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A study of peer coaching in teachers’ online professional learning communities

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Abstract

Facilitating professional development of teachers has been considered as a critical factor for improving education quality. The use of an online professional learning community can provide professional development opportunities including courses, activities, and interactions with peers; thus, teachers can get together to share their resources, solve problems, develop working strategies, and improve their performance. In this study, peer coaching consists of four factors: academic support, technical support, emotional support, and reflective support. The authors collected self-reports regarding peer coaching behavior from 376 members of online professional learning communities in China. Data analyses and investigations of logs showed that the teachers had rated themselves as slightly above the average in all the factors of peer coaching. Peer coaching was mainly composed of reflective support and emotional support. Male teachers tended to provide more technical support, and senior teachers tended to provide more academic support and less technical support. The teachers with 6–10 years of teaching experience scored lowest in the construct of technical support. There was no significant difference between primary school and junior high school teachers. The findings of this study suggest that the development of teachers’ pedagogical, content, and technological knowledge (TPACK) may help to improve the effect of peer coaching and conducting training for teachers before the peer coaching process may help.

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Acknowledgments

This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61272205 and 71473079) and the MOE (Ministry of Education in China) Project of Humanities and Social Sciences (Grant No. 15YJC880134), as well as the Philosophy and Social Science Foundation Project of Hunan Province (Grant No. 15YBA099). This work was also conducted as part of a research project that was funded by the key laboratory of Hunan Province (Project No. 2015TP1017).

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Correspondence to Si Zhang or Qingtang Liu.

Appendix

Appendix

1.1 Academic support

  • AS1: I can actively help others to analyze and improve their ICT lesson plans.

  • AS2: I can timely give comments on others’ ICT lesson plans.

  • AS3: I can help others to modify their ICT lesson plans many times.

  • AS4: I can actively respond to others’ requests for help regarding subject matter knowledge.

  • AS5: I can timely give comments on others’ video lessons based on the ICT lesson plans.

  • AS6: I can timely submit revisions for the ICT lesson plan.

1.2 Technical support

  • TS1: I can actively help others to use ICT tools in the classroom.

  • TS2: I can actively provide ICT resources for others.

  • TS3: I will tell others how to give comments and reply.

  • TS4: I will share the experience of how to develop ICT curriculum resources.

  • TS5: I will share the experience of how to use ICT tools in the classroom.

1.3 Emotional support

  • ES1: I will give positive comments when others submit an ICT lesson plan.

  • ES2: I will share the emotional story in my own teaching experiences.

  • ES3: I will give positive comments when others submit a video lesson based on the ICT lesson plan.

  • ES4: I will encourage other teachers to reform their teaching activities.

  • ES5: I will give positive comments on other teachers’ advice.

1.4 Reflective support

  • RS1: I will timely reflect on every step of classroom teaching.

  • RS2: I will timely reflect on professional learning activity.

  • RS3: I will timely respond to the comments from others.

  • RS4: I will timely summarize the learning activities.

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Zhang, S., Liu, Q. & Wang, Q. A study of peer coaching in teachers’ online professional learning communities. Univ Access Inf Soc 16, 337–347 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-016-0461-4

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