lynn's team demonstrated that they could collaborate online and create a strong sense of group belonging while producing a professional quality evaluation. This could be extended to district level training or collaboration of teachers across districts. For example, Michele, partly as a result of her experience in this group, has developed a collaborative relationship with a teacher in North Carolina. She and this teacher are connecting their students via "pen pal" relationships and sharing ideas about teaching. The fact that asynchronous networks worked so well to facilitate collaboration gives one some hope that they could be used to develop collaborative relationships and the improvement of teaching. Further research needs to be conducted in this area to see what kinds of communication tools and online communication practices best facilitates this kind of sharing. This research builds on the work by Levin and his colleagues and clearly demonstrates that advanced learning technologies can be utilized to facilitate professional development and collaboration. What is clear is these technologies do create the conditions for teachers to develop collaborative relationships far beyond their schools and districts.

Learning to integrate technology by using online technology

By taking this online course, students were compelled to learn technologies to support their participation. To sustain participation, CTER students learned to create web pages, developed electronic portfolios, used PowerPoint, Excel and Microsoft Word. In addition, they learned how to use synchronous and asynchronous technologies to communicate with the instructor and classmates. For example, Michele Jacobs learned how to use PowerPoint and how to develop electronic portfolios and used her newly formed competence to develop an e-portfolio curriculum project. She later used this newly formed knowledge to develop portfolios for teachers in her school and district and to help teachers develop professional presentations. The analysis of Michele's experience is a compelling argument for the use of online technology to teach technology integration. Not only do these technologies allow students to remain in their districts and schools and have a ready context for application and integration of technology but participating in the online classroom requires that students develop a facility with these same technologies. Further research needs to specify the specific ways in which online technology can be most effectively used to promote technology integration in the context of reformed teaching practice.

Implications for theories of identity and learning

Lave and Wenger (1991) argued that learning is a process of becoming a central participation within a community of practice and adopting a participant identity. This research takes this relationship between identity and learning seriously and applies it to K-12 teachers participation within the context of the online classroom. This analysis of identity and learning described the ways in which CTER students’ practitioner identities positioned them within multiple communities of practice (e.g. online class, schools, and districts) and how this process influenced students’ ongoing participation in these contexts. Consider the differences between Michele and Lynn's participation in the evaluation of the simulated school project. Because Michele was expanding on an existing practitioner identity, she was positioned differently with regards to the instructional activity and the wider evaluation community of practice. Indeed, she was not a newcomer, but had significant experience making her a more central participant in this community of practice. Her process of expanding on this practitioner positioned her to be a leader in the group and a mentor or guide for Lynn. In contrast, Lynn did not have experience evaluating clearly placing her on the margins of the simulated school instructional activity and the wider evaluation community. As she worked to adopt this new identity, she had some difficulties learning key concepts and practices, but eventually positioned herself more centrally as she tried to make significant contributions to their team’s evaluation project. This account of Michele and Lynn further specifies how the status of one’s practitioner identity positions one in a community of practice and how this positioning influences one’s participation.

Another contribution of this research to the study of identity and learning are the dimensions utilized to differentiate the processes of extending, adopting, and defending practitioner identities. Although there is clearly a need for further research to specify these relationships, the idea that identity is constructed along these dimensions is a hypothesis that needs further research and explication. This dissertation represents one compelling account of this process, other research exploring these dimensions relevant to identity formation and learning are necessary.

Identity formation and collaboration via online technology

Bruce (1997) and Haas (1996) both argue that technologies do not determine use, but are in a transactional relationship with people and the purposes and practices in which they are used. In addition, Hawisher & Self (1999), Baym (1997) and Haythornthwaite, Wellman, & Garton (1998) discuss the ways in which the Internet and communication technologies provide a potential context for identity formation and community building. The case study research reported in this paper supports and extends these findings along several lines. The discussion of Michele's development of her curriculum project described the supportive environment that was constructed over the course of three semesters and how this supportive environment facilitated the extension of her existing practitioner identity. Other examples of this rich environment for student interaction in CTER OnLine are reported in Levin & Waddoups (2000).

In addition, the description of Lynn's participation in her class team demonstrated how a group identity scaffolded her adoption of this new practitioner identity. Finally, the account of students participating in the virtual Suzie pages activity demonstrated how consensus was reached among the students as they supported each others' resistance to the characterizations of their teaching practice. This is an example of the ways in which students used asynchronous technology to defend their practitioner identities, but this use subverted the instructor’s goals and objectives. In summary, this research supports the claim that the Internet and text based communication technologies are rich sites for K-12 teacher’s to extend, adopt, and defend their practitioner identities, but the outcome cannot be determined in advance. Indeed, CTER students often used the online technologies to meet their own goals, despite the goals or intentions of the instructional designer or faculty member.

Implications for developing and delivering online education

There is a heated debate concerning the advisability of using the Internet and communication technologies to provide distance education. One point of contention is the extent to which these technologies can create robust learning environments. The detailed analysis of Michele, Lynn and their classmates as they participated in the CTER Online program provide tentative findings concerning what constitutes best practices in online instruction more generally and specifically for teacher professional development.

Implications for the creation of effective online learning spaces

These case study analyses have illustrated ways in which the Internet and communication technologies can create effective spaces for professional development. From the analysis of Michele in developing her curriculum project and Lynn participating as a member of an evaluation team it is evident that these online technologies provided them with spaces for learning. The power of the online environment for Michele is that she was able to learn principles of technology integration while experimenting in her classroom. This created an important synergy between her role as a student in the online classroom and her role as a teacher in her first grade classroom. In contrast, Lynn learned to conduct a program evaluation through evaluating a simulated junior high school in collaboration with Michele and other team members who had more experience in this area than she was. This collaboration was conducted completely online and provided a context for her to make mistakes and eventually develop a better understand of the evaluation process. These findings suggest that online technologies may be particularly effective to support apprenticeship learning (Levin & Waugh, 1998), anytime and anywhere (Levin & Waddoups, 2000).

The elements of quality online instruction that emerged from this study support recent published findings from the CTER Online program (Levin, Levin, & Waddoups 1999; Levin & Waddoups, 2000). First, it is important to provide students with multiple communication tools so they can utilize them to accomplish the tasks they need to accomplish. For example, the teams in the EPS 304 course used asynchronous tools to propose directions for their evaluation of the simulated junior high school, to give personal opinions about directions, to comment on other peoples summaries of readings, and to make suggestions about evaluation questions. However, they used synchronous tools to develop a consensus and reach closure so they could move forward on the evaluation project. Using both kinds of communication technologies helped facilitate their positive group interaction. Second, it is important to provide students with multiple instructional formats. For example, in the evaluation class the CTER students participated in reading groups, case study groups, a simulation, and evaluated their individual project. Participating in these multiple formats created an opportunity for Lynn to learn how to evaluate. Third, it is important to provide students with rich feedback from multiple sources. For example, when Michele developed her curriculum project she received feedback from her classmates, from faculty members, from community members, and from her colleagues. Through receiving this feedback, she was able to extend her practitioner identity as a skilled user of educational technology and was able to find new innovative uses of her e-portfolios such as developing portfolios for all teachers in her building. Fourth, it is important to provide students a context to apply their knowledge, whether it is in a simulation or their own classrooms, and then to have a context to discuss their application. Michele developing her e-portfolio, using it in her classroom, and evaluating the effectiveness of the project were all contexts for application and feedback. .

Fostering effective learning teams in the online classroom

The analyses reported here provide some tentative principles of what constitutes a good working group and how such a group functions to support learning.

First, the combination of synchronous and asynchronous technology is probably important—the groups examined here were able to use the synchronous technologies to discuss immediate needs and to build consensus on actions and the asynchronous media to carry on discussions of readings and to voice opinions. They responded to each other’s messages quickly and were encouraging and caring about their group members. Having a suite of communication tools was important. Second, it is important to have leadership emerge in the group to assign tasks and take responsibility for the overall direction of the group. In her team, Michele Jacobs and Matthew Rockford emerged as leaders who had expertise and were able to scaffold the participation of less experienced team members like Lynn. Third, the case study analyses suggests that purposefully selecting groups with mixed abilities is likely to promote learning and collaboration. Fourth, it was helpful for these students to have the project divided into identifiable tasks and intermediate goals and to divide these tasks and deadlines among the participants. Indeed, unless Lynn was "forced" to take a leading role in Section three of the junior high evaluation, she may have been content playing a more passive participant role. Fifth, the students were able to build and benefited from the development of group affiliation, which led to a greater commitment to the well being of the group. This was clearly demonstrated by the statement by many group members that they had the "best group" and that they had a "team spirit." This high functioning group allowed for Lynn to make many mistakes, but corrected her to a group of people that helped scaffold her participation by helping her to perform better than she could if she worked alone. What is especially interesting about this group is they were able to complete their work entirely through the use of text-based communication technologies. Building on these tentative findings, there is a need to systematically analyze what kinds of discourse and material practices are necessary to constitute positive collaborative relationships in the online classroom.

Development of a supportive online classroom community

Another important finding of this study is the importance of providing a supportive community of practice for learning. When Michele was working on her e-portfolio project there were many instances where she received a great deal of support from her classmates and the instructors. Because CTER students are able to review each others' work and make comments anytime and anywhere a computer was available these supportive relations may be more likely to occur in the online class. There are a few conditions that may promote the development of a supportive learning environment from my case study analysis. First, the instructor must model supportive online communication to students. In the case study analysis of Michele, all the faculty members provided supportive and constructive feedback to her. This kind of communication served as a model for how CTER classmates should respond to each other’s work. Second, designing online experiences using the cohort model creates the condition where students become familiar with each other both personally and professionally. Many times students provided support to those students they knew best. Third, having students work on projects that extend across semesters allows them to develop expertise and helps their classmates become familiar with their project. This kind of familiarity allows for more detailed feedback and ongoing support. My analysis of Michele's development of a curriculum project and Lynn's experience learning to evaluate both provide evidence for the development of a supportive learning environment using online communication tools. There is a need for further research to discuss the ways in which these technologies can be used to create supportive teaching and learning atmospheres

Difficulty of entertaining sensitive online communications online

The analysis of the Suzie Pages discussion in EPS 304 points to the difficulty of entertaining sensitive discussion through online communication technologies. More research needs to be conducted to identify strategies for effectively conducting sensitive online communications. Some possible directions for this work could include: First, there may be patterns of faculty intervention that allow for more sensitive discussions to take place. In the virtual Suzie interactions, the instructor did not respond to individual contributions, but responded to all the student’s contributions. Would responding to contributions individually instead of as a group have downplayed the likelihood of resistance? Second, there were twenty- six students participating in the Suzie discussion. Maybe having students work in groups to develop responses would have been more effective and downplayed student resistance. Third, new media such as voice and interactive video may be helpful to communicate the nuance message that the instructor was trying to communicate. There is a need for further research to determine effective methods for conducting sensitive discussions online that promote positive student engagement and downplay the likelihood of resistance.

Summary

The case studies presented in this paper have provided detailed accounts of K-12 teachers participating in an online Masters degree program. We have argued that the process of deploying a practitioner identity guides how students participate in the context of this online program. Indeed, there seems to be a different pattern associated with those extending existent identities versus those adopting new practitioner identities. In addition, there is the likelihood that resistance will occur as students participate in sensitive online discussions. This case study analysis has also pointed to ways to provide quality online education and professional development for K-12 practitioners. In particular, the research identified the power of teaching teachers to integrate technology through technology and having a context for learning, application, and discussion. There is still a great deal we do not know about participating and learning in online communities, but these case studies represent an effort to explore the dynamics between identity and learning in these contexts.

References

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank UI Online and Ed-Online for their financial support of CTER Online and the evaluation reported in this paper. We also would like to thank the CTER Online students, faculty and support staff, without whom CTER Online would not be such a powerful context for learning and research.