Cultivating a Personal Learning Network that Leads to Professional Change

Cultivating a Personal Learning Network that Leads to Professional Change

Dissertation Manuscript Submitted to Northcentral University Graduate Faculty of the School of Education in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

by BENJAMIN L. STEWART

Prescott Valley, Arizona August 2015

Approval Page Cultivating a Personal Learning Network that Leads to Professional Change By BENJAMIN L. STEWART Approved by:

________________________________________________ Chair: Dr. Alexandru Spatariu

_____________________ Date

Certified by:

________________________________________________ Dean of School: Dr. Heather Frederick

_____________________ Date

Abstract Teacher professional development opportunities in Mexico are currently lacking. The traditional approaches of professional development such as workshops and conferences are commonplace but do little to bridge the gap between abstract concepts about teaching and learning and the practicalities teachers face in the classroom. The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to describe how ideas, materials, and social interactions form a PLN through online, informal pedagogical dialogues among English language educators as it relates to professional learning. The five participants of this study were selected from a total of 10 based on their willingness to complete an informed consent form, complete an initial online survey, interact with other professionals publically online, and participate in a final interview. The online survey contained demographic information about each case and included both open and closed items; a content analysis was done on public interactions that tool place online; and a final in-depth interview used open questions to inquire about how respective PLNs changed over time. All data was coded, categorized, and placed into themes based on the ideational, material, and social aspects of each PLN. The findings show that professional knowledge, skills sets, and overall dispositions emerge in unique ways based on how ideas, technologies, and personal contacts interrelate with each other over time, and that an individual’s PLN provides unanticipated benefits when sharing publicly online.

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Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1 Background ................................................................................................................................. 4 Problem Statement ...................................................................................................................... 7 Purpose........................................................................................................................................ 9 Theoretical Framework ............................................................................................................. 10 Research Questions ................................................................................................................... 14 Nature of the Study ................................................................................................................... 16 Significance .............................................................................................................................. 16 Definitions ................................................................................................................................ 18 Summary ................................................................................................................................... 21 Chapter 2: Literature Review ........................................................................................................ 23 EFL Teaching Knowledge ........................................................................................................ 26 Professional learning community ............................................................................................. 39 The Complexity of Learning..................................................................................................... 47 Actor-network Theory (ANT) .................................................................................................. 53 Personal Learning Network (PLN) ........................................................................................... 57 Summary ................................................................................................................................... 64 Chapter 3: Research Method......................................................................................................... 66 Research Method and Design ................................................................................................... 68 Participants................................................................................................................................ 70 Materials/Instruments ............................................................................................................... 72 Data Collection, Processing, and Analysis ............................................................................... 76 Methodological Assumptions, Limitations, and Delimitations ................................................ 83 Ethical Assurances .................................................................................................................... 84 Summary ................................................................................................................................... 86 Chapter 4: Findings ....................................................................................................................... 87 Results ....................................................................................................................................... 89 Evaluation of Findings ............................................................................................................ 124 Summary ................................................................................................................................. 131 Chapter 5: Implications, Recommendations, and Conclusions .................................................. 133 Implications ............................................................................................................................ 135 Recommendations ................................................................................................................... 141 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................. 144

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References ................................................................................................................................... 147 Appendix A: Informed Consent Form ........................................................................................ 162 Appendix B: EFL/ESL Teacher Survey ..................................................................................... 164 Appendix C: Semi-structured Interview Guide .......................................................................... 176 Most Significant Change ............................................................................................................ 176 Appendix D: Multicase Study Preestablished Themes based on Research Questions .............. 177 Appendix E: Matrix for Generating Theme-based Assertions ................................................... 178 from Case Findings Rated Important .......................................................................................... 178 Appendix F: Matrix for Generating Theme-based Assertions................................................... 178 from Merged Findings Rated Important ..................................................................................... 178 Appendix G: A Matrix for Generating Theme-Based ............................................................... 180 Assertions from Important Factor Clusters ................................................................................. 180 Appendix H: Predetermined Codes ........................................................................................... 181

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List of Tables Table 1: Overall Participant Demographics ------------------------------------------------------------ 90 Table 2: How Participants Feel About Sharing With Strangers Publically Online --------------- 91 Table 3: Twitter Usage per Participant------------------------------------------------------------------ 92 Table 4: Twitter Ratios of Mentions, Replies, Links, and Hashtags to Total Number of Tweets 94 Table 5: Amber's Twitter Mentions, Replies, and Retweets as a Percentage of Tweets ----------- 95 Table 6: Amber's Blog Publishing Schedule ------------------------------------------------------------ 96 Table 7: Internet Usefulness and Use (Barry) --------------------------------------------------------- 100 Table 8: Barry's Use of Twitter Mentions, Replies, Links, and Hashtags -------------------------- 101 Table 9: New, Reply, and Retweets per Total Tweets ------------------------------------------------- 107 Table 10: Twitter Platforms per Participant ----------------------------------------------------------- 107 Table 11: TESOL Key Words Tweeted ------------------------------------------------------------------ 109 Table 12: Other Key Words Tweeted-------------------------------------------------------------------- 110 Table 13: Mention and Hashtag Averages per Participant ------------------------------------------ 117 Table 14: Key words from Twitter Posts (Tweets) ---------------------------------------------------- 123

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List of Figures Figure 1: Fractal Structure ........................................................................................................... 51 Figure 2: Networks ........................................................................................................................ 60 Figure 3: Participant's Self-Assessment of Understanding Social Media .................................... 93

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1 Chapter 1: Introduction One of the most effective means of teacher professional development is through informal

dialogues about teaching and learning (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2011). Although current research supports the need for formal learning (e.g., workshops and conferences) and informal learning (e.g., teacher networks and mentoring), the tendency is to rely on isolated workshops and conferences as the primary means for promoting professional learning (Chung Wei, Darling-Hammond, Andree, Richardson, & Orphanos, 2009; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2011). This is a particular problem in Mexico where as few as 40% of teachers receive the professional development support that they need (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2011). This same report shows similar problems for novice teachers in Mexico since 60-65% of have no access to induction and mentoring programs. Thus, informal learning becomes a necessary complement to traditional, more formal styles of learning that provides all educators the support needed to achieve professional learning goals.

Informal learning through the use of informal pedagogical dialogues has been researched in terms of how specific online spaces or Web 2.0 tools were being used in education: microblogging, blogging, and online communities (Ebner, Lienhardt, Rohs, & Meyer, 2010; Park, Mi Heo, & Lee, 2011; Ren et al., 2012). These studies conclude that current technologies (i.e., microblogging and blogging) expand knowledge flow into informal, communal discourses beyond the confines of formal structures of which are usually associated with temporally and spatially limited, contrived, educational contexts (i.e., workshops, conferences, classroom settings, etc.). And although other studies have contributed to informal discourses related to learning and pedagogy through ICTs (Lawless & Pellegrino, 2007; Lofstrom & Nevgi, 2008),

they tend to focus more on measuring learning satisfaction rather than on addressing whether

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teachers have actually changed their beliefs and intentions towards student-centered learning (Rientes, Brouwer, & Lygo-Baker, 2013). Thus, more empirical evidence is needed to better understand a change in one’s interactional patterns and pedagogical ideas through informal pedagocial dialogues that emerge over time without limiting the adult learner to a certain type of technology (e.g., microblogging or blogging), community, or any other temporal and spatial limitation. To understand a change in behaviors and ideas is to understand the emergent nature of informal and open discourse. Change as it relates to professional teacher learning is complex which according to Barlow & Waldrop (1994) and Richardson (2005) is a focus on emergent behaviors that result from interactions within and among self-organizing and adaptive systems (as cited in Mason, 2008).

The term PLN is directly derived from Personal Learning Environment, which was first used at the Personal Learning Environments Session at a JISC/ CETIS Conference in 2004” (Warlick, 2012, p. loc.202). Siemens (2005) also uses the term briefly, but more importantly defines networks as connections between human and non-human devices: computer networks, individuals, groups, etc. (2003). When researching PLNs and virtual learning environments, Nikolaou & Tsolakidis (2013) specifically defines a PLN as simply “… a network of people with whom one is connected with the aim to learn” (p. 79). Subscribing to Latour’s (2005) notion that ideas or concepts are also nodes which can form associations with other human and physical objects, a more holistic approach will be taken for this study when defining the term PLN; that is, a PLN will be defined as an individual's recollection of ongoing associations of networked nodes (i.e., conceptualizations, technologies, and social interactions) with the intent of fostering both intentional and incidental forms of learning or change. Ideas or concepts will be presented

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in terms of teacher knowledge specifically and technologies, social interaction, and ideas as well will be rooted in complexity theory and actor-network theory.

Due to the lack of empirical evidence around the complexity of reifying the term personal learning network (PLN), a theoretical-based explanation follows that frames the term, PLN, specifically for the purposes of this study. To reify the notion of complex change through informal pedagogical dialogues, concepts, materials, and social interaction can be viewed as an aggregation. Based on actor-network theory (ANT), associations in the aggregate exist between actors, or “any thing that‌modifies a state of affairs by making a differenceâ€? (Latour, 2005, loc.

933). Actors, or network nodes, then can be an ideational (e.g., concepts), material (e.g., technologies), or interpersonal (e.g., social interactions) collective of interrelated network nodes.

The objective of applying actor-network theory within research is to understand how network nodes (or actors) come together, how they manage to hold together, and how they form associations that produce agency: identities, rules, routines, policies, instruments, and reforms (Fenwick & Edwards, 2010). To this end, and for the purpose of this study, nodal associations will be viewed in terms of ideas, technologies, and online social interactions, which collectively will be referred to as a PLN. The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study is to better understand the complexities and emergent attributes of informal, professional learning in the field of language education so that subsequent efforts can be made to improve the kinds of support that novice and expert practitioners need to improve pedagogical skill sets. This study will explore the emergent patterns stemming from online informal dialogues about teaching and learning in terms of how EFL educators interact with ideas, decide on the materials and technologies to be used, and determine with whom they will communicate in terms of cultivating a PLN, a term rooted in

complexity theory and actor network theory, but specifically defined for the purposes of this

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study. Chapter one presents the background, problem, and purpose statement behind the research questions that lead the study through various concepts included in Chapter two. The second chapter presents teacher knowledge, professional learning communities, complexity theory, and actor-network theory that lead to the main theoretical concept for this research: the PLN. Chapter three includes the method and design of the research, the participants, instruments, data collection, assumptions, and ethical assurances that pertain to this study.

Background Quality teacher professional development continues to be well researched due to its influence on teacher practice (Darling-Hammond, Wei, Andree, Richardson, & Orphanos, 2009).

After having conducted a meta-analysis of many quantitative studies on teacher professional development, Darling-Hammond et al. concluded that quality teacher professional development results from understanding the design of professional development experiences themselves.

More specifically, designing opportunities for active learning or sense-making activities become a crucial part of any educative experience (Snow-Renner & Lauer, 2005). One way to design opportunities for active learning is through the development of communities of practice.

Communities of practice (CoPs) are groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002). In higher education, CoPs have been found to have “analytical purchase� when it comes to teaching and learning in the particular academic classroom (Morton, 2012, p. 101). But Morton also acknowledges that CoPs hardly explain the hierarchical roles that take place between instructor and student relationships. In

fact, ANT, as an alternative to CoPs, provides an alternative lens for framing change and

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innovation when it comes to analyzing social relationships (Fenwick & Edwards, 2012).

ANT provides a viable means for investigating sociomaterial orientations that are being explored in social science research (Fenwick, Edwards, & Sawchuk, 2011). ANT, or aggregations of associations between actors (i.e., ideas, human beings, objects, etc.), has been found to support teacher change from a single narrative (i.e., one math teacher), using primarily one software package used for mathematical computations (Boylan, 2010). ANT, along with complexity theory, has also been used to study teachers, accountants, and pharmacists and how professional learning is assessed (Fenwick, 2009). The findings reveal that professional learning is less acquisitive, a-political, conscious, and representable and opens up the possibility that it is more of “a web of collective action of cultural discourses, nodes of micro-negotiation and struggle, politics of knowledge and institutions, and system contradictions of their work” (p.

242). Associating heterogeneous human and non-human actors or nodes in terms of a sociomaterial network then provides a theoretical base, in part, for articulating the complexities of open and transparent professional learning.

In addition to ANT, complexity theory offers a complementary framework with which to analyze how practitioners interact. “Complexity theory is an appropriate lens through which to view the dynamics at work within schools, not in order to predict and control but to enable more responsive and dynamic processes which accommodate existing and emerging possibilities” (Phelps, Graham, & Watts, 2011, p. 60). The authors conclude that professional development is not linear or of a single approach but rather that schools become more reflective and engaged when it comes to educators’ own professional learning. Other research has concluded that complexity theory is ideal for teacher development facilitators who support a bottom-up,

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emergent, and self-organizing approach to professional learning experiences among staff (Fazio & Gallagher, 2009). Using ANT and complexity theory as complementary conceptualizations, the term personal learning network (PLN) will be used as a basis for closing the gap in current literature that seeks to reveal the non-linear and emergent characteristics of professional learning in education.

For the purpose of this research, a PLN will be defined in greater terms than Nikolaou & Tsolakidis’s (2013) simplified definition, which mainly limits it to a human network. To understand the meaning of a PLN as it relates to this study is to take each of the three terms in turn, beginning with network. A PLN is a network just as ANT is a network of associative and interrelated entities or nodes: ideational (i.e., ideas, concepts, notions, feelings, etc.), physical (objects, material, technologies, etc.), and social (i.e., short-distance interactions among human beings). The theoretical basis for the idea of learning is rooted in complexity theory: learning as being emergent, non-linear, diverse, political, etc. Finally, a PLN more than anything personal in that it refers to the unit of analysis for this research; that is, the individual educator. Indeed, the learning network becomes personal since the individual remains the center of a surrounding learning network of connecting nodes.

Studies related to the distributed nature of learning, specifically the role of materiality in the workplace (e.g., technologies, artifacts, and objects), along with studies revealing the assumptions of what constitutes professional learning have been lacking in current research (Fenwick, 2009; Fenwick, 2010). Professional learning viewed in terms of a PLN is revealed within the specific definition used for the purposes of this study: a PLN as aggregated associations of ideas, materials, and social interactions. This study seeks to close the current gap in literature by taking a more holistic definition of a PLN and applying it to a group of language

educators among three different local universities. By understanding the distributed nature of

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learning – in terms of ideas, materials, and social interactions – and the learning complexities that exist in every-day, informal dialogues that educators engage in, professional learning that exists within a PLN will afford greater insight into how to plan and support professional learning experiences for both the novice and expert educator alike.

Problem Statement Traditional approaches to professional development remain popular but do not lead to ongoing and sustainable professional growth (Darling-Hammond, Wei, Andree, Richardson, & Orphanos, 2009). Darling-Hammond, Wei, Andree, Richardson, and Orphanos (2009) claim “episodic workshops disconnected from practice do not allow teachers the time for serious, cumulative study of the given subject matter or for trying out ideas in the classroom and reflecting on the results” (p. 44). And although isolated workshops and conferences provide teachers a break in routine, a chance to meet colleagues and discuss professional problems, and exposure to stimulating new ideas, they remain far removed from the situational factors affecting day-to-day classroom practices (Atay, 2006).

In Mexico a traditional view of professional learning is evident as the country trails 21 other countries when it comes to professional development support – just over 40% of Mexican teachers receive support compared to a global average of nearly 70% (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2011). Moreover, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report cites 60-65% of Mexican teachers have no formal induction and mentoring programs, which is quite high when compared to a global average of only18-20%. In order for educators in Mexico to receive the proper support needed for ongoing professional learning, a more complex approach is needed in defining “professional collaboration

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as spaces of intra-activity and disruption, where knowledge is distinguished as phenomena and identities (Fenwick, 2012). To make this distinction, a PLN perspective offers an alternative to interpreting how teaching practitioners interact with colleagues from their own institution as well as others outside their institution simultaneously (Mackey & Evans, 2011).

A theoretical framework rooted in PLN conceptualizations shifts from a phenomenonbased analysis (i.e., isolated workshops and conferences) to a relational-based analysis stemming from associations between ideas, technologies, and social relationships. Understanding PLN effects is “to imagine teaching and learning as material-semiotic assemblages of sociotechnical relations embedded in and performed by shifting connections and interactions among a variety of organic, technical, ‘natural’, 9 and textual materials” (Gough, 2004). Just as Angus, Cook, and Evans (2001) saw the simplistic task of making a cup of coffee as an exhaustive detail of multitude of connections involving both human and non-human devices, so too is the apparent simplistic task of educators interacting, sharing ideas, and using different technologies (as cited in Gough, 2004). This research sets out to implement a PLN theory (i.e., a theoretical conceptualization based on ANT and complexity theory and specifically defined for the purpose of this study) to not only better understand the complexities of professional learning as an individual, material, and social achievement, but also as an overall enacted network effect. This study sets out to reveal the ideational, material, and social connections (i.e., PLNs) behind online educator interactions so that intentional efforts going forward can assume more productive leadership roles within an organization by (a) enabling the conditions in which complex mechanisms can emerge and (b) preparing organizations to respond quickly and effectively to unanticipated conditions (both destructive and beneficial) (Uhl-Bien, 2008). Failing to recognizing the multitude of connections that form current professional learning behaviors will

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lead to accepting the notion of professional development solely in terms of isolated workshops and conferences, which continues to stifled learning experiences among educators in ways that hinder ongoing professional development.

Purpose The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to describe how ideas, materials, and social interactions form a PLN through online, informal pedagogical dialogues among English language educators as it relates to professional learning. It was the informal pedagogical dialogues with others that stem from online ICTs that contain what educators need to know to better do their jobs within an information landscape (Warlick, 2012). In fact, teachers must learn first how to be connected collaborators themselves before attempting to model such behaviors for students, for instance (Nussbaum-Beach, 2012). For the purpose of this study, the term PLN was defined as an aggregate of associations of ideas, technologies, and social interactions, and will serve as the theoretical concept under investigation, or what Stake (2006) refers to as “the quintain� (p. 6).

Specifically, this study analyzed how five English language educators interact openly online through detailed observations and participants’ own accounts of individual changes to ideational, material, and social relationships (i.e., an observance and description of a PLN). To conduct such an analysis, various data collection strategies were employed: (a) an online survey (Appendix B), which included an informed consent clause (Appendix A) that was used in part to select the participants of the study as well as to provide demographic information; (b) content analyze on informal pedagogical dialogues published publically online; and (c) a semi-structured interview (Appendix C). These strategies were designed in order to understand (a) how participants perceived open, online, informal pedagogical dialogues within their personal

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learning networks and (b) how participants perceived changes to their personal learning networks during the 10-week data collection process. Participants of the study interacted online throughout the 10-week period as they normally would have. HyperResearch, a qualitative research design software program, was used to analyze data collected from the online survey, informal pedagogical dialogues posted on the web, and recorded interviews in order to determine how ideational, material, and social relationships formed over time via informal pedagogical dialogues conducted by language educators through public, online interactions.

The objective of this study was to explore how participants conducted online pedagogical dialogues by framing ideas, technologies, and social interactions (i.e., PLN nodes) as being complex, emergent, and relational. By researching PLNs as being a dynamic set of nodal associations, humans and objects were viewed as effects of dynamic materialization processes that caused them to emerge through gatherings and act in indeterminate entanglements of local everyday practice – a relational materiality that is often overlooked in educational research (Fenwick, Edwards, & Sawchuk, 2011). Researching and unveiling PLNs within a local context remained the precursor for reconnoitering professional learning in terms of what individual identities and behaviors were translated in becoming part of a network (Fenwick, 2010). The alternative was to equate professional learning solely as isolated events (e.g., workshops and conferences) which would have a less likelihood of becoming relevant and meaningful for the teaching practitioner interested in ongoing professional learning.

Theoretical Framework The theoretical framework for this multiple case study was based on what constitutes teacher knowledge, complexity theory, and ANT. Specifically, this study sought to find out how informal dialogues among EFL educators in Mexico emerged within a complex and adaptive

EFL teacher knowledge-based network (i.e., one’s understandings, knowledge, skills, and

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dispositions). Teacher knowledge based on understandings emerges from a combination of facets: explaining, interpreting, apply, having perspective, having empathy, and having selfknowledge (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). In terms of EFL teachers, these six facets of understanding lead to a more comprehensive approach to language teacher competence (LTC) that emerges from three relational and interdependent domains: (i) language competence (i.e., the ability to communicate meaning), (ii) pedagogical competence (i.e., skill sets of one person that prompt learning in another person), and (iii) language awareness (i.e., knowledge about language or KAL) (Cots & Arnó, 2005). Because some English language teachers are non-native speakers themselves, Cots and Arnó’s (2005) notion of LTC is particularly useful since teacher knowledge is not only in terms of knowledge and understanding of content, but also knowledge related to being an English speaker and writer (i.e., skill-based) and knowledge about how others acquire the language (i.e., knowledge-based). Understanding what is meant by teacher knowledge underpins how the learning process can take place.

One way to shape what a teacher knows (i.e., understandings, knowledge, skills, and dispositions) is by stating that it occurs within a professional learning community (PLC). All PLCs share three common elements: a domain, practice, and community (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002). The authors stress that a PLN’s domain, practice, and community share a sense of commonality: (a) a domain with a mission statement or shared common interest; (b) a practice with a shared set of ideas, tools, information, and language; and (c) a community with the acceptance of group membership. And although learning can occur within a PLC, the focus of this research is to shift the unit of analysis to the individual EFL educator in understanding how

informal dialogues about teaching and learning emerge within a PLN. The emergence and

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complexity involved in cultivating a PLN is grounded in ANT. Complexity learning has long been researched in the hard sciences but more recently has included the social sciences as well. Two key concepts that relate complexity theory to learning stem from the notions of feedback loops and sustainability. Feedback loops are usually associated with teacher and student feedback based on performance evidence, but it is also the nonlinear logic that entails circular and recursive relationships between human and non-human devices (Kay, 2008). Over time, relational objects (i.e., human and non-human collective) that provide feedback loops stem from prior experiences through a decision-making process referred to as memory formation (Johnson, 2007). The memory formation process is what allows interactions to remain sustainable. Sustainability of a complex system results from the synergies that exist supporting the claim that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (Kayuni, 2010).

Through ongoing synergistic systems model, self-organization and sustainability exist despite a central controller or decision-maker that dictates how others are to behave. Within the framework of complexity theory, ANT explains how learning centers around the individual (as opposed to a PLC) through a personal learning network.

Understanding how ANT relates to a PLN requires defining what is meant by actant.

ANT consists of a network of actants that can be anything that acts or that can be acted upon, whether human (i.e., social) or non-human (i.e., textual, conceptual, or technical) (Latour, 1997).

The actants then act as ideational, material, and socially-connected nodes within a collective network. An aggregation of connected nodes (i.e., relational actants) forms a local, variable, and contingent actor-network method and theory that is derived from material-semiotics (Alexander, 2004). Material-semiotics from an ANT worldview â€œâ€Śdescribes the enactment of materially

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and discursively heterogeneous relations that produce and reshuffle all kinds of actors including objects, subjects, human beings, machines, animals, ‘nature’, ideas, organizations, inequalities, scale and sizes, and geographical arrangements” (Law, 2009, p. 2). The author points out that ANT’s material-semiotics describes the performative nature of human and non-human relations that lead to some aggregated effect (e.g., object, person, artifact, etc.). Hence, this study investigates the performative nature of ideas, materials, and people as a collective aggregate that presents itself as a dynamic effect or PLN. And at the same time, the PLN as a dynamic effect of interrelated nodes, was framed in terms of an individual case. The individual case, or unit of analysis, for this study is the EFL educator.

As a point of departure, a PLN incorporates complexity theory and ANT’s material semiotics but goes one step further. Whereas ANT focuses on how social behavior occurs within a network, a PLN takes on a connectivist approach in finding out how learning occurs within a network (Bell, 2010; Bell 2011). This research traced complexity and heterogeneity by asking participants what they do and how and why they interact the way they do within a PLN; in doing so, one escapes the tendency to homogenize and unify participants' particular surroundings (Fenwick & Edwards, 2010). Simply, complexity science provides a “clear, comprehensive, congruent, cohesive, and consistent explanation of particular aspects of reality” (Shoup & Clark Studer, 2010, p. vii). Professional learning from a complexity theory lens is expressed in terms of recognizing learning patterns that result from self-organization without the benefit of a central controller (Mitchell, 2009). An inquiry into PLNs is a descriptive journey into the educator’s learning trajectory in order to better understand the web relations that exist at cognitive, ideational, social, and material levels. Understanding such a learning trajectory enables stakeholders to better frame professional learning as the complex set of relations that it is, and is

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the precursor for understanding the complexity around improving student achievement resulting from insight into the complex web relations that make up any reality.

Whereas ANT focuses on how social behavior occurs within a network, a PLN takes on a connectivist approach in finding out how learning occurs within a network (Bell, 2010; Bell 2011). A PLN is an individual's recollection of ongoing distribution of boundary nodes over time (i.e., both human and non-human objects) that directly interact with each other via unidirectional or bidirectional forms of communication with the intent of fostering both intentional and incidental ends. For the purposes of this study, a PLN is an aggregation of socio-technical patterns; that is, patterns between ideas, material objects, and people which are actants in and of themselves. Hence, in order to provide more professional development support to educators in Mexico, this research seeks to shed light on how informal dialogues about teaching and learning intersect with reflective dialogues regarding educators’ awareness of their own dynamic PLN. This awareness becomes transformative as they interpret the various nodal relationships of their PLNs – an awareness that reveals itself through the contributions, informal dialogues, and personal reflections that emerge and adapt over time.

Research Questions A qualitative, multiple case study was conducted in order to better understand how a PLN emerges through online, informal, pedagogical dialogues in order to shed light on the support educators need in Mexico. Professional learning can be quite complex, so for the purpose of this research, a broadening of the term PLN was needed. The theoretical framework that leads to defining a PLN for the purposes of this study began with the notion of teacher knowledge.

Teacher knowledge included any potential ideas, opinions, thoughts, etc. that participants were likely to share about the teaching profession: content knowledge, pedagogical skill sets,

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dispositions, and additional linguistic skills educators may have had with regard to learning an additional language – it is possible that participants could have been non-native speaking English language educators. Beyond the ideational component of a PLN that involves the different aspects of teacher knowledge, social interaction were framed in terms of a professional learning community (PLC). Teacher knowledge and PLCs were then shifted to more salient aspects; videlicet, complex theory and ANT outline remained the key theoretical components of a PLN. Complex theory and ANT provided the learning-as-a-network mindframe that not only contrasted the notion of a PLC, but more importantly placed learning as a non-linear process of human and material (i.e., sociomaterial) aggregated relationships. It was precisely the aggregated, complex relationships between ideas, materials, and social interactions that served as the underlying premise of a PLN. A PLN, based on ANT and complexity theory are associations or connections of ideas, technologies, and social interactions; that is, to understand any one of these three elements is to understand the relationship between the three as an associative aggregate. The following research questions were based on the concept of a PLN and the patterns that emerged through open, online, informal pedagogical dialogues, with an end to better understand the complexities of professional learning, which remained the precursor to any viable steps leading to greater support to educators in Mexico. The first question resulted from observations from online activity while the second gave participants opportunities to express an interpretation in how PLNs changed over time: 1. How do PLNs of EFL educators emerge through open, online, informal pedagogical dialogues?

2. How do EFL educators explain changes to their personal learning networks over time?

Nature of the Study

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This multiple case study explored how PLNs emerged via open, online, informal pedagogical dialogues. Five EFL educators from different educational contexts interacted publically online discussing areas of teaching and learning English as a foreign language. A variety of data collection techniques were employed to obtain the qualitative data necessary for interpreting the emergence of a PLN and various patterns that resulted from online interactions: online survey, content analysis on observations made from informal pedagogical dialogues published on the web, and a final interview. The data collection process occurred over a 10week period and relied heavily on participant posts using social media and public websites. All data (i.e., recorded from the initial survey, informal pedagogical dialogues published on the web, and interviews) were then coded using mainly predetermined codes based on the literature review (e.g., ideational, material, and social interactions; fractals, etc.) along with additional latent codes that emerged during the data collection process. From the raw codes, analytic memos were realized in order to reflect and extract categories, themes, and patterns that evolved from participants’ PLNs. Raw codes were also linked to demographic information related to the participants of the study such as institution, education, and years of experience among others in order to search for any additional converging or diverging patterns that may existed between both the case and the PLN as a theoretical concept. Finally, HyperRESEARCH was used to capture and analyze all qualitative data.

Significance The findings of this study informed teachers and all other educational stakeholders how to better create an educational ecosystem around PLNs and informal pedagogical dialogues.

Currently, there is little research related to how the distributed nature of learning, specifically the

role of materiality in the workplace (e.g., technologies, artifacts, and objects) and the basic

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assumptions of what constitutes professional learning take place (Fenwick, 2009; Fenwick, 2010). Moreover, professional development tends to focus on practices and programs instead of people; that is, building professional learning around practices and programs tends to lead to isolated workshops, change initiatives that fail to create a conducive learning environment, and summative teacher evaluations that simply recapitulate past events with little-to-no ongoing support (Reeves, 2010). For these reasons, this study set out to analyze how informal dialogues reveal the distributed nature and complexity of professional learning in education. The distribution of learning was viewed in terms of a PLN or a connection between ideas, materials, and individuals that are interrelated and adaptive over time.

Knowing how EFL educators conduct informal pedagogical dialogues in terms of a dynamic PLN can offer a more engaging and effective professional development framework. As EFL educators begin getting used to openly sharing and contributing with others publically, open access learning transforms into a framework for educators to unite local issues related to teaching and learning to open and informal dialogues. The informal dialogues of teaching and learning then complement other qualitative and quantitative learning analytics that collectively provide for a variety of indicators that allow greater perceptiveness into the level of engagement within a professional development program. A PLN at its core is personal and underpins one’s entire professional learning experience. “Personalization elevates human learning to new heights while encouraging everyone involved to seek more� (Bonk, 2009, p. 352). As educators become more involved to seek more out of personal learning experiences on their own, a more sustainable learning trajectory ensues. As professional learning becomes more sustainable, a more

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ubiquitous professional development effect begins to provide the support needed to help close the gap between where Mexican learners are today and where they need to be in the future.

Definitions The following are key terms that relate to the context of the study and help provide perspective in framing the notion of a PLN as a means for one’s own professional learning.

Boundary nodes. Boundary nodes are people, groups, organizations, communities, and devices the learner directly interacts with (i.e., unidirectional or bidirectional) as part of a PLN).

The term is synonymous with the notion of actants within an actor network (Latour, 2005) and is limited to those with a direct connection or those defined as having one degree of separation from the learner or central node (i.e., individuals and artifacts that a learner directly maintains contact).

Connectivism. Connectivism is a learning theory that integrates chaos, network, complexity and self-organization theories, defines learning as residing also outside the individual and throughout the network itself, and recognizes that the decision-making process requires the learner to adapt to a context that is in a constant state of flux. The following are eight principles associated with connectivism as a learning theory: (a) importance of having a diversity of opinions, (b) connecting specialized boundary nodes, (c) learning residing in non-human appliances, (d) the capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known, (e) cultivating connections is a precursor to facilitate learning, (f) ability to connect between fields, ideas, and concepts, (g) currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge), (h) decision-making as a learning process (Siemens, 2005).

19 Open educational resource (OER). Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning

or research materials that are in the public domain or released with an intellectual property license that allows for free use, adaptation, and distribution (United Nations..., 2011).

Openness: The notion of openness relates to the underlining condition required in order to grow a PLN. A PLN must be open in the sense that OERs and OEPs are shared freely, enabling others to “reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute” (Wiley, 2008) resources and processes.

Personal learning network (PLN). A personal learning network (PLN) is defined as an ongoing distribution of material, ideational, and human relational nodes (i.e., both human and non-human objects) that consists of either unidirectional or bidirectional forms of communication for the purposes of promoting both intentional and incidental professional learning. For the purposes of this study, the term PLN is used instead of community of practice in that a PLN places more emphasis on socio-technical relationships of the individual (based on ANT and complexity theory) and is less concerned with cultural-historical perspective of group practice, which are characteristic of communities of practice (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002). Analyzing a PLN entailed investigating complex changes to a PLN over a meso-level period of time (i.e., period of weeks).

Quintain. In a multiple case study analysis, a quintain is what bounds various case studies together; that is, any object, phenomenon or condition under study (Stake, 2006). The author stresses the importance of addressing a “case-quintain dilemma” (p. 7): researchers should avoid focusing too much on the individual case while ignoring important details to the quintain or collective target. But at the same time, understanding the quintain is impossible without understanding individual cases. A case-quintain dilemma is provoked by a case-quintain dialectic:

20 “The Themes originated with people planning to study the Quintain. The Findings originated with people studying the Cases. These are two conceptual orientations, not independent but different. To treat them both as forces for understanding the Quintain, the Analyst keeps them both alive even as he or she is writing the Assertions of the final report. The Themes preserve the main research questions for the overall study. The Findings preserve certain activity (belonging to Case and Quintain alike) found in the special circumstances of the Cases.

When the Themes and Factors meet, they appear to the Analyst as both consolidation and extension of understanding” (pp. 39-40).

The notion of a quintain provides the basis for approaching data collection and data analysis of multiple case studies.

Sheltered Instructional Operation Protocol (SIOP) Model. The SIOP model provides the basis for making subject-matter more comprehensible to English language learners who are taking content courses with native-speaking learners. Aspects of the SIOP model include specific techniques that make input more comprehensible at the planning, implementation, and assessment stages (Echevarría, Vogt, & Short, 2004). Although the SIOP model was originally intended on teaching and learning English as a second language (e.g., learning English in the United States), the notion of comprehensible input has been well researched to include also the teaching and learning of English as a foreign language (e.g., learning English in Mexico) (Krashen, 2003). This study does not seek to defend what is “comprehensible”, but rather to use the SIOP model as a basis for communicating challenges English-as-a-foreign language educators face in terms of their own teaching and learning.

21 Understandings. Understandings are the “moral of the story, or rather, of [the] unit�

(Wiggins and McTighe, 2011, p. 80). When implementing a lesson, the goal is to create an educative experience where evidence provides successful results in terms how students develop six different facets: (a) explain, (b) interpret, and (c) apply concepts; (d) show empathy, (e) perspective, and (f) self-knowledge (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005). The six facets of understanding then become the basis with which all other performance verbs are labeled. For example, performance verbs such as describe, teach, and model fall under the facet of explanation while critique, translate, and judge fall under the facet of interpretation (Wiggins & McTighe, 2011). A non-hierarchical view of the six facets of understanding is a different approach to classifying performance verbs compared to Bloom's revised taxonomy. Bloom's revised taxonomy categorizes understanding as a lower order thinking skill along with additional performance verbs such as interpreting, summarizing, and explaining (Churches, 2008). Within the context of this study, LUISLE unites understandings and language objectives in tandem; that is, understandings and language become means and ends simultaneously.

Summary The objective of undergoing any professional development pursuit is to view leadership as a complex, adaptive, nonlinear feedback network that is emergent and consistent of an interactive process that is embedded in context and history (Uhl-Bien, 2011). This study seeks to fill the gap in current research by investigating the distributed nature of professional learning from a material-semiotic perspective and by describing the basic assumptions of what constitutes professional learning (Fenwick, 2009; Fenwick, 2010). A qualitative multiple case study explored how EFL educators in Mexico conduct open and informal pedagogical dialogues that enrich a personal learning network along with any challenges they may face. From an ANT and

complexity theory framework, conceptual, social, and material-based networks emerged by collecting various types of data: group discussions, interviews, participant reflections, content analysis, and pre and post teacher survey related to informal pedagogical dialogues via public web sites. Providing additional insight into what constitutes professional learning in education lays the groundwork for further discussion as to how to measure, support, and share alternative forms of assessing how an educator understandings, increases pedagogical skill sets, and determines the dispositions needed in order to become an expert learner – a prerequisite for teaching students too how to become an expert learner.

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23 Chapter 2: Literature Review The term professional learning community has become ubiquitous to a point that it has

essentially lost its meaning (DuFour, DuFour, & Eaker, 2008). Schools rely on mandate-driven change and isolated staff development sessions, which historically have not worked (Tomlinson, Brimijoin, & Narvaez, 2008). Little research has been conducted relating the distributed and emergent nature of learning, specifically the role of materiality in the workplace (e.g., technologies, artifacts, and objects) and the basic assumptions of what constitutes professional learning take place (Fenwick, 2009; Fenwick, 2010). This study seeks to close the current gap in literature by taking a more holistic definition of a PLN (i.e., not just human associations but ideational and technological associations as well) and applying it to a group of language educators among three different local universities. This study seeks to close this gap in literature specifically by showing how PLNs (as previously define) emerge among a group of educators from the same area (EFL) but from different universities that set out to compare and contrast network patterns not only between individuals but also groups of individuals within various institutions. Revealing the complexities and emergent attributes of a cultivating PLN help provide greater insight into the support educators need to remain more effective, efficient, and engaging life-long learners.

The search strategy for developing the literature review stemmed from a variety of strategies and tools, which utilized a two-stage search approach. Besides using scholarly texts from a personal library, different educational databases were being accessed to search articles, books, dissertations, and other scholarly texts. Some of the educational databases that were selected most often were EBSCOhost Education Research Complete (2012), ERIC (2012), Gale Academic OneFile (2012), ProQuest Education Journals (2012), SAGE Journals Online (2012),

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Science Direct (2012), Taylor & Francis Online (2012), Ebrary (2012), ProQuest Dissertations and Theses (2012), and Northcentral University Dissertations (2012). In addition to the aforementioned educational databases, Mendeley (2012) papers research catalog was used to find additional sources pertaining to topics associated with the dissertation thesis. The first stage when searching topics related to the dissertation thesis yielded Boolean searches that were conducted based on various keywords and phrases which included but were not limited to the following: personal learning network, personal learning environment, professional learning network, professional learning environment, professional development, professional learning, complexity theory, chaos theory, emergentism, actor-network theory, and material semiotics.

Boolean searches were also used during the second stage of the search strategy, using the Mendeley desktop (MendeleyResearch, 2011). The Mendeley desktop is a dedicated program suitable for applying Boolean searches throughout all collected sources imported into the program (either manually or directly from the browser) and also organizes sources into folders, tags, keywords, and open online groups which helps facilitate others who wish to comment and suggest additional sources related to the study.

The purpose of the literature review is to provide the theoretical support behind the idea of a PLN as it relates to professional learning in the area of teaching English as an additional language (i.e., English as a foreign language, English as a second language, etc.). For the purpose of this research, a PLN is being defined as an aggregate of heterogeneous associations of human and non-human entities or network nodes. Examples of human and non-human network nodes include human beings, groups and teams of individuals, institutions, animals, objects, materials, technologies, ideas, concepts, opinions, etc. Within the context of this research, three terms were used throughout to articulate the main constituents of a PLN as it pertains to

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professional learning among EFL language educators: (a) ideas or ideational representations, (b) technologies, and (c) human or social interactions that are for the most part limited to direct contact with others (i.e., primarily one-degree of separation). The literature review begins with presenting literature in support of teaching knowledge in generally leading up to EFL teaching knowledge specifically. Teaching knowledge in general is presented in terms of understandings, knowledge, skill sets, and disposition whereas educators in the EFL professional who are English language learners themselves might also have additional considerations related to teaching knowledge and skill. Teaching knowledge that begins the literature review presents the what of professional learning; the rest of the literature review deals with the how of professional learning.

Learning communities, complex theory, and actor-network theory demonstrate how society interacts and the diverse, non-linear, and unpredictable attributes that frame open communication.

Complexity theory provides an argument for non-linear learning (i.e., gaining understandings, skill sets, and dispositions) that at times is chaotic and emergent but can show signs of stability, mobility, and dynamic attributes. In addition to complexity theory, the section on actor-network theory (ANT) underpins learning by justifying how connections across a network form, decay, or can remain fairly stable over time. One of the key features of ANT is framing ideas, material, & individuals as a result of prior relationships formed over time, and how simplifying reality to dichotomies (e.g., teacher/learner, researcher/practitioner, expert/novice, etc.) can be avoided by viewing the nodes of a PLN not as being fixed but as a complex adaptable network of socio-material relationships that exhibit a potential to act. This ontological view of professional learning is the premise for the PLN – a theoretical concept rooted in the contextual dimensions of each individual language educator as the unit of analysis

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for this study. In the final section of the literature review, the PLN becomes the basis for one’s professional learning which emerges from interacting with other educators, materials, and conceptualizations in order to recognize complex, emergent, dynamic, and networked patterns.

EFL Teaching Knowledge Understandings. Any teaching practice is based on understandings. Bloom's revised taxonomy categorizes an understanding as a lower order thinking skill along with other related performance verbs such as interpreting, summarizing, and explaining (Churches, 2008). But for the purpose of this study, the term has a broader sense. Understandings are the “moral of the story� or concept, idea, or notion (Wiggins and McTighe, 2011, p. 80). When implementing a lesson, the goal is to create an educative experience where evidence provides successful results in terms how students develop six different facets of understanding: the learner can (a) explain, (b) interpret, and (c) apply concepts and the learner has (d) empathy, (e) perspective, and (f) selfknowledge (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005). The six facets of understanding then become the basis with which all other performance verbs are labeled. For example, performance verbs such as describe, teach, and model fall under the facet of explanation while critique, translate, and judge fall under the facet of interpretation (Wiggins & McTighe, 2011). A non-hierarchical view of applying the six facets of understanding avoids the notion that lower critical thinking skills are a necessary precursor to higher order cognitive development.

The notion of thinking about understandings in term of facets is not new. To help educators not confuse knowledge with understandings when designing rigorous performance tasks, five facets were originally introduced as a means for rethinking, reflecting upon, reconsidering, and revising the meaning of what was learned and what was believed: the learner can (i) explain and interpret and the learner has (ii) performance know-how, (iii) perspective, (iv)

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empathy, and (v) self-knowledge (Wiggins, 1998). But to 'really understand', the now six facets of understandings (i.e., explain, interpret, apply, perspective, empathy, and self-knowledge) collectively contribute to the degree students can (i) draw useful inferences, make connections among facts, and explain their own conclusions in their own words and (ii) “transfer learning to new situations with appropriate flexibility and fluency� (Wiggins & McTighe, 2011, p. 58). Just as the six facets apply to learners in the classroom, so too do they apply to the understandings faculty are to develop according the school mission and vision statements (Wiggins & McTighe, 2007). This cognitive approach regarding how people learn is applicable to any subject, but in terms of EFL teaching practice, a further discussion is needed.

In addition to the language teacher being able to form and promote understandings with learners, language teacher competence (LTC) more specifically articulates what is meant by declarative knowledge (i.e., understanding or knowing that...) in terms of teaching English as a foreign language. LTC emerges from three relational and interdependent domains: (i) language competence (i.e., the ability to communicate meaning), (ii) pedagogical competence (i.e., skill sets of one person that prompt learning in another person), and (iii) language awareness (i.e., knowledge about language or KAL) (Cots & ArnĂł, 2005). KAL (language and pedagogical competences will be discussed later) includes in part, topics such as second language acquisition, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and language assessment which incidentally may or may not be synonymous with the term content knowledge. KAL and content knowledge are synonymous if the language teacher is giving a course in psycholinguistics; that is, giving an English for academic purposes class where the subject knowledge is not solely linguistic. But if the language teacher is giving a general English course, then KAL (e.g., psycholinguistics) and content knowledge (e.g., English related to real-life themes) diverge. Thus, KAL and content

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knowledge become the precursor for developing enduring understandings or the big ideas that students should retain after the details have been forgotten (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005).

Besides knowing what the desired results are for a particular class (i.e., KAL, content knowledge, and understandings), teachers who have an understanding about the different types of evidence required to assess student achievement, are better equipped to provide the support needed to improve student achievement. Assessment can be categorized into three areas: (I) formative assessment or assessment for learning, (ii) summative assessment or measurement of learning at the classroom level, and (iii) a combination of summative assessments at the program level (e.g., overall grade point average or GPA) (Yorke, 2010). Assessment can also be considered as falling along a simple to complex continuum: informal discussions, academic prompts, quizzes and exams, and performance tasks respectively (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005).

Regardless of the combination of assessments used to measure and promote learning, assessment design that aligns to curricular aims preclude instructional design and implementation, also called “assessment-illuminated instruction” (Popham, 2008a, p. 265), or “backward design” (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005, p. XX).

In the field of teaching EFL, various forms of evidence need to measure and promote both understandings but also language. Assessing the EFL classroom includes collecting evidence related to vocabulary use, course content, and various other types of assessments collected throughout the course (i.e., behavioral assessments that measure language and conduct) (Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2004). More specifically, criterion-referenced tests are used to compare a student's performance to a standard or criterion (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2007). A standard often used in language learning is the Common European Framework which influences how many language course books are designed and also provides extensive descriptors that

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provide the criteria for rubrics used for more qualitative-based assessment instruments (Council of Europe, 2011). Similarly, measuring understandings can result from having a rubric containing the six facets of understanding as a standard of performance that aligns to curricular goals (Wiggins and McTighe, 2011).

Assessment for learning (i.e., formative assessment) complements summative assessment in a variety of ways. “Formative assessment is a planned process in which assessment-elicited evidence of students' status is used by teachers to adjust their ongoing instructional procedures or by students to adjust their current learning tactics (Popham, 2008b, p. 6). This joint commitment between teacher and learner is an active and intentional process that continuously and systematically gathers evidence of learning with the express goal of improving student achievement (Moss & Brookhart, 2009). E-portfolios and performance-based assessments, for instance, offer additional examples of formative assessments that lend themselves to a more authentic learning context that assesses not only the end product but the process as well (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2007). Thus assessing of learning and assessing for learning complement each other by providing the evidence necessary (i.e., qualitative and quantitative data) to make more accurate inferences on student achievement. Once assessments that align to desired results (i.e., curricular aims) have been determined, educators then move to the next step: planning the learning sequence.

An approach to planning a learning progression that is conducive to higher academic achievement emerges from a myriad of factors. English language teachers need to believe in the students, know the subject matter, help students form connections with the subject and other aspects of the students' lives, promote academic language, promote interaction with both content and students, and articulate the importance of how students are ultimately responsible for their

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own learning (Waldron, n.d., as cited in Rothenberg & Fisher, 2007). Together, these aspects emerge through differentiating instruction; that is, teachers reflect on how content, processes, and products can be differentiated based on the students’ readiness, interests, and learning preferences through the implementation of meaningful tasks, flexible grouping techniques, and ongoing assessment and adjustment (Tomlinson, 1999). Landrum & McDuffiep (2010) performed a literature review related to differentiated instruction, learning preferences and learning styles and concluded that each are have an educational benefit if based on a type of “individualized� instruction that is a) planned in a way that builds on what individual students currently know and can do and targets meaningful goals regarding what they need to learn next; and (b) accommodations and modifications to teaching and testing routines are made in order to provide students with full and meaningful access to the content they need to learn (p. 9).

Thus, the level of individualization and differentiation that occurs throughout the learning sequence will depend on the particular role the teacher plays.

At any given moment, a teacher will assume different roles. The role a teacher assumes will depend on the type of action the student is to perform. If the learning goal is acquisition, then the learner might be asked to define, identify, memorize, recall, select or apprehend where the teacher takes more of a didactic role; if the learning goal is meaning, then the learner might be asked to analyze, critique, interpret, synthesize, or compare and contrast where the teacher takes more of a facilitative role; and if the learning goal is transfer, then the learner might be asked to create, design, solve, or troubleshoot where the teacher takes more of a coaching role (Wiggins & McTighe, 2011). By comparison, a teacher could mediate between students, teachers or experts, parents, administrators, and community leaders; inspired students and

authentic learning environments; content and skill development delivery (i.e., face to face or

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online); and assessment as advancing learning and the creative process (Mehisto, Marsh, & Frigols, 2008). Although the roles teachers assume are many, they are necessary in creating an learning ecosystem that allows the language learner specifically to combine the learning of an additional language with advancing one's critical thinking skills.

Educators may approach the transformation of language learners to become better critical thinkers from a variety of directions. Bloom's revised taxonomy ranks performance verbs from lower order thinking skills to higher order thinking skills as follows: remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating (Churches, 2008). Another approach assumes a non-hierarchical list of verbs that serve as a guide when promoting higher order thinking skills: appreciating, assigning, associating, classifying, combining, committing, comparing, condensing, converting, defining, describing, designating, discriminating, extending, identifying cause and effect, imaging, linking, observing, predicting, reconciling, role-playing, separating, selecting, triggering, utilizing, and verifying (Mehisto, Marsh, & Frigols, 2008). A more practical and humanistic approach is to use the term understandings to mean any performance verb that falls under one of the six facets: explain, interpret, apply, perspective, empathy, and self-knowledge (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). That is, the degree to which a learner understands, is the degree to which a learner can perform actions verb that fall under as many of the six facets as possible. Promoting understandings among language learners rejects the notion that certain verbs automatically be performed first, as in the case of Bloom's revised taxonomy. When learning understandings and language together, both understandings and language become means and ends: the language learner becomes a more critical thinker through

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the use of an additional language and the language learner improves language skills through the practice of being a more critical thinker.

Bringing together understandings and language learning requires counterbalanced instruction. Skehan (1998) originally proposed the idea of counterbalanced instruction in order to push learners who were either form-oriented or meaning-oriented in the opposite direction (as cited in Lyster, 2007). Counterbalancing form and meaning shifted to counterbalancing content and language within language immersion programs avoiding the tendency to overemphasize one at the expense of the other (Lyster, 2008). At the same time, the SIOP model, which emerged from the Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English (SDAIE) in the United States, provided a way to operationalize how sheltered instruction makes content more comprehensible to the English language learner through careful planning, implementing, and reviewing classroom procedures (Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2004). In Europe, the Content and Language Integrated Learning in Bilingual and Multilingual Education (CLIL) approach set out to triangulate content, language, and learning skills (Mehisto, Marsh, & Frigols, 2008). But since all understandings require some degree of both enabling knowledge and subskills that center around content, the act of counterbalancing language changes from content to understandings.

Skills. The skills of becoming a better teacher are vast. One pedagogical approach is to ask, What can I do as an educator that will lead to more effective instruction? An educator can (i) establish and communicate learning goals, track progress, and celebrate success, (ii) help students interact and practice with new understandings, knowledge, and skills, (iii) help students generate and test hypotheses about new knowledge, (iv) engage students throughout the lesson by establishing and maintaining effective relationships, (v) establish and maintain classroom rules and procedures, (vi) communicate high expectations for all students, and (vii) develop

effective lessons organized into a cohesive unit (Marzano, 2007). Another approach is to

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promote teacher leaders regardless of title or position. A teacher leader is one who has the willingness to (i) mentor and coach others, (ii) communicate with all teachers regardless of personal affiliation or preference, (iii) grow by bringing new ideas to the classroom and school, (iv) become a more competent communicate of one's ideas, (v) engage in creative and problembased issues that address higher student achievement, and (vi) share with others and to take risks in front of peers (McEwan, 2003). Indeed, the skills needed to become a better teacher require a joining of pedagogical skill sets with leadership skills such that the learning community within a school encapsulates all educational stakeholders (i.e., students, teachers, parents, administrators, and community leaders). But harnessing one's skills, whether pedagogical or based on leadership, involves some degree of materiality or material use (e.g., technologies, artifacts, and objects).

Educational technology provides the means for teachers to become better communicators as well as providing the skill sets needed to promote learning in another person. The International Society for Technology in Education (2011) has developed a list of standards and performance indicators that set out to engage students and improve learning, enrich professional practice, and to provide positive models for students, colleagues, and the community. The technology standards teachers should facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity, design and develop digital-age learning experiences and assessments, model digital-age work and learning, promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility, and engage in professional growth and leadership. Also, there is a unification between instructional design (e.g., behaviorism, cognitivism, and social constructivism), educational media (e.g., film, television, online video, and social media), and educational computing (e.g., computers, internet, and

mobile devices) such that a single term, educational technology, begins to show how future

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trends emerge (Newby, Stepich, Lehman, & Russell, 2010). Some of the trends include more use of electronic books and mobile technologies, augmented reality and game-based learning, and gestured-based computing and learning analytics (Johnson, Smith, Willis, Levine, & Haywood, 2011). But the prevalence of educational technology does not go far enough to closing the gap between affordances and actual higher student achievement.

In a survey of current literature, Neubauer, Hug, Hamon, & Stewart (2011) posit that the ubiquity of current technologies has done little to facilitate collaboration and student-centered learning in schools to the degree that strategies are needed in order to leverage Web 2.0 tools in order to help students prepare for the challenges of globalization, automation, and complexity (Neubauer, Hug, Hamon, & Stewart, 2011). Facilitating learning can occur through a variety of possible methodologies: tutorials, hypermedia, drills, simulations, games, tools and open-ended learning environments, tests, and web-based learning (Alassi & Trollip, 2001). These methodologies are of little use if teachers are not provided with a set of technological tools and the instructional designs and procedures needed to explain how the technological tools may be used (Zhang, 2010). The author proposes dealing with challenges using a complex system perspective that involves a principle-based approach instead of a procedure-based approach; one that requires the educator, or “grassroots innovator� to reflect across the macro- and micro-level (p. 240). So the skills required to use ICTs under proper contexts, pedagogical skills that engage learners efficiently and effectively, and leadership skills that promote the leadership skills of others collectively apply to all teachers, but leave out communicative skills that are especially relevant to non-native speaking language teachers.

35 Educators of any subject rely on the ability to communicate meaning, but non-native

speaking language teachers especially rely on language competence as it can strongly influence one’s identity. Language competence as part of an LTC (i.e., along with pedagogical competence and language awareness) is particularly a contentious issue when it comes to the individual native or non-native speaker educator in relation to a particular social setting (Davies, 2011). The native and non-native dichotomy has led to a more detailed description of language identity not only in terms of language proficiency but also in terms of how the speaker perceives individual language proficiency and how others view the speaker's proficiency: these more detail descriptions include bilingual speakers, English as a first language speaker, second-generation English speaker, English-dominant, L1[native language]-dominant, and English-variety speaker (Faez, 2011). Regardless as to how one classifies language identity – oftentimes dichotomously referencing teachers as native or non-native speaker – sensitivities in linguistic problems learners encounter should be recognized and dealt with when learning an additional language (Rao, 2010). The author coded and categorized qualitative data taken from an open-ended survey and interviews and revealed that “…language teaching is an art, a science, and a skill that requires complex pedagogical preparation and practice” (p. 66). For this reason, EFL teaching practice and to a lesser degree teaching practice in general become interdependent associations of skill sets that include language competence, technology, leadership, and pedagogy: skills that are associated with a teacher’s understanding of curriculum, assessment, and instruction.

Dispositions. The teaching practice in the area of EFL, like in other subject areas, require not only that teachers have understandings and knowledge of the subject and the appropriate skills sets already mentioned, but also the disposition to engage and learn with others. Indeed, “dispositions are the engine of performance in teaching, linking inner values and

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commitments with action in the context of practice” (Carroll, 2012, p. 38). The notion of linking inner values and commitments with action were revealed after conducting a case study of a teacher candidate taking a teaching practicum class over the course of 10 weeks. The study shows that certain performances of understanding that the teacher candidate can implement in class (e.g., learners making connections, implications, and relationships) can provide “a critical tool for assessing the trajectory of learning dispositions for ambitious teachers” (pp. 60-61). The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Educators (NCATE) and many state departments of education in the United States have adopted a philosophy that no longer is it enough that teacher candidates have knowledge and skills in a certain area, but now must also possess the appropriate disposition for the profession (Duplass & Cruz, 2010). The appropriate disposition then links with the knowledge and skills that lay the foundation to becoming a teacher leader – an expectation that extends to all teachers from the novice to the expert (Bond, 2011). Thus, teacher educational programs have incorporated a four-step process for measuring dispositions among teacher candidates: (i) clearly define what is meant by dispositions, (ii) determine how this process can be operationalized, (iii) determine the types of assessments needed to evaluate dispositions, and (iv) collect and analyze data on these assessments and use it to revise program's focus and assessment of dispositions (Shiveley & Misco, 2010).

Defining dispositions can vary. The NCATE defines dispositions as follows: Professional attitudes, values, and beliefs demonstrated through both verbal and non-verbal behaviors as educators interact with students, families, colleagues, and communities. These positive behaviors support student learning and development.

NCATE expects institutions to assess professional dispositions based on observable behaviors in educational settings. The two professional dispositions

37 that NCATE expects institutions to assess are fairness and the belief that all students can learn. Based on their mission and conceptual framework, professional education units can identify, define, and operationalize additional professional dispositions (The National Council..., 2012).

Another way of looking at dispositions is to categorize them as anything that isn't considered knowledge and not labeled as skills so that to mark someone as an “effective educator” would result from an amalgamation of all three (Wasicsko, Callahan, & Wirtz, 2004). The authors reached this conclusion by surveying the literature and by asking four fundamental questions: a) What is meant by dispositions? b) How will the definition be used in the conceptual framework? c) How will dispositions be assessed? and d) What can be done to get commitment and buy-in from faculty and administration? (pp. 2-6). To take the notion of dispositions one step further, educators can develop certain habits of mind; that is, “the dispositions that are skillfully and mindfully employed by characteristically successful people when confronted with problems, the solutions to which are not immediately apparent” (Costa, 2008). Having the right habits of mind, more than the proper knowledge and skill, becomes a precursor for interacting within a personal learning network, or support system that one relies on as a learning educator – an issue to be addressed in more detail later.

Once a definition of dispositions has been established, stakeholders then determine which dispositions are needed in order to be successful and how those dispositions will be measured as in the following: professionalism, open-mindedness, ability to listen, a belief that all students can learn, reflection, temperance, self-control, and patience to name a few (Shiveley & Misco, 2010).

The belief that all students can learn and the willingness to collaborate with all stakeholders, for instance, underpins how making public promises or collective commitments with all stakeholders

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contributes to the success of one of the most successful high schools in the United States: Adlai Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois (DuFour, DuFour, & Eaker, 2008). Being held accountable to different stakeholders provides the basis for operationalizing dispositions through transparent and public dialogue.

Effective educators with the proper dispositions are held accountable to the degree that teaching behavior can be assessed. Knowing what constitutes evidence for developing dispositions provides the basis for operationalizing performances of understanding (Carroll, 2012). Several of the six facets of understandings mentioned earlier also lay the groundwork for providing the appropriate evidence for assessing dispositions, such as empathy, perspective, and self-knowledge. Moreover, two competing approaches of assessing dispositions in education include quantitative measures, reductionism, and cause-and-effect relationships that link to standards on the one hand; and a more qualitative, descriptive, interpretive, and discursive approach on the other (Diez, 2006).

Teaching practice is an amalgamation of understandings (which includes enabling knowledge), skill sets, and dispositions. These three dimensions to teaching are interdependent and emerge and develop over time. When assessing teaching practice through ongoing professional development, one of the biggest challenges is to provide an unbiased judgment that leads to unreliable interpretations of an educator's conduct regarding what one knows; what one can do; and what attitudes, beliefs, ideals, ideas, and experiences one has (Duplass & Cruz, 2010). What follows is an explanation as to how community change occurs within a professional learning environment.

Professional learning community

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Domain. From a community of practice perspective (CoP), professional learning occurs as a result of a shared domain of interest (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002). Without it, a CoP cannot exist since “it gives the members of the community a common ground to work with and provides a sense of identity thereby giving purpose to and generating value for the CoP's members and stakeholders” (May, 2009). This can lead to an organization legitimizing a welldeveloped domain whereas marginalizing CoP members with an ill-conceived domain (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002). The process then to develop a valuable domain is much like an individual working with a group of individuals towards a type of community purpose statement that is contingent on its relevance to the mission and vision statements and values of the organization.

In education, schools develop a learning-related plan in the form of a mission statement (Wiggins & McTighe, 2007). More broadly, a professional learning community (e.g., a school) rests on four interrelated pillars: (i) mission – Why do we exist? (ii) vision – What do we hope to become? (iii) values – What commitments must we make to create the school or district that will improve our ability to fulfill our purpose? (iv) and goals – What goals will we use to monitor our progress? (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, 2008). In terms of a CoP, legitimizing a domain equates to acknowledging alignment to these four pillars of a professional learning community. Just as domains are legitimized based on how they align to the four pillars, individual learning goals are legitimized within a CoP domain.

Learning-related planning not only occurs at the group and organizational level, but also at the individual level. One approach in planning for professional learning is to start with the ends (e.g., mission and vision statements) and follow up with ways and means. The Goals and

Roles Evaluation Model (GREM) takes such an approach by dividing up performance

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assessment into two categories: development phase and implementation phase (Stronge, 1997).

Under GREM, the development phase consists of determining the mission of the school, translate the mission into individual responsibilities, and determine the type of performance indicator that each individual is to carry out. The implementation phase includes collecting data from the individual's performance, compare the performance to some benchmark, and promote change that seeks to improve the program through professional development. A linear approach to professional learning such as GREM provides a common dilemma in professional development between personal development and organizational learning (Scales, Pickering, Senior, Headley, Garner, & Boulton, 2011).

Another approach to professional learning is to base it in action research and action learning. Part of a teacher's job when not teaching is to be a continuous learner by keeping abreast of current research on teaching and learning, enhancing professional skills, and engaging in action research at the school and district levels (Wiggins & McTighe, 2007). But a more personalized approach to professional development avoids domains or preplanning at the organizational level altogether. Action learning, for example, branches away from action research in that the former focuses on learning through action while the latter is based on a research method grounded in practice (McGill & Beaty, 2002). Although the term action learning can vary, it is usually associated with having the following key features: (i) sets of about six people, (ii) action on real tasks or problems at work, (iii) tasks or problems are individual rather than collective, (iv) questioning as the main way to help participants proceed with their tasks or problems, and (v) facilitators are used (Pedler, Burgoyne, & Brook, 2005).

Hence, action learning requires a purposeful pursuit in addressing the existential questions What

do I stand for? and What am I trying to do? (Pedler & Burgoyne, 2008), two questions that

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underpin understanding how teachers create a personal learning network that leads to personal change.

Practice. A domain based on intentionality, or goal setting, provides the basis for establishing a set of practices that reside somewhere between the individual and the community.

The term practice can be thought of as a “set of frameworks, ideas, tools, information, styles, language, stories, and documents that community members share� (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002). But practice is not only contingent on sharing ideas, tools, and information within a community or group (i.e., a collective), but also occurs at the individual level through action learning. And although action learning lacks the empirical and experimental evidence needed to qualify it as a rigorous research standard, Leonard and Marquardt (2010) presented a meta-analysis by synthesizing 21 quantitative and qualitative studies related to action learning and found that action learning can promote transformative learning experiences for the individual which converged with similar findings from Kueht (2009) as well. The notion of practice then, presents an assortment of dichotomies: community members versus non-community members, intentional learning versus incidental learning, the individual versus the community, and quantitative versus qualitative research designs used to collect information about the effectiveness of practice. These same dichotomies along with others will fade when learning through practice is viewed through an Actor-Network Theory (ANT) framework which will be discussed later.

Another aspect of practice which emerges through the sharing of experiences with others is the idea of reflection. One of the key features to action learning is that it is based on tasks or problems at work, but this does little to distinguish between problem solving and problem

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setting. Practitioners (e.g., educators) who think about doing something while they are doing it are reflecting in action (Schon, 1983). According to Schon, reflecting in action avoids the idea that goals, ends, and objectives are presented as fixed or isolated cases that need resolving; that is, to reflect in action is to learn how to problem set as the practitioner continues to reevaluate (i.e., problem set repeatedly) as the context changes over time (1983). As practitioners share experiences with others, they reflect on action (i.e., after the fact) which provides the means for discovering how one's knowing-in-action might have contributed to some unexpected outcome (Schon, 1987). Consequently, practitioners reflect not by framing personal experiences around a predetermined problem that is generalizable to a particular group, community, or organization, but rather they reflect on more local problems that emerge through one's own tacit knowledge.

Community. Professional learning through practice can occur within a community.

Associating the practice with community accomplishes two things: (i) “it yields a more tractable characterization of the concept of practice – in particular, by distinguishing it from less tractable terms like culture, activity, or structure” and (ii) “it defines a special type of community – a community of practice” (Wenger, 1998, p. 72). Wenger goes on to add that a community of practice (CoP) can be viewed as a unit whereby communal membership is contingent on mutual engagement. Moreover, community practice results from securing commitments and establishing partnerships that encumber a set of cognitive, analytic, and sorting skills (Hardcastle, Powers, & Wenocur, 2011). Hence, the relationship between practice and community depends on the scope of a domain of shared interests that align to a particular set of goals within an organization, a practice that is based on common knowledge needs, and the amount of assistance individuals receive in finding the benefit of networking and sharing knowledge with others (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002). But when considering how

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professional learn in the workshop (e.g., educators within a school organization), placing less emphasis on practice yields to a slightly different perspective.

A community can be framed in a variety of ways, in part, under the assumption that a community consists of individuals networking and sharing ideas with others. A community can also be stated in terms of a gesellschaft or gemeinschaft, which are German for society and community respectively. According to Serviovanni (1999), gemeinschaft is essential to building community within schools because it promotes a we identity that families provide; it fosters a shared space or locale for individuals to interact; and it bonds people together via a common goal, shared set of values, and a shared conception of being (See Table 1).

Table 1 Gesellschaft vs. Gemeinschaft

Identity Personal Relationships Goals Society Unity

Gesellschaft (society)

Gemeinschaft (community)

Focuses on I

Focuses on we

Contrived

Bonding

Contractual

Common

Secular

Sacred

Separated in spite of uniting

United in spite of separating

factors

factors

Communities also embody a “civic virtue- the willingness of people to sacrifice their selfinterest on behalf of the common good� (Serviovanni, 2005). In a professional learning context, a professional learning community (PLC) then achieves the following: (i) has a shared purpose, clear direction, collective commitments, and goals; (ii) focuses on learning based on a collaborative culture; (iii) pursues a collective inquiry into best practice and current reality; (iv)

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embraces the notion of learning by doing; (v) has a commitment to continuous improvement; and (vi) is oriented to results (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, 2008). Whether termed as a CoP or a PLC, professional learning emerges from having a certain level of commonality among a group of people: some degree of mutual engagement (i.e., reciprocity), goals, values or collective commitments, purpose, direction, and a degree of common or best practices. But accounting for professional learning with a particular domain, practice, and community is limited without an understanding of how learning emerges.

Professional development stems from a learning ecology. Current technological advances have given rise to different professional learning trajectories which have extended beyond time and space constraints of the past (Day & Sachs, 2004). New affordances result as learning trajectories become more “collaborative, developmental, collective, inquiry-based, personalized, varied, supportive, contextualized, proactive, and andragogical” (Días-Maggioli, 2004, pp. 5-6). The reason learning trajectories are more supportive, for example, is because educators have more opportunities to interact via live communication (i.e., synchronous communication) and offline forms of communication (i.e., asynchronous forms of communication). As a result, the learning ecosystem expands beyond the educational organization to the degree that learning trajectories become more inherently adaptable to their surroundings; as a result, personal interactions are more likely to shift from being congenial, as found in most conventional schools, to collegial, something that is lacking in today’s schools (Glickman, Gordon, & Ross-Gordon, 2007). But an adaptable learning trajectory within a community-based educational organization is unlikely to occur without understanding the role of leadership.

45 In order for leadership and learning to coexist within an educational organization, a shift

in culture needs to occur. Value-added dimensions to leadership, for instance, create a shift from planning to purposing; from giving directions to enabling teachers and the school; from providing a monitoring system to building an accountability system; from extrinsic motivation to intrinsic motivation; and from congeniality to collegiality (Serviovanni, 2005). From a professional development standpoint, this shift in culture might be from external training (workshops and course) to job-embedded learning; from presentations to entire faculties to teambased action research; from learning individually through courses and workshops to learning collectively by working together; and from short-term exposure to multiple concepts and practices to sustained commitment to limited, more focused initiatives (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, 2008). This shift in culture is contingent on how teacher leaders are granted leadership roles as an entitlement which seeks to place those who have the ability and will to act in the forefront of the decision-making process (Serviovanni, 2005). Independent of position or title, educators begin to distribute leadership responsibilities in order to add value to the learning and sharing process that leads to such a cultural shift.

To further articulate the dichotomous shift in cultural leadership, differences can be drawn between human rationality and assessing individuals’ assumptions. The expectation that human behavior is a zero-sum game assumes a model I theory that supports the notion that individuals are objective, level-headed, and intolerable of publically testing one’s assumptions – see Table 2 (Argyris & Schon, 1974).

Table 2 Model I vs. Model II

46 Model I

Model II

Competition

Win/lose

Maximize valid information

Rationality

Individuals are rational

Maximize free & informed choice

Publically testing

Intolerably risky

Maximize internal commitment

assumptions

to decisions made

Argyris and Schon add that organizations work more effectively if leaders adhere more to a Model II theory, one that maximizes valid information, free and informed choice, and internal commitment to decisions made by practitioners (1974). Similarly, the same dichotomy can be viewed as being a “Clockwork I” and “Clockwork II” theory whereas the former works by regulating the master wheel and master pin of a clockwork organization (top-down) and the latter requires the “cultural cement” of norms, values, belief, and purposes of the people to assure coherence between the cogs, gears, and pins that all spin independently of each other (Serviovanni, 2005, pp. 33-34). Finally, professional learning within an organization can be viewed as being a tight and loose leadership style, somewhere between an autocratic approach and a laissez-faire approach – giving educators, for example, the freedom to be autonomous and creative but within a systematic framework committed to nondiscretionary priorities and parameters (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, 2008).

Professional development has been viewed as having a domain through a set of common practices within a network of people who share ideas and experiences with others. Common characteristics have emerged that suggest ideally that groups of people share a common mission,

goals, or purpose (i.e., intentionality) via research-based practices and principles, sometimes

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referred to as best practices, all within a single unit referred to as a community albeit one that can also interact with other communities. From this point on, the term professional development will be referred to as professional learning as it pertains mainly to how a network community revolves around a particular individual (i.e., educator). Shifting the unit of analysis from a community or set of practices to the individual requires a framework based on complexity theory and actor-network theory, not to debunk the notion that learning occurs in a CoP or PLC, but to argue that such a shift is required for the sake of learning efficacy.

The Complexity of Learning Feedback loops. Complexity Science is “the study of the phenomena which emerge from a collection of interacting objects� (Johnson, 2007, pp. 3-4). One of the key features of a complex system is the notion of feedback loops. Interacting objects, such as teachers and supervisors, have traditionally viewed feedback as teacher observations and assessment (i.e., teacher evaluations) which have embraced various underlying assumptions: (i) observation and assessment lead to personal reflection for the purpose of improving student achievement, (ii) observation and assessment can benefit both teacher and supervisor (or any involved), and (iii) when teachers see improvement, they are more likely to continue such improvement (Sparks & Loucks-Horsley (2007). In a professional learning community, feedback might occur in topdown and bottom-up approaches between administrators and supervisors and teachers such that a balance between these two approaches is ideal for organizational learning. But feedback loops entail a broader notion than just observation and assessment between teachers and supervisors.

Feedback loops cover any cause and effect relationship.

48 Feedback loops entail circular and recursive relationships between cause and effect

through nonlinear logic (Kay, 2008). Since interacting objects are human, decision-making and subsequent actions are based on feedback loops that depend on prior experiences that lead to memory formation (Johnson, 2007). As memory formation builds over time, these recursive relationships render a synergistic effect; that is, when faced with the nonlinearity of professional learning, the whole becomes more than the sum of its parts which is a key tenet to complex systems (Strogatz, 2003). The author goes on to say that whole systems can only be evaluated holistically and not an aggregation of evaluating individual parts. What sets feedback loops apart from a linear perspective is that the latter adheres to a reductionist stance which results from direct cause-and-effect relationships; hence, the aggregation of the parts is exactly equivalent to the whole. But feedback loops tend to take on different meanings depending on the context.

Since feedback loops are situational, not all feedback loops yield equivalent change events. From an organizational standpoint, the tendency is to frame feedback loops as having little effect on the individual whereas feedback spirals, for example, are seen as being more recursive (Costa, 2008). A feedback spiral is an ongoing dialectical process where an original theory-based concept is applied in practice, reviewed, and subsequently reapplied in a forthcoming event (Blindenbacher & Raoul Nashat, 2010). But because complex systems are made up of humans, recursiveness becomes an inherent aspect of feedback loops that do not result from direct cause-and-effect relationships, as already mentioned. Moreover, feedback loops can be expressed as generating a change in another person – a positive feedback loop – or expressed as not evoking any change in another person – a negative feedback loop (Uhl-Bien & Marion, 2008). The complex nature of feedback loops then, creates a generative, dynamic

system that emerges from experience. Besides feedback loops, another attribute of complex

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systems is one of sustainability.

Sustainability. The degree that a complex system is sustainable depends on its non-linear structure. Like complexity theory, chaos theory relates to wholes and the relationships between constituent agents, contrasting the often reductionist concerns of mainstream science with the essence of the ‘ultimate particle’ (Mason, 2008b). The butterfly effect has been the signature of chaos since the 1979 paper by Lorenz called, Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas? (Strogatz, 2003). Strogatz goes on to define a chaotic system as one with small disturbances which grow exponentially fast, rendering longterm prediction impossible. DeWaard, et al. (2011) researched a massive open online course (MOOC) in relation to complexity theory by collecting descriptive data from public online spaces and then performing a content analysis. They found that a MOOC is exemplar of an open and adaptive, complex system which provides a possible solution for new educational environments that fit the “Knowledge Age” of adult learning today (p. 112). But since a chaotic system appears to be random, yet is deterministic, the sustainability of a system will depend on how change transpires over time. To provide greater insight into the dynamics of a non-linear system within an educational context, for example, a deeper understanding of how chaotic and complexity systems converge and diverge follows.

A complex system lies somewhere between a linear and chaotic system. As previously mentioned, a linear system is one that is reductive, and is an aggregation of constituent elements that equal the whole. At the other end of the continuum, a chaotic system is one that appears random but is actually deterministic. Like chaotic systems, complexity is the study of systems of interconnected components whose behavior cannot be explained solely by the properties of their

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parts but from the behavior that arises from their interconnectedness (English, 2011). They are both nonlinear and are synergistic in that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. One key attribute to a complex system is the synergies that exist as in the case with Kayuni (2010) who researched a community secondary school policy that managed to persevere despite apparent overwhelming challenges. Through a chaotic and complex framework, the author distinguished complex systems from chaotic systems by explaining that the former self-organize and are dynamic in how they order and structure themselves throughout the growing process whereas the latter continuously transform into more complex systems which undergo irreversible changes.

Thus, the author goes on to explain how most innovation occurs “on the edge of chaos” – somewhere between chaos and complexity – where most creativity and innovation occur; in the case of Community Day Secondary Schools, new policies followed a period of poor quality and lack of relevance in education, yet innovation did occur in the form of developing a new teacher service commission, greater communication across schools who adapt the new policy, and an increase in public awareness and participation within the education sector (p. 9). Change that transmits through professional learning systems then can benefit from self-organization and sustainability, and can demonstrate progress within the network, even though over outcomes might be to the contrary. Self-organization and sustainability suggest an absence of a central controller which is an essential constituent of non-linear behavior that creates embedded patterns of sustainability, or fractals (Johnson, 2007).

51 Fractals are common in both chaotic and complex systems and help to bolster

sustainability throughout the system. Many natural phenomena that exist today are fractals which are repeated patterns at various scales such as maps, mountains, snowflakes, and even languages (Mandelbrot, 1977). In Figure 1, for instance, the tree illustrates a fractal structure in that the entire tree consists of small trees, which are made up of smaller trees, and so on (Dooley, 2008). In social organizations, a “fractal time ecology� can exist where day-to-day leadership patterns connect with similar Figure 1: Fractal Structure

patterns observed over the course of weeks, months, and years (Dooley & Lichtenstein, 2008). According to Smitherman (2005), a fractallike pattern of dynamic relations is also present within the

classroom, where social media can be used to increase social interaction with less temporal and special constraints (as cited in Casey & Evans, 2011). However, she goes on to describe behavior in a nonlinear system as not only being chaotic, but also fixed and periodic. In terms of fractals and their relevance to a learning organization then, is to realize that just because human behavior may appear to be random, inconsistent, and haphazard, does not necessarily mean that there are simpler behavioral patterns that scale not only over time but hierarchically as well. If simpler behavioral patterns scale, sustainability in the sense of a multidimensional learning ecology is more likely to occur (Pavlovich, 2009).

52 A nonlinear dynamic perspective provides a framework for understanding the complexity

of an educational organization that places professional development at the fore. In additional to deterministic chaos - complex patterns that result in apparent randomness – nonlinear social behaviors can also be described as being stable but necessarily repetitive or what Lorenz (1993) refers to as “complex attractors” (as cited in Uhl-Bien & Marion, 2008, loc. 578). For example, continued technical support for educators lead to a consistent pattern of greater risk taking and experimentation with online social tools. Although nonrepetitive behavior exist, there is a tendency for teachers to try web tools if provided adequate support. Over time, individuals decide whether or not to begin experimenting with new web tools (given ongoing technological support) by choosing one complex attractor over another. When certain conditions result in a person choosing one attractor over another, a third tenet of nonlinear dynamic systems emerges termed bifurcation (Goldstein, 2008). Deterministic chaos, complex attractors, and bifurcations collectively create a nonlinear dynamic system that provides the framework for professional learning to occur.

Within an educational system, nonlinear dynamics describe professional learning throughout one’s career in terms of how adapting to one’s surroundings over time and making choices that seem small if considered in isolation actually add up exponentially over time as in the case of the butterfly effect explained earlier (Bloch, 2005). As the practitioner engages in a unique learning trajectory, embedded patterns of behavior may occur statically, periodically, and chaotically. The embedded interactional patterns that depend more on personal connections than on one’s race or social background offer insight into relationships between the individual and the group (Christakis & Fowler, 2009). This relationship equates to how the individual influences others and how others influence the individual. The actor-network theory (ANT) supports how

complex interactions between humans and nonhumans in that it is not considered a single or

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coherent theoretical domain, but one that is developing diversely in response to current challenges (Fenwick & Edwards, 2010).

Actor-network Theory (ANT) Translation. ANT provides a more appropriate framework for how people learn and practice in the field of education. ANT embraces four central ideas: (a) the world is made up of actors and actants, (b) no object is inherently reducible or irreducible to any other, (c) actants link to one another by way of translation, and (d) actants are not inherently strong or weak (Harmon, 2009). Of the prior four central ideas, the final one (i.e., that actants are not inherently strong or weak) leads to an additional set of notions relevant to professional learning: actants are a result of their concreteness; people and objects are what they are; and there is little need for dichotomous notions (i.e., labeling) such as novice and master teacher, those who lead versus those who are led, and theory versus practice (Harmon, 2009; Gomart & Hennion, 2004).

Namely, distinctions between theory and practice, those who lead and those who are lead, and other dichotomies often found in the field of education do not exist from an ANT perspective.

For this reason, professional learning brings people and objects together through a process of knowing, or an enactment that results from connections with other people and things (Fenwich & Edwards, 2010).

Translation, as a central tenet to ANT, elucidates why terms such as professional development and training yield to the more descriptive term, professional learning. Translation can be defined as an ontological frame with regard to how entities change over time (Fenwick & Edwards, 2010). From an ANT perspective, describing the notion of society, for instance, does not consist simply of ties or connections that link humans and nonhumans, but instead is a result

of translation: the momentary associations between humans and nonhumans that are

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characterized by the way it gathers together into new shapes (Latour, 2005). An ontological approach to the process of learning is minimized when terms like trained teachers or professional development seminars suggest that individuals move from being less to being more or nothing to something. Moreover, translation is complex in that ongoing interactions act as either positive or negative feedback loops that lead to emergent network change (Johnson, 2007).

Transformational change that occurs at the individual level can also entice change in others (and vice a versa) through what is referred to as “herd behavior� (Strogatz, 2003, p. 265). Thus, change and the relationship between social practice and professional learning remain connected entities within a networked-system.

Actors (i.e., actants) are networks and vice versa to the degree that actors (i.e., networks) are not inherently strong or inherently simple nor complex, but can be examined in terms of how traces of associations remain after some educational performance (Fenwick & Edwards, 2010).

But instead of viewing sociology or social practice as being contextual or even embedded with cultural norms, sociology - or social practice more specifically – can also be viewed as being traces of associations (Latour, 2005). Tracing associations not only form agencies but also form ideas, identities, rules, routines, policies, instruments, and reforms as well (Fenwick & Edwards, 2010). Thus, the practice of teaching and learning results by recognizing how associations or alliance formation grow and perish over time, and how these associations relate to humans, materials (e.g., ICTs), and concepts.

Understanding how to improve EFL teacher practice stems from understanding how people learn. From an ANT perspective, people and objects are linked through relational materiality. Relational materiality is the notion that all entities (i.e., individuals and objects) are

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produced through relations and that entities are performative in that they are produced in, by, and through such relations (Law & Hassard, 1999). Thus, professional learning emerges by having the educator recall how relations form and to learn how the performative value of the network transforms the individual (e.g., through a change in teaching practice). Individual transformation, or professional learning, becomes the recollection of how relations form through a nondiscrete and dynamic network. Individuals, groups, and objects that make up the individual nodes of a dynamic network are seen as being in a continual state of flux, where agency (i.e., the actant) and structure (i.e., the network) intertwine through heterogeneous assemblages (Law & Hassard, 1999). Thus, improving professional learning emerges through continue support in how educators recall how past, current, and future assemblages (i.e., events) take shape (Fenwich & Edwards, 2010). In doing so, supervisors begin to transform teachers to instructional leaders – a notion that relates more to will and ability than to position, role, or title.

Material semiotics. One of the tenets to ANT is that everything comprises of actors. An actor is anything that has an effect on other things; therefore, an actor can be of any size, real or unreal (i.e., all actors are in essence real), physical or non-physical, and an actor contains other actors ad infinitum (Latour & Harman, 2010). The idea of an actor embedded within another actor and so on, is much like to notion of fractals mentioned earlier (e.g., a tree within a tree, within a tree etc.). An actor might be an abstract concept, idea, or belief or something more concrete like a pencil, computer, or some other physical object. The interrelationship between actors, as in a network, becomes the unit of semiotic analysis.

Semiotics takes a different approach to data collection and analysis than typical qualitative research designs. For instance, instead of an inside-out approach, semiotics takes an outside-in approach (Lawes, 2002). Lawes compares these two approaches by explaining how a

group of people might interpret a box of chocolate cookies (i.e., biscuits) and how the

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interpretation does not simply come from a single person’s interpretation, but rather a whole host of communicative signs and symbols, referred to as culture (e.g., language, visual signs, music, etc.). Hence, the unit of analysis stems from the connection, relationship, and interaction among a set of actors and not just the individual. The notion of semiotics underpins the complexity of actors; even though they may show signs of stability, they exist as an effect of an irreducible relationship of actors.

Since actors can be conceptual, biological, social, and material, the way in which signs and symbols relate can be viewed as material semiotics. An actor-network’s material semiotics is not a theory in the same way that sociology asks the question why, but rather is more of a methodology which asks the question how (Law, 2009). As such, the term material semiotics becomes a more accurate term than actor-network theory in how natural, social, and technical objects become enacted within a web, how they associate and exercise force, and how they persist, decline, and mutate over time (Fenwick & Edwards, 2010). Because network actors are an effect of complex distributions of constituent actors interacting with each other, no two actors are ever exactly the same and are constantly adapting throughout each node of the network.

Since actors can cease to exist or become obsolete, understanding a network equates to understanding it in relation to its durability and mobility.

Various forms of semiotic durability and mobility impart different effects on the interdependency of constituent actors or on the actor itself. Material durability refers to the length of time an object (i.e., actor) will last, and strategic durability refers to the sustainability of processes or activity patterns within the actor-network over time (Law, 2009). Law posits that a thought or speech act, for example, is much less durable than an idea transferred to text; and

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relational patterns among human and nonhuman actors typically remain purposeful as long as ongoing discourse is maintained. Moreover, the overall durability of an actor network depends on the stability of an object in a different space (i.e., different set of constituent actors), also referred to as an “immutable mobile� (Jones & Latour, 2005, p. 16). Semiotic durability and mobility then, refer to how people, thoughts, and artifacts persist, grow, and decay over time (i.e., temporal) and through different spaces or environments (i.e., spatial). Understanding the interdependent, temporal, and spatial nature of actors across a network underpins the notion of a personal learning network.

Personal Learning Network (PLN) The different facets of a PLN. The current shift in how people learn has created a dependency on information and communication technologies (ICTs) to the degree that growing a PLN has become an imperative for educators who want to stay connected to the changing world that we are charged with introducing to our students (Warlick, 2009). A personalized network of people and materials has value when directed towards professional development events which are based on teacher responsibilities, are ongoing, and are tailored towards the educator in terms of years of service and personal preference (Bauer, 2010). From an ANT perspective, network learning constitutes connecting people, materials, and conceptualizations from forming associations or connections that make up a PLN. A PLN takes a holistic approach in associating and defining constituent parts. An attempt to distinguish between network types tend to create terms such as professional learning environment (PLE), professional learning network (PfLN), and PLN, each with its own particular meaning. For instance, PLEs tend to focus on blogs, wikis, and other ICTs as creating affordances for learners to be in more control of what and when they learn (Al-Zoube, 2009).

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PLEs then are framed as predicating PLNs that are focused more on personal relationships to exist that ultimately leads to more specific PfLNs, or networks of collaborating professionals and experts via professional organizations (Ivanova, 2009). If a network is defined as a collection of nodes (i.e., a collection of actors), then an ANT PLN is any particular aggregation of socioconceptual, biological, and technical nodes that make up a particular individual at a particular point in time. Hence, an individual may appear to be immutable and inevitable, but in essence is the effect of complex sets of previous dynamic events and negotiations within networks. The black-box metaphor is often used when discussing ANT as a way to address the tendency of examining the interworking of the box (i.e., network) and instead study the discourses, controversies, and relationships that shaped its role (Fenwick & Edwards, 2010). This is precisely the approach taken when discussing PLNs – not as fixed structures that are examined in isolation, but rather as fluid socio-material networks that are an effect of prior nodal relationships. From an ANT mindscape and for the purpose of this study, a PLN is any relationship or association of actors that links individuals, material, and conceptualizations.

A key tenet to a complex PLN is that of communicative flow. Communicative flow (i.e., relational ties) is either unidirectional as when a lecturer disperses information out to a group of students, or bidirectional which is a more discursive event between nodes, individuals, or actors (Wasserman & Faust, 2008). Most people communicate directly with friends, a friend of a friend, or a friend of a friend of a friend – also referred to as communicating up to three degrees of separation (Christakis & Fowler, 2009). This small-world effect demonstrates how directly (i.e., a friend) and indirectly (e.g., friend of a friend) one can outwardly effect the network and how the network can directly and indirectly influence the individual. Knowing how and when connections form help lead to a particular type of complex network formation that lends itself to

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how individuals learn in a sociotechnical environment; that is, how connections do not randomly connect but rather are scale-free (Crook, 2009; Barabási, 2003). In effect, the small-world phenomenon is a unifying feature of diverse networks found both in nature and in technology (Strogatz, 2003). But understanding the true complexity of a PLN embodies not only the direction of the relational tie (i.e., unidirectional or bidirectional) but also the strength of the relational tie itself.

Network connections that make up a PLN can vary. The ties educators form with others can be referred to as either strong or weak (Granovetter, 1973). The author terms strong ties as those friends or colleagues who are in close contact – i.e., within one degree of separation – and those who share a strong bond whereas weak ties are friends of friends (or friend of a friend of a friend) that one may know but have little contact with. To leverage a PLN around ongoing professional learning requires a holistic understanding of strong and weak ties that connect with nodes – which are networks themselves - that provide the greatest potential for learning. The potentiality of learning or agency then is not inherent within the actor or node, but rather in the associations that relate to the actor or node (Fenwick & Edwards, 2010). Recognizing directional ties that exist between network nodes provides insight into network topologies that exist in social interactions.

Choosing the network nodes that best make up a PLN is not a random event. If educators formed a random PLN, it would be illustrated as a normal distribution, or bell-shaped curve whereby the number of colleagues an educator interacted with would be virtually the same in number, or at least fairly close to the mean (Barabási, 2003). But networks are not random but are scale-free and assume a Pareto distribution where a small number of entities typically have the largest percentage of influence (e.g., small number of computer brands accounting for most

of the computers sold, a small number of employees or owners accounting for the largest

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percentage of income earned, etc.) (Barabási, 2003; Buchanan, 2002). In education, educators do not choose with whom they will interact simply by chance, but rather form purposeful relationships based on personal needs, interests, and learning preferences. Thus, a PLN has less to do with the number of constituent nodes and more to do with how scale-free, material semiotics associate with purposeful and dynamic relationships. Simply, an educator pursues a scale-free PLN in terms of connectivity (See Figure 2).

Figure 2: Networks

The idea that some nodes have more connections than others can be explained in terms of a “scale-free network” (Strogatz, 2003; Barabási, 2003; Barabási & Albert, 1999). The Pareto distribution or power law distribution is ubiquitous in terms of how nature and material interact: language, demography, commerce, information and computer sciences, geology, physics and astronomy (Newman, 2006). Newman specifically lists the number of citations of papers as one example of a power law distribution in that much of the literature that is cited is linked back to a relatively few number of authors. To understand the literature then is to understand to trace the associations (i.e., deeper citations) that lead up to one particular source, for example an article

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from a journal. Similarly, reflecting on one’s own perspective is to trace the associations that lead to a particular conceptualization or behavior. A growing PLN bifurcates critical awareness into the prevailing and precarious interactions of the moment with a dynamic view of nodal relationships that change and adapt over time. Since the educator is the central node of the PLN, this two-pronged approach to critical awareness becomes the basis of growing into a more reflective practitioner.

The way in which an educator reflects on thoughts and experiences will depend on one articulates the dynamics of a PLN. The development of a PLN is the effect of how an individual forms directional ties that emerge from a nonreductivist phenomenon (Christakis & Fowler, 2009). Interactions that lead to strong and weak ties emerge through a scale free network, or a collection of nodes that are not connected to any one dominant entity or node within a network (Strogatz, 2003). Instead, clusters of subnetworks referred to as being “ego-centered” consists of a focal actor (i.e., ego) with “alters” or ties that link other to the ego (Wasserman & Faust, 2008, p. 42). Another way to refer to clusters is in terms of “hubs” and “connectors” (Barabási, 2003, pp. 55-64). For the purpose of this study, hubs (e.g., a link between a large number of nodes), nodes, (e.g., any entity the educator connects with), connectors (e.g., a single node with a large number of connecting nodes), and connections (e.g., the directional flow of information that exists between any two nodes) will be used to articulate the dynamics of cultivating a PLN. The cultivation of a PLN drives professional learning and the change process.

Professional learning. An essential aspect of ongoing professional learning is one of sustainability; that is, the way in which educators become interdependent in such a way that both formal and informal learning emerges free from coercion. In a small-world network topology, chaotic and random networks are at opposite ends of a continuum where a small-world network

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resides somewhere in between (Pieris & Fusina, 2009; Watts & Strogatz, 1998). A small-world network includes the following two features: (a) a low average path length between network nodes (e.g., individuals can easily connect with others via a small number of intermediaries) and (b) a “high transitivity (most of a person's friends are friends with one another)” (Christakis & Fowler, 2009). The notion of high transitivity can also be expressed in terms of a strength in ties, or a “combination of the amount of time, the emotional intensity, the intimacy (mutual confiding), and the reciprocal services which characterizes the tie” (Granovetter, 1973).

Professional development, or more accurately, professional learning can be viewed in terms of coaching educators in how recognizing and adapting between network nodes become beneficial to both the individual and the network.

Creating opportunities to network is synonymous with professional learning. A network is based on connections and contagion or the spreading of an emotion or idea across a network, and can be ephemeral or lifelong, casual or intense, or personal or anonymous (Christakis & Fowler, 2009). Additionally, complex and network learning stems from the following principles: (a) learning occurs when there is diversity of opinion, (b) learning happens when connections are made with other individuals and with nonhuman devices such as technology, (c) one's learning potential is more important than what one knows right now, (d) facilitative learning emerges through the cultivation of one's PLN, (e) recognizing patterns and tendencies is a required skill for the future, (f) learning activities require up-to-date and relevant content, (g) the act of making a decision is vital, (h) planning on what to learn requires perspective, and

63 (i) any supported truisms should be confined to particular context; that is, based on time and space (Siemens, 2005).

ANT relates to connective principles by not distinguishing between human and non-human objects as static entities in-and-of themselves (Law, 2009). As a result, professional learning in the field of education is the coaching of educators to come to recognize the potentialities that exist between people, materials, and conceptualizations by realizing dynamic, network patterns as an effect of prior experiences.

A learning network may also be viewed in terms of an ecological unit whereby the individual learner adapts to the network and the network takes shape because of the individual (Educause‌, 2011). Within this context, a PLN ensues from an ongoing aggregation and pruning of boundary nodes (i.e., human, non-human, and conceptual) which have the following characteristics as they relate to material semiotics: (a) semiotic and materialistic rationality (a change in one node effects a change in another), (b) heterogeneity (a respect for diversity), (c) precarious process deriving from a temporal orientation (synchronous and asynchronous intentional and incidental learning), and (d) spatial considerations (online communities, face-toface meetings, etc.) (Law, 2009). In terms of professional learning among educators, educative experiences become based on how a change from one individual influences a change in someone or something else, and vice versa. This notion thus becomes the basis for seeing the value in educators sharing ideas and experiences, caring that someone else might benefit from their sharing, and daring to take risks both as a life-long learner and teacher.

Sharing, caring, and daring carry different meanings depending on the theoretical viewpoint one subscribes to. In a community of practice (CoP), there is a need for understanding the role of the overall structure [i.e., the community or practice as the unit of analysis] in how it

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promotes a more intentionally systematic benefit regarding how knowledge is to be managed (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002). Another theoretical perspective assumes the activity itself provides the means for culturally embedded tools to mediate between the person and the outcome, and that certain rules mediate between the person and the community (Rizzo, 2003).

But from an ANT perspective, and more specifically a connectivist perspective, the individual learner becomes the unit of analysis in that the socio-technical and conceptual elements of a PLN originate from the individual learner's perspective in terms of how the network effects a change in teaching practice and how the individual learn effects change to the PLN. Summary Understanding how educators pursue professional learning vis-Ă -vis interaction within a PLN and any necessary artifacts is complex. Professional learning from an ANT framework holds that (a) the world is made up of actors and actants, (b) no object is inherently reducible or irreducible to any other, (c) actants link to one another by way of translation, and (d) actants are not inherently strong or weak (Harmon, 2009). Not categorizing actants (i.e., people or objects) as inherently strong or weak allows for a more open and transparent learning affordances devoid of social or positional hierarchy or any preconceived conceptions of how materials (e.g., web tools) are to be used. Thus, through complexity science, the emergent properties of phenomena are examined as a result of interactions over time (Johnson, 2007). Specifically, informal dialogues related to teaching and learning have the greatest participation levels among teachers and highest level of impact when compared to other types of professional development (e.g., workshops, conferences, etc.) (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2011). This study seeks to provide a model for creating greater professional development support to educators in Mexico by providing broader affordances for educators to carry out

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informal dialogues related to teaching and learning within a complex PLN. It seeks to fill the gap in current research in understanding the distributed nature of learning, specifically the role of materiality in the workplace (e.g., technologies, artifacts, and objects) and the basic assumptions of what constitutes professional learning (Fenwick, 2009; Fenwick, 2010). By gaining further insight into the complexities of informal dialogues as a means for professional learning, great support for professional development effort will help improve the current state of the educational system in Mexico.

66 Chapter 3: Research Method PLNs have historically been simplified to mean a network of people whom interact with

the aim to learn (Nikolaou & Tsolakidis, 2013). In order to reveal how professional learning might be more sustainable and relevant for practicing EFL educators, this qualitative multiple case study sought to analyze emergent patterns stemming from a more comprehensive notion of a PLN that was not only based on individual networks, but also networking technologies and ideas as all three created an aggregated collection of related associations. That is to say, the ideas that EFL educators tended to share with others, the materials and technologies they used, and the individuals EFL educators chose to interact with were referred to collectively as a personal learning network (PLN). The way in which PLNs were observed and understood were through open, online informal dialogues about teaching and learning, looking for patterns in how EFL educators shared ideas with others, how they decided on the materials and technologies to be used, and how they determined with whom they would communicate. The following research questions were directed towards understanding how EFL educators who come from different educational contexts conducted their respective open, online, informal dialogues and contributions to OERs within public web sites: (a) How do EFL educators in Mexico conduct open, online, informal pedagogical dialogues within a personal learning network? and (b) How do EFL educators in Mexico perceive changes to their personal learning networks over time?

The Mexican educational system lags behind other countries in terms of student scores in reading, math, and science (Shepherd, 2010). Moreover, professional development typically focuses on practices and programs instead of supporting people in the end leading to isolated workshops, change initiatives that fail to create a conducive learning environment, and summative assessments that simply recapitulate past events with little-to-no ongoing support

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(Reeves, 2010). Any professional development endeavor that seeks to address these problems should scale; that is, it should offer the greatest potential for educators to grow in terms of interacting with others openly online. For this study, five EFL educators from various educational contexts were chosen on the basis of their current use of technology and their willingness to interact with others via online public posts. The two main criteria for choosing the participants were their willingness to participate online and a history of having used technology to communicate with others in the past. An overall analysis was conducted from the data of the initial survey, informal pedagogical dialogues published online, and final interview. By taking an aggregate approach to bringing together these different data sources afforded a deeper perspective in how participants framed their PLN as a connected network of ideas, materials, and social interactions.

When assessing an individual’s PLN as a construct, qualitative data should be credible, transferable, dependable, and confirmable (Trochim & Donnelly, 2008). In order for data to be credible, the researcher took a participant observer role in assuring that the reporting accurately reflected the participants’ perspectives. This was done by triangulating types of data already mentioned in order to achieve deeper understandings of the PLN as a socio-technical network.

In terms of transferability, the cross-case analysis along with the research method itself was meant to be scalable and adaptable to many different educational contexts. Making sure qualitative data was dependable depended on the extent that a changing context was continuously being considered as part of the analysis and in the final reporting. Finally, as data was being collected, all evidence remained openly online so to maintain a clear audit trail for those who wish to compare fieldwork with the reporting and those who wish to duplicate the research method for future studies, also referred to as confirmability. For all private information

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obtained for the study, an informed consent form (see Appendix A) was used so to maintain a level of ethics and integrity in full accordance to institutional review board standards.

What follows is a detailed description of the overall research method and design used to research informal pedagogical dialogues that link to PLNs, followed by a description of the participants and instruments used to collect the data. The process in which data was collected is explained as well as the type of analysis used to better understand the complexity of PLN formation. To conclude, methodological assumptions, limitations, and delimitations will be explained, which will conclude with a section on ethical assurances with regard to the entire research method design.

Research Method and Design This multiple case study employed a qualitative research design. A qualitative research design allowed participants to share interpretations through an inductive, emergent, and holistic approach (Creswell, 2009). Qualitative methods focus primarily on what people say and what people do that enabled researchers to understand the meaning of a particular phenomenon, event, or activity (Gillham, 2010). A qualitative approach also allowed for a greater wealth of detailed descriptive data on a smaller number of case studies in comparison to quantitative approaches (Patton, 2002). And from an ANT perspective, qualitative data provided a rich, descriptive narrative in understanding the related attributes between network nodes (McCormick, Fox, Carmichael, and Procter, 2011). Although most of the data used in this study was qualitative (e.g., content analysis from electronic artifacts, forum posts, and personal discussions), frequencies and other types of descriptive, numeric data was used to compare and contrast the demographic information obtained from the multiple case study.

69 Although this study was rooted in a qualitative research design, it did embrace a multi-

method research approach. When conducting a content analysis study, qualitative data can also be expressed quantitatively by developing frequencies of topics and themes. Quantitative data that have originated from qualitative data is considered a qualitative research design based on a “methods” (as opposed to a “methodology”) definition (Creswell & Clark, 2007, p. 12). But since participant descriptors obtained in this research (i.e., independent variables which are quantitative data) was gathered from a survey applied at the start of the data collection process, a multimethod research (as opposed to a mixed method design) best describes the most appropriate research method design for this study (Morse, 2003).

A multiple case study as a qualitative research design was used in order to study the following: (a) understand how EFL educators in Mexico conduct open and informal pedagogical dialogues within a personal learning network and (b) understand how EFL educators in Mexico explain changes to their personal learning networks over time. The theoretical concept that binded the individual cases together was the PLN. Defining a theoretical concept was necessary when doing this multiple case study in order to avoid losing sight of what is being researched; that is, to best understand the conceptualization, one needs to understand the context or case study from which the proposition is based (Stake, 2006). Thus, the unit of analysis, or individual case, for this study was the EFL educator and the proposition was the PLN. To preserve the integrity of the case study, special care was taken when collecting and analyzing data at the smallest unit of analysis - in this case the EFL educator (Patton, 2002). To this end, reification of a PLN stemmed from researching how educators connect ideational, material, and social interactions based on what they say and what they do (i.e., online activities via posts, live discussions, personal written reflections, and interviews). This avoided researching

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conceptualizations in the abstract and instead adhered to a more concrete description of topics related to the participants' real-life experiences (Yin, 2009). By researching informal pedagogical dialogues among EFL educators, the intent was to draw connections or associations between what educators say and do in terms of an emergent and dynamic PLN. How interaction patterns and related materials corresponded with each other were voiced in terms of associations. Instead of relying on direct, one-to-one associations generated by statistical generalizations (i.e., sampling groups and inferential statistics), analytical generalizations were conducted at the PLN (i.e., construct) level as a means for recognizing patterns related to theoretical concepts (Yin, 2009). Researching how informal pedagogical dialogues enrich a PLN thus, required an understanding of how EFL educators choose conceptualizations related to teaching and learning (e.g., knowledge, skills, dispositions, curriculum, assessment, and instruction); how EFL educators used and reflected on material objects; and how EFL educators socially interacted with others. Thus, an overall analysis was conducted on data obtained from the initial online survey, field notes from the content analysis on informal pedagogical dialogues published publically on the web, and final interviews in order to analyze how educators (a) shared constructs related to knowledge, skills, etc., (b) used difference materials such as ICTs to communicate with others, and (c) interacted with other individuals based on ideational and material network patterns.

Participants The participants for this study include five EFL educators from different educational contexts. An online survey was administered to various research candidates in order to select the five most likely to participate and conclude the study – an informed consent form was included in the survey as well (Appendix A). The participants who were likely to be chosen were based

on their willingness to openly share personal teaching and learning experiences with other

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colleagues by openly interacting through online web sites as well as demonstrate a level of technological readiness. Evidence taken from the online survey was used to determine whether participants had posted or replied to a personal blog or contributed to a wiki, Twitter account, Google+ account, or any other social media that was open to the public within the last year. The criteria for scoring the potential participants was to (a) count the number of different technologies they use (i.e., blogs, microblogs, wikis, open facebook pages, etc.) and (b) determine the frequency with which they publicly publish their posts and replies to colleagues within the last year; that is, to measure the level of interaction that takes place between individuals. Online survey items include How comfortable are you sharing your successes either as a teacher or learner with a fellow educator with whom you work? and Copy and paste any URLs (website addresses) to any personal websites that you either own or online communities that you participate in‌ among others. The participants for the study must also have at the time of the study been teaching one class with English language learners teaching general English, academic English, or English for specific purposes classes.

Since all activities were open, it was possible to have participants of the study interact with educators who are not part of the study. Although the initial survey, field notes, and interviews was limited to the participants of the study, participant interaction extended to nonparticipants as well since informal pedagogical dialogues were published publically on the Internet. An open research design such as this promotes great potentiality of actants (i.e., EFL educators) interacting as they normally might since they are not restricted to any particular group of individuals: colleagues from the same institution, same city, state, country, etc. Such a professional learning environment is grounded in complexity theory and ANT, and reflects a

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more realistic view of technological-driven communication that is becoming more ubiquitous in how society currently engages in thoughtful dialogue.

The unit of analysis for this study was the individual educator (i.e., participant). When conducting a case study however, “the unit of analysis may be defined one way, even though the phenomenon being studied actually follows a different definition” (Yin, 2009, loc. 861). Thus, the individual educator’s PLN exhibited convergent or divergent patterns at a different level of analysis: among colleagues from within the same institution, from within the same institution, or some other level across institutions. For this reason, participants were chosen from various educational contexts in order to conduct an embedded multiple unit of analysis for this multiplecase design, allowing for each unit of analysis (individual, collegial, institution, etc.) to expand or scale if particular patterns emerge. For this particular study theoretical saturation was reached since additional emergent patterns failed to emerge from additional first level coding labels that would have generated new themes. Glaser and Strauss (1967) referred to as theoretical saturation in that collecting any additional data would not shed any further light on the issue under investigation (Mason, 2010).

Materials/Instruments Online survey. In order to choose the participants for this study, an online survey was applied (See Appendix B). The EFL/ESL Teacher Network Survey (Stewart, 2012a) was adapted from the OERu planning group (eduMOOC…, 2011) for the purposes of obtaining information on learning preferences of individuals who take open, online learning experience.

The survey began by describing the purpose of the study followed by a section that allowed participants to give written consent for their participation. The next section of the survey included personal information of the participants that provided demographic information: first

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and last name, formal education, work experience, and personal and professional goals. This section also included questions related to how participants were willing to share different areas of their own professional learning that they would like to improve; for instance, becoming a better speaker of English, writer of English, practitioner with regard to pedagogical skill sets, and applied linguist (i.e., one who has knowledge about language). The section that followed related to how participants felt about sharing experiences and opinions openly with others online.

Finally, the survey concluded with an extensive section on how participants currently were using technology both as a language educator and adult learner.

By applying a online survey at the onset of the data collection process, it provided a methodology for asking people to describe themselves by providing a “snapshot� of how they think and behave at a given point in time (Cozby, 2009, p. 122). The purpose of the online survey was to (a) gather baseline information about each participant in terms of frequency and comfortability with using technology related to their own professional learning, and (b) use this baseline information as a point of comparison when analyzing how ideas, technologies (materials), and social interactions may have changed over the 10-week data collection period.

Based on the results of the survey, a more careful analysis of each participant laid out the first phase in establishing the criteria necessary for choosing an institution with the highest number of participants most likely to actively take part in the study. Establishing the criteria in this way served as an example of a purposeful sampling technique that was suitable for a more in-depth, follow-up inquiry (Patton, 2002). The criteria for scoring the potential participants was to (a) count the number of different technologies they use (i.e., blogs, microblogs, wikis, open facebook pages, etc.) and (b) determine the frequency with which they publicly publish their posts and replies to colleagues within the last year; that is, to measure the level of interaction that

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takes place between individuals. The purpose of the online survey was threefold: (a) to possibly find institutions with participants most likely to complete the study based on current use of technology (i.e., how answered questions indicate prior use of blogs, wikis, etc.); (b) to determine a willingness to share experiences and opinions with others online; and (c) to provide baseline information from those participants who are ultimately chosen for the study A review of public websites and respective online activity (i.e., posts and replies, etc.) from survey respondents was administered in order to validate online survey responses. Verifying online survey responses was managed either personally with each participant, scanning the website for evidence of interaction, or both; the baseline information taken from the survey was then matched against all subsequent data collected for the study. Based on the criteria above (i.e., number of different kinds of technologies used and interaction frequency based on posts and replies), the online survey was designed to find candidates from different educational contexts who were appropriate for the study.

Interview. The final data collection technique involved a 30-45 minute semi-structured interview with each participant. An interview guide (See Appendix C) was used to conduct oneon-one semi-structured interview with each participant. In order to determine what would be asked during each interview, the initial survey and field notes from informal pedagogical dialogues conducted openly online collectively dictated the direction of the interview. That is, questions made during the private interview set out to clarify or elaborate further on specific findings linking prior comments made during online interactions and online survey results. Each interview was unique in some aspects while shared commonalities in others. Analyzing data as it emerged throughout the study provided the basis for each interview, while still respecting the semi-structure interview guide and ultimately the research questions. The semi-structure

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interview occurred at the end of the 10-week data collection period and after the five participants from various educational contexts had been determined. The criteria for choosing the participants and subsequent interviews were based on their level of participation (i.e., number of posts and replies and word count of total posts and replies).

Various worksheets were maintained using the computer program HyperResearch. All of the worksheets were based on Stake (2006) in an effort to understand both the quintain – in this case the personal learning network as a conceptualization – and the multiple cases themselves (i.e., the attributes of the individual English language educator). Worksheet 1 (See Appendix C) included the themes that indicated the primary information about the quintain based on the research questions of the multiple case study. Worksheet 2 (See Appendix D) comprised of the findings per case which was then cross-referenced to respective themes. Each case and theme referenced as being high, middle, and low utility based on the research questions. Worksheet 3 (See Appendix E) merged findings according to case and theme by rating them by importance: high, middle, and low importance. Worksheet 4 (See Appendix F) created factor clusters per case and theme, again by importance. HyperResearch was used to generate the appropriate reports that these worksheets set out to accomplish by gathering and analyzing public information generated by the participants of the study.

Various data collection techniques were constant throughout the study which included initial online survey, field notes from informal pedagogical dialogues published online, and interviews. During the 10-week interaction period, participants were free to use the websites and tools of their choice in order to conduct informal, open, online pedagogical dialogues with others. Once the 10-week interaction period concluded, a final one-on-one interview took place

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in order to gather any final information about their experiences and challenges with regard to publically publishing informal pedagogical dialogues online with others.

Data Collection, Processing, and Analysis The data collection process began by inviting English language educators from around the world to participate in this doctoral study. The online survey the posted publically for anyone to complete and contained 58 questions which took approximately 15-20 minutes to complete. Once the online survey had been completed, the data was analyzed in order to determine the participants who met the criteria for the study. The data from the online surveys would also be analyzed throughout the data collection process in order to provide context for subsequent interviews as a final data collecting technique.

After the five participants of the study had been chosen for the study, a 10-week data collection process began. During the data collection process, participants continued interacting as they normally would have, making posts and replying to other posts to public websites of their choice. A public website is a website anyone can access and may or may not require a user name and password. Informal pedagogical dialogues (i.e., open, online posts and replies made by EFL educators to public websites) could have related to curriculum, assessment, instruction, or teaching and learning strategies related to current teaching practices that participants have experienced in the past. Topics could also expand to meta-discussions related to the interactive research experience itself (e.g., issues related to technology that hinder or improve ways of interacting with others).

Once the 10-week interactive period has concluded (i.e., published posts and replies along with participant reflections), a one-on-one, 30-40 minute interview was carried out with each participant, based on an interview guide (See Appendix C). The semi-structured interview

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was specifically driven by data gathered from surveys and informal pedagogical dialogues. One of the types of questions to be included related to most significant change perspectives. Related questions evolved around the central question: Looking back over the last 10 weeks, what do you think was the most significant change in your personal learning network that contributed to your own professional learning.

Data from surveys and interviews were held confidential and were the only data from this study of this type – all other information remained open on public websites. If the participants wished to remain anonymous throughout the study, they had the option of using pseudonyms when creating public accounts, but this was not the case for this study – all participants used their real names when interacting publically online. However, when reporting the findings, pseudonyms provided confidentiality for the participants of the study.

When taking part in a study of this kind, participant burden becomes especially important. Since participants were expected to interact publically online as they normally would had they not been participating in the study, the additional time investment was limited to the online survey and final interview. However, an estimated temporal burden for all data collection techniques could be set at approximately 12 hours and 45 minutes (See Table 3). This is only an estimate as each participant indicated different time investments when it came to interacting with others online.

Table 3: Temporal burden for research

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Online survey

15 minutes

10-week interaction period

Est. 12.5 hours (posts, replies, & reflections)

Final one-on-one interview

30 minutes

Estimated total time

12 hours and 45 minutes

Content analysis. Content analysis in case studies “is used to refer to any qualitative data reduction and sense-making effort that takes a volume of qualitative material and attempts to identify core consistencies and meanings” (Patton, 2002, p. 453). For this study, all of the data obtained from the online surveys, the 10-week interaction period of open and online posts and replies, and one-and-one interviews underwent a content analysis using the computer application, HyperSearch. Also, this study adhered to a collaborative social research approach that used collected data, which reflexively used feedback to craft future actions; information was used to understand the context and theoretical concept behind each case study (Berg & Lune, 2011). The authors suggest a standard set of analytic activities for collecting and analyzing qualitative data that are appropriate for this type of study: •

Data are collected and converted into text.

•

Open codes and coding frames (i.e., axial coding) are analytically developed and affixed to analytical memos.

•

Materials are sorted by categories, identifying similar phrases, patterns, relationships, and commonalities or disparities.

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Sorted materials are examined to isolate meaningful patterns and processes.

•

Identified patterns are considered in light of previous research and theories, and a small set of generalizations is established.

Under a directed content analysis approach, codes were defined beforehand and during data analysis based on theory or prior research (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005). For this study, predetermined, first-level coding included labels based on types of interactions (i.e., ideational, material, and social), types of communication (i.e., synchronous, asynchronous, and semisynchronous), delivery (i.e., face to face and online) and openness (i.e., public and private).

Within these codes more specific codes that related to each other provided further details.

Additional predetermined codes that linked to theoretical concepts related to this study included teacher pedagogical knowledge, teacher dispositions, and concepts related to complexity and actor network theory, among others. Although most codes were predetermined based on the literature, additional codes emerged when analyzing data.

In addition to using a pre-established coding system as a directed content approach, analytical memos were kept to reflect on the research process as it unfolded in terms of what was being learned, any emerging insights, and any future actions that were necessary (Ely, 1991). In order to analyze data, a multilevel coding system together with analytic memos were maintained to identify theoretical conceptualizations. Specifically, open, selective (i.e., for category development), and axial coding systems were retained to form patterns from the bottom up: raw data to category development to thematic development to theoretical concepts (Corbin & Strauss, 2008; Hahn, 2008). An open coding system was employed to gather direct quotes and general ideas when quotes become too wordy.

80 The final step in analyzing the data was to carry out a cross-case analysis in order to

resolve the dilemma between the cases (i.e., those attributes specific to the educator or school) and the collective target (i.e., PLN) – or what Stake (2006) refers to as a quintain. The author suggests that a “case-quintain dilemma� exists when doing a case study that can be summed up as follows: The Themes originated with people planning to study the Quintain. The Findings originated with people studying the Cases. These are two conceptual orientations, not independent but different. To treat them both as forces for understanding the Quintain, the Analyst keeps them both alive even as he or she is writing the Assertions of the final report. The Themes preserve the main research questions for the overall study. The Findings preserve certain activity (belonging to Case and Quintain alike) found in the special circumstances of the Cases. When the Themes and Factors meet, they appear to the Analyst as both consolidation and extension of understanding (pp. 39-40).

To resolve the case-quintain dilemma, theoretically based coding schemes (i.e., a directed content analysis) allowed for understanding the PLN as a theoretical concept in terms of the individual case study (i.e., unit of analysis). Since a directed content analysis also allowed for defining codes during the data analysis, some themes emerged due to the complexity and chaotic dimensions of professional learning. The data analysis was performed then in order to seek emergent patterns not only between the individual PLNs themselves but also between the different case studies.

In order to look for patterns between the PLN and the case study, the most significant change (MSC) technique was used to provide context as participants discuss any emergent

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features of their PLN (Davies & Dart, 2005). During the interview, and as stated in the interview guide (See Appendix C), the MSC technique helped facilitate further reflection into understanding insights into interpretations related to informal pedagogical dialogue experiences.

The overarching question underpinning the MSC technique (via participant reflections, group discussions, and online contributions and comments) was as follows: Looking back over the last one-to-two weeks, what do you think was the most significant change in your personal learning network that contributed to your own professional learning? The overarching question was meant to link the theoretical framework to the research questions, but did not necessarily reflect the wording of the semi-structured interviews. Related questions were framed in more practical terms and were introduced during the final, semi-structured interview in order to provide additional insight into how PLNs emerge through informal pedagogical dialogues and how participants explained and interpreted changes to their respective PLN over time.

The MSC technique was used to connect themes around the educator's PLN and any transformations that occurred throughout the research period with regard to ideas and practical experiences educators might have had (Davies & Dart, 2005). As change stories (CS) began to unveil over time, asynchronous (e.g., weekly posts and replies), synchronous (e.g., online Google+ Hangouts and personal interviews), and semi-synchronous (e.g., Twitter, Google+ Community posts, etc.) forms of communication were develop around questions that related to PLN and individual case dynamics. In order for a CS to be considered significant, three separate but interrelated concepts must have been present: (a) the degree to which network patterns and relationships were recognizable from an ideational, material, and interpersonal perspective, (b) the degree of intentional and incidental change within a PLN that existed, and (c) the perceived impact a PLN had on one’s current teaching practice. Changes within a PLN related to certain

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network principles by (a) growing the number of direct, network nodes (i.e., actants), (b) pruning or reducing network nodes, and (c) changing how information flowed between two connected nodes (i.e., unidirectional, bidirectional, or the value of information within the flow itself). The MSC technique lent itself well to unpacking the change process that also included how the researcher approaches interpreting personal perspectives.

The MSC technique provided an interpretive means for developing a hermeneutic circle.

In order to understand the associations within a dynamic PLN, a hermeneutic circle was implemented in order to draw out experiences and interpretations from the participants of the study. The hermeneutic circle linked parts to the whole and the whole to its parts, and included layering interpretation bound to specific temporal and spatial constraints or contexts (Patton, 2002). It also acted as a way of working out or accounting for the strangeness of an utterance, text, or action in relationship to the utterance, text, or action as a whole; in doing so, the historical perspective of the interpreter [i.e., the researcher] was less likely to distort the actual meaning of the utterance, text, or action (Schwandt, 2007). The hermeneutic phenomenological analysis was chosen over a phenomenological analysis because the former seeks to find meaning as people are constructed by the world while at the same time are constructing the world based on individual backgrounds and experiences – the latter simply attempts to unfold meaning as they are lived in everyday experience (Laverty, 2003). To promote the hermeneutic circle in this way, a reciprocal relationship existed during the interview between the researcher and participants such that ideas, materials, and personal interactions (as nodes to a network) emerge from interactive exchanges that explain network nodes or aggregations of ideational, material, and social nodes and the PLN as a single network and vice versa.

Methodological Assumptions, Limitations, and Delimitations

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This study was based on the following assumptions: 1. Participants were under no obligation to answer any particular way or conduct behavior according to any institutional mandate. It was assumed that participants would offer honest discussions about how they feel and how they choose to interact with others given the fact that each participant signed a consent form and confidentiality would be respected on any private information shared.

2. It was assumed that participants would understand their right to withdraw from the study from the moment the study began until the findings were officially published.

Since this is a multiple case study on the complexity of PLNs, it was impossible to shed light on every possible network node that extended outward various degrees from each participant (e.g., a colleague of a colleague of a colleague, etc.). To overcome this limitation, only the most salient aspects of an EFL educator’s PLN were explored; that is, networked nodes that related directly to the participle were included in the study. Another possible limitation was that participants might have felt disconnected from the process since most of the data collection would be done on the Internet. In fact, upon completion of the study, many comments were made that they had forgotten that the study was being conducted.

Although the objective of this multiple case study was to reach saturation, it was limited to teachers who were teaching English language learners under different educational contexts from around the world. The study is not inferential to any particular population but a descriptive look at differences and more importantly similarities in how English language and possibly professionals in general learn through open, online interactions. This study was also limited to English language teachers who have some degree of Internet connectivity and some degree of

comfort level when it came to using technology. This study would be less relevant to those

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English language teaching professionals who totally disregard technology or do not have the skill sets to do the most basic functions in terms of using computing devices to connect to the Internet.

Ethical Assurances When conducting a qualitative research, the researcher had the personal obligation to respect the rights, needs, values, and desires of the participants (Creswell, 2009). Because this qualitative study required teachers to share ideas and experiences openly online, ethical issues became especially important since teachers were often ridiculed by colleagues for showing initiative and imagination, trying out new methods, and trying different curricular arrangements (Bagin, Gallagher, & Moore, 2008). To assure proper safeguards were in place to deal with such ethical issues, an ethical issue checklist was used (Patton, 2002): 1) The participants understood the purpose of the study; that is, they were asked to share ideas and experiences with other educators openly online by completing an informed context form.

2) The study provided an opportunity for the educator to meet and collaborate with other colleagues with similar and different perspectives. Also, there was a potential benefit for building collegial relationships that might extend beyond the scope of the research.

3) Confidentiality was maintained throughout the study. a) Approval was obtained from the Institutional Review Board at Northcentral University before data was to be collected. b) Participants were assured that all private information was used only for the purposes of the study for a period of no longer than one year, at which time all information would be destroyed or deleted entirely.

85 c) The participants understood the nature of publishing content publically online and that even though removal of such content was possible, that evidence of this content could remain. If information was removed before the publishing date of the dissertation, that does not automatically exclude it from the study. Special care was taken in working with participants as to what was and was not reported on during the finding write up of the dissertation. d) In the case of a public website, participants understood that information would be maintained as long as the website itself remained open, which likely could extend well beyond the date findings were published. e) Pseudonyms were used to generalize private reflections in a way that respects the confidentiality of the participant. f) Participant concerns, interests, and requests were considered when reporting data. g) All ethical issues pertaining to this study were openly published online.

In addition to the above list, the Belmont Report, which is text designed to protect human

subjects against unethical research practices, was the basis for maintaining ethical research standards based on three principles: respect for persons, beneficence, and justice (Belmont Report, 1979). With regard to respect for persons, participants of the study were treated as confidential who were capable and had the right to make their own decisions regarding their own personal goals, the materials they decided to use, and the way in which they chose to interact with others. For the purpose of this study, beneficence related to maximizing the participant’s potential for further cooperation with other educators by treating each participant as daring, sharing, and caring individuals by respecting the terms of the informed consent form as well as adhering to the itemized list above which minimized risk. Finally, those who benefited most

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from the research were equally distributed among all participants in that the research did not set out to put some participants at a disadvantage. To maintain justice, data collection and reporting emerged from participatory dialogues between researcher and participants so that not only were participants not being exploited but that the research also served some common good.

Summary This section discussed the research method used to investigate (a) how EFL educators from various educational contexts conducted open and informal pedagogical dialogues that enriched a PLN, and (b) how these EFL educators explained changes to their respective PLN over time. Researching informal pedagogical dialogues through a multiple case study research design was intended to understand the dynamic nature of a PLN as a theoretical concept along with gaining insight into the context that surrounded each particular case study (i.e., the unit of analysis). Considering five English language educators from different educational contexts, data was collected in order to search for emerging patterns that form and influence informal pedagogical dialogues in terms of a PLN. Surveys, field notes, analytic memos, and interviews provided the means for collecting and analyzing informal pedagogical dialogues and MSC stories related to the complexity of PLNs among participants. Due to the complexity of networks, assumptions, limitations, and delimitations pertaining to the study were also presented.

Finally, since most of the research method design involved open, online discussions, special ethical concerns were required to assure that participants understood how the information would be used in the study and to the degree of what they share would remain confidential throughout the study.

87 Chapter 4: Findings The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore how ideas, materials,

and social interactions form a PLN through online, informal pedagogical dialogues among English language educators as they relate in aggregate to one’s professional learning. A PLN is an aggregate of associations of ideas, technologies, and social interactions, also referred to as the “quintain” (Stake, 2006, p. 6); informal pedagogical dialogues are what educators need to know to better do their jobs within an informational landscape (Warlick, 2012). Thus, teachers learn first how to be connected collaborators themselves - through the ongoing development of a PLN – before attempting to model such behaviors for students (Nussbaum-Beach, 2012).

A qualitative multiple case study was used to analyze how five English language educators from around the world interact openly online through detailed observations and participants’ own accounts of individual changes to ideational, material, and social relationships (i.e., an observance and description of a PLN). To conduct such an analysis, a multitude of data collection strategies were employed: (a) an online survey (Appendix B) was used to select the participants of the study as well as provide respective demographic information; (b) a content analysis on online public interactions, and (c) a semi-structured interview (Appendix C) designed to understand (i) how participants perceived open, online, informal pedagogical dialogues within their personal learning networks and (ii) how participants perceive changes to their personal learning networks during the 10-week data collection process. Participants of the study interacted online from November 15, 2014 through January 31, 2015 (10-weeks) as they normally would have based on personal obligations and interests. Interactions online and interviews were transcribed and coded using the HyperResearch software program, which was then used to analyze the data.

88 The objective of this study is to explore how participants conduct online pedagogical

dialogues by framing ideas, technologies, and social interactions (i.e., PLN nodes) as being complex, emergent, and relational. By researching PLNs as being a dynamic set of nodal associations, humans and objects are seen as effects of dynamic materialization processes that cause them to emerge through gatherings and act in indeterminate entanglements of local everyday practice – a relational materiality that is often overlooked in educational research (Fenwick, Edwards, & Sawchuk, 2011). Researching and unveiling PLNs within a local context remains the precursor for reconnoitering professional learning in terms of what individual identities and behaviors are translated in becoming part of a network (Fenwick, 2010). The alternative is to equate professional learning solely as isolated events (e.g., workshops and conferences), which have a less likelihood of becoming relevant and meaningful for the teaching practitioner interested in ongoing professional learning.

The results from this qualitative multiple case study are presented by each individual case according to the following research questions: Q1: How do PLNs of EFL educators in Mexico emerge through open, online, informal pedagogical dialogues?

Q2: How do EFL educators in Mexico explain changes to their personal learning networks over time?

For the purposes of this research, a PLN, or personal learning network, was defined as an ongoing distribution of material, ideational, and human relational nodes (i.e., both human and non-human objects) that consisted of either unidirectional or bidirectional forms of communication for the purposes of promoting both intentional and incidental professional learning. The PLN then was the quintain, or the object to be studied, and therefore was the

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theoretical concept that would be explored in terms of the individual case studies (Stake, 2006).

Stake (2006) suggests that when researching multiple case studies, the goal is to go beyond the case study, called instrumental case studies, in a way that ties the quintain (i.e., PLN) to the particular contextual elements of the case study.

In unveiling the PLN and the instrumental case studies, this chapter begins with the results section by presenting overall demographic information about each of the five instrumental case studies so to provide local context for each of the participants who agreed to take part in this study. The remaining findings – by way of triangulation of the different data sources – will take each of the five case studies in turn by delineating different tenets of a PLN (i.e., ideas, materials, and personal relationships) and respective demographic information about each case that will show salient points of convergence and divergence which relate to both research questions. By triangulating online survey responses, informal pedagogical dialogues, and interview responses, converging lines of evidence make findings more robust (Yin, 2012). An evaluation of the findings will follow by revealing the related theoretical concepts that are associated with the PLN. Finally, the chapter will conclude with a summary.

Results Demographic findings. Five English language educators responded to an invitation to participate in this doctoral study, which was sent out via social media (Twitter, Google+, and a Wiki); and included individuals from various parts of the world from different educational contexts (see Table 4). All five participants began by signing an informed consent form (see Appendix A). Also, Amber, Barry, Carl, Donna, and Erik (pseudonyms) completed an online survey, participated in public, online interactions between November 15, 2014 through January 31, 2015, and an online (private) interview via Skype or Google+ hangouts. Participants were a

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diverse group based on the types of classes they teach, where they reside, nationality, education, and experience using technology. Amber and Donna were the only ones who indicated that they began using social media from the time they began teaching. Although specific findings show many points of contrast between each case (i.e., participant), to be discussed later, the diversity of backgrounds was no indication of any lack of purpose when using a PLN to further professional learning.

Table 4: Overall Participant Demographics Gender Teaches Resides Nationality Last Degree Experience teaching (years) Experience with social media (years) Tech.

Change Hrs./week

Amber Female CLIL

Carl Male TEFL

Donna Female TESL

Asia

Australia/Oceana

Europe

North America

Australia/Oceana

Bachelor’s

Master’s

Bachelor’s

Master’s

5-7 years

+10 years

+10 years

+10 years

+10 years

5-7 years

7-10 years

3-5 years

+10 years

5-7 years

Laggard

Early adapter

10-20

30-40

Europe North America PhD Candidate

Laggard 10-20

Barry Male TEFL North America

Early adapter +40

Erik Male TESL North America North America

Early adapter 20-30

When participants were asked in the online survey how they felt about sharing successes and failures with perfect strangers, no one felt uncomfortable when doing so (see Table 5).

Donna actually felt very comfortable sharing with perfect strangers while Erik was the only participant who felt slightly different between sharing successes and failures with strangers.

Irrespective of their diverse backgrounds, participants shared similar worldviews when it came to

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sharing ideas publicly online, whether this worldview was a precursor to using technology or one that developed over time.

Table 5: How Participants Feel About Sharing With Strangers Publically Online Sharing successes with strangers Sharing failures with strangers

Amber 3

Barry 3

Carl 3

Donna 5

Erik 5

3

3

3

5

4

Note: 1=extremely uncomfortable; 5=extremely comfortable

Twitter was the tool most often used by the five participants for the study. A Twitter summary of each of the five participants shows a comparison of how the tool was being used at the time of the study (See Table 6). Only Carl and Erik have followers-to-following ratio of greater than 100% (i.e., 259% and 299% respectively) while the other three participants have ratios between 90%-100%.

Table 6: Twitter Usage per Participant Total tweets Following Followers Listed Joined Location Followers / following Analyzed tweets

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Amber 7,398 772 767 31 Apr., 2009 UK 99%

Barry 2,665 1,409 1,271 40 Feb., 2009 Mexico 90%

Carl 18,978 910 2,355 103 Oct., 2011 Seoul 259%

Donna 14,718 1,911 1,856 96 Oct., 2008 New Zealand 97%

Erik 24,851 904 2,705 159 Feb., 2009 Canada 299%

495

87

556

634

424

Amber’s PLN. To share ideas and to interact with others publicly online, Amber used Twitter as a main material tenet of her PLN. Between November 15, 2014 through January 31, 2015, Amber tweeted 495 times and retweeted other people’s tweets 291 times, or a retweet/tweet ratio of 59%. Amber indicated in the online survey at the onset of the study that she felt her skills using microblogs (e.g., Twitter) were intermediate while the rest of the participants indicated an advanced level (See Figure 3). Twitter activity among the other participants was as follows (total retweets/total tweets = ratio): Barry 14/87 = 16%; Carl 219/556 = 39%; Donna 118/634 = 19%; and Erik 53/424 = 13%. Other indicators of Twitter use include mentions, replies, links, and hashtags.

Figure 3: Participant's Self-Assessment of Understanding Social Media

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3 2.5 Blogs Microblogs

2

Social Bookmarks 1.5

Wikis Forums

1

Search Emails

0.5 0 Amber

Donna

Erik

Barry

Carl

Note: 1=Beginner, 2=Intermediate, and 3=Advanced Twitter mentions are used to send tweets so that followers receive a notification. The symbol @ is used before the Twitter handle when tweeting messages up to 140 characters.

Replies are a way to nest responses to an original tweet so that a more forum-like discussion can be had either synchronously (i.e., real time) or asynchronously (over time). Links are when tweets include a hyperlink or URL to an external web page. And finally, a hashtag is a way to index tweets based on key words. The symbol # is used before the keyword (no spaces) within the tweet so that individuals can search or filter tweets by concepts. For example, if one was interested in teaching English to students of other languages (TESOL), a search using the hashtag #tesol would generate a list of tweets related to this topic.

Amber had the following mentions, replies, links, and hashtags when using Twitter (count/ratio to total tweets): mentions – 100/495=20%; replies – 61/495= 12%; links –

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110/495=22%; and hashtags – 154/495=31%. Again, when compared to the other participants, Amber demonstrates an ability to use mentions, replies, links, and hashtags within her PLN, yet perceives her own understanding of microblogging as intermediate (See Table 7). Compare this with those of the other participants who all had a higher perception of their respective competencies to microblog.

Table 7: Twitter Ratios of Mentions, Replies, Links, and Hashtags to Total Number of Tweets

Understandin

Amber

Barry

Carl

Donna

Erik

Intermediate

Advanced

Advanced

Advanced

Advanced

100/495=20

71/87=82

370/556=67

1136/634=179

392/424=93

%

%

%

%

%

61/495=12%

19/87=22

241/556=43

396/634=62%

232/424=55

%

%

110/495=22

54/87=62

86/556=16%

%

%

154/495=31

64/87=74

138/556=25

%

%

%

g of microblogs Mentions

Replies

Links

Hashtags

% 188/634=30%

110/424=26 %

360/634=57%

106/424=25 %

Example: 100/495=20% is the same as taking the total number of mentions (or replies, links, and hashtags) and dividing this number into the total number of tweets in order to achieve a ratio expressed as a percentage.

Amber shows mixed numbers in certain areas of how she uses Twitter when compared to the other participants. For instance, the number of mentions per tweet and the percentage of

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tweets being replies are low while the percentage of tweets being retweeted is quite high (See Table 8).

Table 8: Amber's Twitter Mentions, Replies, and Retweets as a Percentage of Tweets Mentions per tweet % of tweets being replies % of tweets being retweets

Amber 20%

Barry 82%

Carl 67%

Donna 179%

Erik 92%

12%

22%

43%

62%

55%

59%

16%

39%

19%

13%

But although these numbers indicate fewer mentions and replies, she stated, …[I was] surprised at how much people actually pay attention to what I’m tweeting…because I´ve got replies [and] responses from others, particularly in January…when I…made a comment or…news about my forthcoming [doctoral oral defense], I actually got some feedback. I would say [I was] presently surprised because often I don´t normally have a back and forth with people [via social media]. It's just more like, “Oh, I´ll talk about this…”, or “This is interesting…”, but nothing necessarily like a Q&A, as much as it [took place] in January. It was a nice change I would say.

In addition to using Twitter, Amber also maintains a public blog. Her publishing scheduled indicates two-to-three blog posts per month between November 2014 and January of 2015, although nothing was posted between November 1 and November 15 of 2014 (See Table 9). In January of 2015, one post in particular received 17 comments that were mainly congratulatory and appreciative for having completed an important milestone in a doctoral study she was involved with and for having shared her experiences with others. The blog post that generated the 17 comments was a personal reflection regarding what she went through and how

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she felt throughout the process. The other blog posts were equally reflective but addressed topics that were of personal interest but not academic or related to professional learning directly.

Table 9: Amber's Blog Publishing Schedule

Post/Comments Post/Comments

Nov. 15-30 2014 N/A

Dec. 2014

Jan. 2015

#1/0 comments #2/1 comments

#1/17 comments #2/2 comments

In addition to her personal blog, Amber also is active in a forum for PhD students. She reflects, [The PhD forum is] basically a discussion group for PhD students [with] different discussion threads. And I've engaged in maybe one or two. I wouldn't say it between the timeframe of Nov. and Jan., but it was earlier, when it came closer to submission time, and I was feeling a bit flustered‌I was just like really frustrated with my analysis, I just‌wanted somewhere where anonymously I could just really vent, and try to get some sort of different perspective and point of view, some advice from a community who understood who were probably going through similar things at the same time. That's why I would choose this particular discussion thread to do so (personal communication, March 16, 2015).

When asked in the online survey about how she would label herself as a user of forums (See Appendix B), she indicated beginner. She also considered herself a beginning in using wikis and social bookmarking tools. Regarding professional learning, Amber had a different perspective in some aspects of her professional learning expectations when compared to some of the other participants. Both Amber and Donna thought that becoming a better speaker was extremely important while Barry, Carl, and Erik thought it was not important at all. Similarly, both Amber

and Donna thought becoming a better writer was extremely important while Erik thought

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becoming a better writer was important, Carl was indifferent, and Barry thought it was not important at all. In reference to increasing one’s understanding of how languages are learned (i.e., applied linguistics), Amber was indifferent while all other participants thought it was at least important in their own professional learning. Thus, Amber feels that skills like becoming a better speaker and writer are more important than theoretical concepts related to her own teaching context (i.e., content and language integrated learning, or CLIL).

Amber’s focus on skill-based professional learning is evident in the writing hashtags used to post to Twitter. Of the 28 hashtags used by Amber during the 10-week data collection period, seven of those hashtags contained some derivative of the word write. Tweets using hashtags with the word write mainly pertained to grammar use, writing creatively, writing principles, writing schedules, writers, writing goals, writing meetings, thesis writing, PhD writing, writing quotes, writing attitudes, academic writing, writing obstacles, and writing support. One particular hashtag is associated with a global, online writing project that occurs each November. Amber uses this hashtag in Twitter to offer writing support to others. “I … engage with the [online] community or if I need to get things out that had to do with academic writing, they would be [my] first go to account”. Amber also used Twitter hashtags related to her studies.

Amber also included hashtags related to her PhD, which were associated with a skillbased professional learning emphasis that embraced research in general. Eleven out of the 28 hashtags used contained some reference to her doctoral studies: PhD, thesis, viva, and research.

Twitter posts revealed a wide range of topics such as research proposal, time management, oral defense, feelings of satisfaction, research preparation, work-life balance, and publishing. Amber demonstrated a particular interest in reaching out to PhD students when she mentioned,

98 [Two hashtags referencing a PhD] seem to be like hashtags that I use a lot if I want to reach out to my community - like specifically to PhD students. [These two hashtags] seem to be what lots of people follow, so I add those hashtags [to my tweets] when I'm either retweeting or asking questions, at least I'd like to think I do (personal communication, March 16, 2015).

Similar online discourse that was explained earlier about Amber’s January web blog post receiving 17 comments is another example of how she is reaching out to others by sharing her doctoral learning experience publically with others.

Amber relied on Twitter and her personal blog to promote professional learning by developing human relationships. In the case of Twitter, Amber referenced 42 individuals (Twitter mentions) during the data collection period. Of those 42 mentions, 17 were stated in tweets more than three times. Amber’s mentions can be divided into three categories: news and politics, PhD students, and colleagues. News and politics included individuals who shared primarily politic news that were of interest to Amber. She also connected via Twitter to PhD students that she assisted. Finally, all other mentions were colleagues with the exception of her partner, who was a personal contact. But Amber also appreciated Twitter interactions what weren’t only mentions.

Amber had interactions with individuals who were complete strangers. In the online survey, Amber was indifferent when asked how comfortable she was sharing successes and failures with perfect strangers openly online. Yet, she stated in the interview that she appreciated interactions where perfect strangers offered support to her via Twitter. Regarding how she felt about the feedback she received, she stated, “I think it´s more like the positivity and the sense of just like you can do this, it will be alright, and that sort of reassurance which was really

refreshing.” She went on to compare support from perfect strangers with the support she

99

receives from friends: Even though you can get it from friends and neighbors, but actually getting it from complete strangers was…something really...special. It was just something different and unexpected. Normally you say good luck to somebody you know. But actually having…someone [read] it on Twitter that you follow and realize that actually they're paying attention [and that] they really want you to do well…is really nice. So in that sense the positivity was surprising, to be on the receiving end (personal communication, March 16, 2015).

Amber thought that 10% of those she interacted with on Twitter are people she knew while the rest were “complete and utter strangers”. She admitted that most of the positive feedback comes from complete strangers.

Amber’s PLN is material, ideational, and relational. The material, or technological, aspects of her PLN included Twitter, a personal blog, and online forums. The ideas that made up most of her interactions were based on writing, research, and reflective based. Finally, the relationships were several close ties with PhD students and colleagues with a shared interest in writing and research as well as perfect strangers who offered support and encouragement in her academic endeavors.

Barry’s PLN. Of all the participants, Barry showed the least amount of Twitter activity.

During the data collection period (November 15, 2014 – January 31, 2015), Barry had just 87 tweets compared to Amber (496), Carl (556), Donna (632), and Erik (421). And when asked if becoming and competent speaker and writer were part of his professional learning goals, he was

the only participant to answer not important at all on both accounts. When it came to

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maintaining his own personal blog, he stated Yeah, I used to be much more active...I used to blog. But then I realized that so many other people had so many better blogs, that I just gave up. I thought there´s no point in wasting my time. I might as well just let them do the talking.

Moreover, when answering Internet-related questions, Barry had the greatest differential overall in how he thought about how usefulness the Internet was and how he used it in terms of his own teaching, lesson planning, and connecting his students to the local and global community (See Table 10).

Table 10: Internet Usefulness and Use (Barry)

Note: Scale for usefulness questions – 5=extremely useful, 1=Not useful at all; Scale for

Response

Response

Response

How useful is the Internet in your own teaching?

5 How useful is the Internet when implementing your lessons?

4 How useful is the Internet for connecting your students with the local/global community?

3

Overall, how often do you use the Internet in your own teaching?

2 How often do you use the Internet when implementing your lessons?

Difference

2 How often do you use the Internet to connect your students with the local/global community?

2 Difference

1

2

Internet use – 5=Almost continuously, 1=Never.

3 Difference

101 Another aspect of Barry’s PLN that is distinguishable from other participants relates to

the type of tweets he produced (See Table 11). Dividing tweets into new tweets, replies, and retweets, Barry had the largest percentage of new tweets with 61% (Amber with 31%, Carl with 21, Donna with 37%, and Erik with 43%). Barry also had a higher percentage increase in how often he included Twitter mentions, replies, links, and hashtags (See Table 8). For instance, over his entire Twitter history, Barry included 1,322 mentions out of 2,627 total tweets (i.e., 50%) and 71 mentions out of 87 total tweets (i.e., 82%) between the period of November 15, 2014 through January 31, 2015, which is the data collection period allotted for this study. The percentage change from 50% to 82% is an increase of 64%, more than any other participant. He was also the only participant to show an increase of mentions, replies, links, and hashtags collectively.

Table 11: Barry's Use of Twitter Mentions, Replies, Links, and Hashtags Amber 31%-20% (-36%)

Barry 50%-82% (64%)

Replies

10%-12% (20%)

16%-22% (38%)

Links

28%-22% (-21%)

49%-62% (27%)

Hashtags

45%-31% (-31%)

51%-74% (45%)

Mentions

Carl 69%67% (-3%) 45%43% (-4%) 20%15% (-25%) 28%25% (-11%)

Donna 208%-179% (-14%)

Erik 84%-92% (10%)

63%-62% (-2%)

45%-55% (22%)

30%-30% (0%)

33%-26% (-21%)

64%-57% (-11%)

23%-25% (9%)

When asked about his online activity, Barry acknowledged that he had become more proficient in how he used Twitter. When asked what he thought the most significant change was to his PLN during the data collection period, he stated,

102 There's nothing major, but one thing that I certainly did do in that time frame [November 15, 2014 through January 31, 2015], was that I started to use Twitter lists more effectively…I downloaded a new Twitter app on my tablet and it was so much more user friendly, that I found it much…easier to interact with others [in my field] and the rest of my PLN. And so I became more active in that period, at least at following people and clicking links. I started using Twitter a lot more than I had been for a while just simply because I had downloaded a new app.

Barry went on and elaborated on how he came around to using this new social media tool, [The tool is] a third party one, it's called Falcon Pro. And actually I bought it years ago, and then the company went bust…I didn't have access to it for a while and I was really disappointed because it's better than the native Twitter app. And I was just messing [around with it] and I realized that it was working again. So yeah, it sparked a whole new interest in my Twitter PLN. When asked about when he began using the social media took, Falcon Pro, Barry replied, “I would say [in] January, probably mid- January [or] early January”. In fact, his number of tweets in January did increase when compared to November and December of 2014: November of 2014 with six tweets, December of 2014 with 30 tweets, and January of 2015 with 51 tweets.

Barry mentioned other social media tools that helped him interact publically online. For instance, he used Pulse – a feed reader – for getting his news which is linked to other social media tools that complement his overall PLN. He explained how he came to use Pulse and other social media tools this way, I find [Pulse] really useful…I have [it] organized into pages...there's a news section and I have a TEFL section with feeds from some of the blogs that I found on Twitter. And I

103 have an e-learning section with stuff on it, you know e-learning news and posts. So I use posts quite a lot, I use it daily…probably more than Twitter. See, that was the thing with…finding Falcon Pro again…I had Falcon Pro before [and] used it all the time. Then it stopped working [and] I started using Pulse just to following posts and feeds. And now I'm using the two of them a lot. And the other thing that I use a lot is Scoop.it, but that's normally for…web searching [and] actually sharing. The stuff that I share tends to come from my own searches. I save them to my Scoop.it pages that have five categories in Scoop.it and those are automatically shared to Twitter and LinkedIn.

Barry clarified that he seldom uses LinkedIn and that shares from Scoop.it are automatically sent and shared in LinkedIn. He also clarified that his main source for getting news is via Pulse, …what normally happens is I'll come across a new blogger or something on Twitter from a Twitter link, and I'll check them out via the link, and if I think they're worth following, I'll add them to my post feed [in Pulse]. [I] periodically trim my post feed to get rid of stuff that is no longer is active…

The mix of social media tools Barry uses served specific purposes and in the aggregate allowed him to navigate throughout is PLN. When compared to the other participants, Barry not only included hashtags more frequently (74% of the time), but also showed the highest increase of hashtag use with 45% (See Table 8). Most of the hashtags related to English language teaching and learning and business English. He used 10 different hashtags ranging from posting a hashtag once to the most frequently used hashtag being used 17 times. In comparison, Amber used hashtags less frequently as a percentage of total tweets and focused hashtags more on topics related to academic writing and her own doctoral research. She used 25 different hashtags ranging from

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posting a hashtag once to the most frequently used hashtag being used 31 times. In both cases, several hashtags were chosen to reference two or three general topics related to one’s PLN. Barry’s integration of social media (i.e., primarily Twitter, Scoop.it, Pulse, and Falcon Pro) were used to discuss ideas related to English language teaching and learning and business English by interacting with colleagues publically online.

Over the 10-week data collection period, Barry included 15 different Twitter mentions.

A Twitter mention, using the symbol @ followed by the person’s Twitter handle, is the equivalent to sending a direct message to a person publically; that is, the message sent from one person to the other remains a public post in Twitter for all to see. During this time period, Barry posted 15 different mentions anywhere from posting one mention to Twitter in one single occurrence – which happened nine times – up to using one particular mention five times.

Compared to hashtags, which are more ideational, the 15 different mentions were used 26 times while 10 different hashtags were used 53 times.

Barry described one online interaction instance with a colleague (i.e., a mention) that also related to a face-to-face class he was teaching at the time. The question was asked if he could recall any particular surprises or anything he did not anticipate within his PLN while participating in the study. He replied, I've been on Twitter for a long time, but I've never really [got] involved in conversations…, I'm a bit shy on Twitter. But then I was inspired by a lesson idea by one of my PLN, someone who is on one of my lists, and I designed a lesson based on her ideas.

He immediately followed up by acknowledging that as a result of this online interaction between his colleague, Fran (pseudonym) and him, others began to retweet the original posts as well and

that the resulting retweets were more than he usually gets. Barry got the idea for a reading

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technique from a person in his PLN (via Twitter) which he explained in detail. After having completed the class activity with his students, explained how he continued interacting online, I shared [my classroom experience as a Google Document via Twitter], Fran retweeted it, it was really only one or two retweets and one favorite, but then actually [at the school where I teach], I used it in a training session for my teachers…just before Christmas…, then all of the teachers went out and used it in their lesson. Since then, I've used the technique again.

Barry explained that the Google Document was a copy of a handout that he used in class. When asked about his relationship with Fran, he recounted his experience as follows, I am not even aware of any of the course books that Fran has written. I know that she is a writer, but I have never used any of her stuff. She just happens to be on a list. I came across her after [a] conference last year. I don't know if you following that, but there's a guy, an academic, from the UK called [Gerry – pseudonym], and he did this quite explosive talk debunking multiple intelligences theory… And there was a lot of activity on Twitter around that, like [Harry – pseudonym] retweeted Gerry’s talk. Then I started following Harry and then there was a lot of exchanges between Harry and Fran, and that's how I came across her. Then I saw her [website] and I liked a couple of ideas on there, so I started to follow her blog, and then I came across the [reading technique].

Most of Barry’s public interactions online are with individuals who he has not met face to face but who he relies on to share ideas of his profession using a variety of social media tools.

Carl’s PLN. Carl indicated in the online survey that he was a laggard when it came to implementing new technologies (See Table 1). He has used social media three-to-five years

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which is less than the other participants, and only used technology 10-20 hours per week. Carl was the only participant who felt uncomfortable sharing successes and failures as either a teacher or learner with a fellow educator with whom he worked. When asked the same question but sharing with a perfect stranger publically online, he remained neutral. When it comes to interacting with his colleagues face to face, who make up his PLN, Carl admitted that that does not happen, “…my main job here at the university…I have zero interactions online [with those whom I work], aside from [correspondence via] email. He went on to clarify, [I have] no connections with my colleagues. But to be fair, I really don't have too many colleagues in my job…it's an isolated thing. So I don't really have much face to face interaction either, I should say. I have contacts with two people, and one of whom is normally not my boss but…actually really is. We don't interact too much face to face and sometimes by email if there is an issue or something. Or if I need to do some extra work, but...I have one other colleague. We kind of share responsibilities, but there's no crossover, there's not a lot of discussion about work stuff, more of a social friendship, but definitely not online.

Carl concluded by saying that his two colleagues with whom he worked were either not really interested in professional development or was really into academic topics of translation and interpretation but nothing online.

Of those participants with more than 400 tweets (i.e., Amber, Carl, Donna, and Erik), Carl had the lowest variance and standard deviation between the number of new, reply, and retweet tweets (See Table 12). Although Carl had the lowest percentage of new tweets, he had the highest percentage and number of reply and retweet tweets when both were taken together;

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that is, 79% of Carl’s tweets were either a reply or retweet, and he was equally likely to post a reply as a retweet. When using Twitter, Carl used the fewest tools to send out tweets.

Table 12: New, Reply, and Retweets per Total Tweets Amber

Barry

Carl

Donna

Erik

New

148 (30%)

58 (67%)

114 (21%)

231 (36%)

177 (42%)

Reply

57 (12%)

15 (17%)

223 (40%)

284 (45%)

191 (45%)

Retweet

290 (59%)

14 (16%)

219 (39%)

119 (19%)

56 (13%)

Carl demonstrated a clear preference in the platform used to send out tweets. The Twitter web client was the preferred method with 87% (See Table 13). The only two other Twitter platforms Carl used was Twitter for websites (3%) and Twitter for Android (10%).

Table 13: Twitter Platforms per Participant

Twitter web client Twitter for iPad Twitter for iPhone TweepsMap Twitter for websites Instagram TweetDeck Mobile web Vine Google iOS Foursquare Facebook Twitter for Android

Amber

Barry

Carl

Donna

Erik

43 (9%)

13 (15%)

482 (87%)

350 (55%)

349 (82%)

142 (22%)

4 (1%)

98 (15%)

19 (4%)

1 (0%) 1 (0%)

19 (3%)

14 (3%)

5 (1%) 6 (1%) 16 (3%) 10 (2%) 5 (1%) 1 (0%)

22 (25%)

55 (10%)

32 (8%)

15 (4%) 3 (1%) 1 (0%) 1 (0%)

108 Buffer Tweetbot for iOS WordPress Scoop.it Twitter for Android tablets Pulse News Spotify

178 (36%) 253 (51%) 6 (1%) 40 (46%) 9 (10%) 2 (2%) 1 (1%)

In addition to the different platforms used to send out tweets to his PLN, Carl also used Twitter to notify others when he posted to his blog. Carl explained it this way, ‌I'd say probably like an average of 1.5 tweets per blog post or something, or if it's something I thought was kind of cool that didn't get read much, I might‌do a little bit more. I don't like to tweet too much.

Like Amber, Carl used Twitter to promote ideas shared in his blog publically through his PLN. Carl used his blog to share various ideas about the field of teaching and learning an additional language. He posted twice between November 15-30, 2014, four times in December, and twice again in January of 2015. For each blog post, readers had the option of sharing the post using the following social media: Twitter, facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and Pinterest. Readers could also email the post to others or print the post directly from the web page to a designated printer. And although Carl uses facebook, of the three (i.e., facebook, his personal blog, and Twitter), he prefers to interact with others publically online via Twitter.

The ideas expressed as hashtags Carl shared in Twitter, like Barry, were mainly related to the field of teaching and learning English as an additional language. Eleven different hashtags were managed a total of 202 times throughout the 10-week data collection period. Hashtags that

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were mainly related to the teaching and learning of English as an additional language related to teacher associations, geographic location (i.e., South Korea), English for academic purposes, and English teaching and learning in general. One hashtag referred to the professional learning of teaching English to students of other languages (TESOL). Much in the same way that Barry used 10 different hashtags, Carl used 11 to share more detailed topics around curriculum, assessment, and instruction. Many topics were also related to professional learning opportunities for other educators, such as massive open online courses (MOOCs) and other educational conferences that were being held face to face. However, Carl had an average of 18.4 posts per hashtag whereas Barry had an average of 5.3.

The ideas Carl shared beyond the use of hashtag made him distinct from the other participants in terms of being a foreign or second language educator. He tweeted (i.e., posted a tweet in Twitter) key words like reading, writing, listening, and speaking – which are typically associated with the field of TESOL – more than any other participant (See Table 14). The other participants tended to focus more on reading and writing and less on listening, speaking, lexicon (i.e., vocabulary), and pronunciation.

Table 14: TESOL Key Words Tweeted

Reading Writing Listening Speaking Lexicon Pronunciation

Amber 18 26 2 2 3 0

Barry 5 1 2 1 1 1

Carl 36 14 18 14 3 0

Donna 41 33 0 0 3 1

Erik 18 23 5 4 12 2

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Carl also tweeted about academic conferences more than the other participants although Donna and Erik clearly favored the topic of conferences over those related to assessment, curriculum, and business English (See Table 15).

Table 15: Other Key Words Tweeted Assessment Conferences Curriculum Business English

Amber 5 3 1 0

Barry 0 1 2 37

Carl 8 21 4 3

Donna 3 15 6 2

Erik 1 17 1 0

In Twitter, Carl had more mentions in his PLN than the other participants. He had 26 mentions out of 384 total tweets, or an average number of tweets per mention of 14.8. Like all participants, some Twitter mentions were individuals whom he met face to face while others were professional relationships developed solely online. It was not uncommon for Carl to express his forming a relationship in terms of how that relationship fostered his own professional learning. In one case he explained, [@MentionMary] (pseudonym), another [hashtag reference] person. We've known each other for now three years. I would say [that we have] a very close relationship on and offline. We chat on facebook all of the time. Also, on a private nature, we ask each other language questions like, “I heard of this today, would you ever say this”? I think she's also American, while the other two guys are British. So I'll get her opinion on English usage and things like this and vice versa, she'll do the same. So [we have] lots of interaction [and] see each other face to face when we can…She lives like 3.5-4 hours away, but I'd say I see her almost once a month if I'm in Korea. I hate those terms "real life", but I would say it's a real life friendship that developed out of online…There's a lot

111 of crossover with the [hashtag reference], and also here in Korea I started a reflective practice special interest group about four years ago. And I'm not very involved now with that, she's the facilitator of it now, so sometimes she'll check in with a request for advice or perspective or this kind of thing. So I can give some help there on what I might do or how I see the situation, or this sort of thing. I guess we didn't actually meet online first, we met offline first at this reflective practice special interest group meeting. We met offline and online right around the same time.

Carl also shared the importance of diversity when forming professional relationships within a PLN. He articulated one such relationship as follows: [@MentionMit], another [hashtag reference]. We met more recently. He's also now involved with the management of the [TESOL-related] group, which is basically just five of us sending emails on things as they need to get done. He has two blogs now – started the second one in January. Really bright guy that I'm happy to know… In Korea lots of people who are involved with professional development are university teachers because they have the time and maybe there are some benefits for presenting and writing papers…[Mit – @MentionMit’s first name, which is a pseudonym] actually works in a language school and so he has a different perspective on that, and I think it's really nice to talk to people with slightly different contacts. And he's super insightful and...I'd say he's 10 years younger than me but I'd say it's a strong friendship online mostly but if there's an opportunity to see each other offline we'll do it at a conference…

In both examples above, Carl connected the Twitter mentions to a related hashtag, and in many cases continued to describe his professional relationship by referring to the Twitter mention by

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using his first name. This was a common occurrence when Carl described his various contacts, the ideas shared, and how the professional relationship developed over time.

Donna’s PLN. Donna had more analyzed tweets during the study (i.e., 634) than any other participant, and was following the largest number of people when compared to the other participants (See Table 6). When asked how she felt sharing successes and failures with strangers publically online, she was the only participant to answer extremely comfortable on both accounts (See Table 5). Donna was also the only participant to consider herself advanced when it came to using blogs, microblogs, social bookmarks, wikis, forums, search engines, and emails (See Figure 1). When using Twitter (i.e., a microblog), she had the highest percentage of mentions and replies to total tweets: mentions with 179% and replies with 62% (See Table 7).

And when it came to posting to Twitter, Donna used a total of 10 different Twitter platforms, which was more than any other participant (See Table 13). The three most used Twitter platforms that Donna used were the Twitter web client (55%), Twitter for iPad (22%), and Twitter for iPhone (15%). Her overall comfort level in using social media and sharing ideas publically online was evident in her recollection of online interactions that took place during the study.

Donna made a clear distinction between her teaching practice and her own professional learning. When asked whether there was any change to her PLN between November 15, 2014 and January 31, 2015, began by distinguishing between her teaching practice and professional learning this way, ‌I'm in New Zealand and between the months of December [of 2014] and January [2015], that's our summer break. So its generally in education, it can be quiet, but because

113 of what I do, it's never quiet. I'm going flat out, so if you're just speaking about my online connections with my personal learning network, it doesn't slow down.

Donna continued to answer the question to illustrate her point by including several references to the ideational, material, and relational aspects to her PLN: personal blog, named a global learning community, Hilary (pseudonym), hashtag reference, Google+ Hangout, and the social media application, WeChat. Donna explained it as follows: Over that period, I wrote several blog posts to clarify my thinking because in December I graduated as a [global learning community] through the work of Hilari, who is an online education specialist in the field of global education. In that period, I worked extensively with teachers of almost four corners of globe, and as we communicate [on topics related to] online learning. In addition, in January I was in connection with my…host daughter in China… We use social media to do most of our communication, and we were using [the software application] WeChat because if you are aware…a lot of social media is blocked [in China]. We used WeChat just to talk to each other and [make] arrangements because in early February, I visited China for a week. In addition, between January and February I worked with our national facilitator in science…as part of my national project in New Zealand…So in one week's time I am running a teach [hashtag reference] [Google+] hangout with nine science educators as part of my national project (emphasis added).

The WeChat application was used to overcome limited access to online communication in China. Donna explained how she dwindled down various social media tools before deciding on WeChat, Wechat is a new tool that I am learning to use because I know that it gives me access to colleagues in China. But I can't use Twitter, I can't use Skype, I mean I can use Skype but

114 it turns on and off if you're working with China…I can't use Google Hangouts. I use [Apple’s video chat software application] Facetime a lot if I talk to my colleagues in China but even then it drops in and out…Every year we host a Mandarin language assistance from China at our school as part of the [Learning Institute] (pseudonym), and I have used WeChat to communicate with the previous Mandarin language assistance, so we've got an online group that we talk with.

So just overcoming the problem of communicating in China involved not just deciding on what social media tool to use, but making a conscious decision not to use several other media tools that would have limited their communicative accessibility in a country that imposes certain restrictions on how individuals communicate with each other publically online.

During the study, Donna experienced a learning episode with one of her PLN members.

She explained how Hilary facilitated this learning experience, Hilary exposed me to four new…online tools, and I'm very strong with online tools [but] these were new tools for me that I hadn't heard about. One big one that I really liked was about the time, learning how to tell time across the zones, and how to pre-book appointments so that we could align [our schedules] across four time zones…that was a new experience for me.

Donna went on to say that because of Hilary’s vast level of understanding and skill sets, that she feels she’s “learning from the best” (personal communication, March 13, 2015).

During the interview, Donna mentioned several times that what she was explaining she also shared in her personal blog. Between the period of November 15, 2014 and January 31, 2015, Donna posted two blog posts in November of 2014, two in December of 2014, and six in January of 2015. Indeed, many of the topics discussed in the interview were shared in her

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personal blog, which included the not only the same ideas, but the same Twitter hashtags and mentions which were also included in posts found in Twitter. Topics included associations with the global learning community (with associating hashtag), global citizenship, personal and professional reflections, links to public online chats (e.g., Google+ Hangouts), professional accomplishments, and cultural reviews, and changing from Blogger to WordPress for hosting her personal blog. When asked about changing from Blogger to WordPress, she said it was “easy” and “seamless” (personal communication, March 13, 2015). She mentioned that both Blogger and WordPress had come a long way and that it really didn’t matter when it came to deciding which to use to host a personal blog.

When asked if anything occurred during the study that she did not anticipate, she mentioned having time to reflect and what reflecting on prior experiences leads to. She stated, …it allows me [to reflect]. So I do have reflection time during that period, and as I am reflecting, I was blogging as much as I [could]. My thought process becomes clearer, and the creative juices are really moving fast so my head is absolutely buzzing by the end of January, before I get back to school. I´ve got all these new ideas and all this new stuff that I want to do.

To corroborate her statement, her personal blog archive not only revealed an increase in the number of blog posts for January, but also how Donna expressed personal goals and objectives she set stemming from global meetings that took place within her global learning community.

When it comes to using a platform for collaborating with other educators in the field, Donna prefers Wikis along with other social media tools. She mentioned, I love using wikis because wikis, I don´t have to lock down. And [they] are very open, you don´t have to have a wiki account to enter a wiki page. Because oftentimes, as we

116 know as educators, every time a new tool comes out, you have to set up a new account.

So what a wiki does is that each [individual] can go and edit [the person’s] page and I leave it open for a period of time when they are setting up a page for broadcasting. And then once a session is over, I lock it down. The other tool I use is Google Hangouts. We use Google Docs for presentations and we use Slideshare. So you got a choice in using Slideshare or Google Presentations to share your presentation. So before the session happens…teachers must have their presentations ready in either Slideshare or Google Docs.

Donna uses Wikis to host presentations and videos by embedding external social media to one public online space. Teachers create three-minute video presentations in YouTube so that more topics can be covered in smaller “chunks” of time.

The Wiki Donna promotes is a completely public wiki for any educator interested in collaborating with others. Not only can anyone view the wiki, but anyone can edit the wiki.

Because it is completely public, contributors can modify the document anonymously, or if they are signed in, may make changes that are associated to a wiki profile. Instructors are provided to educators wishing to present along with a signup register and respective dates for each presenter.

Even though Donna has made many of the over 200 page edits to the wiki main page (not including the page edits to all wiki subpages), it is set up so that the planning, implementation, and sharing of all the different presentations result from the educators themselves. The first entry to the wiki was April 24, 2013 and since then has added over 250 pages and files that make up the entire wiki website. The wiki primarily hosts short, three-minute presentations from mainly New Zealand educators who participate in a Google+ Hangout where they share their

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presentations publically. The wiki also includes Slideshare presentations as Donna mentioned in her interview.

Donna’s overall focus when using social media was to promote professional learning.

She did not particularly use a high number of different mentions and hashtags, but she did include them more often than the other participants (See Table 16).

Table 16: Mention and Hashtag Averages per Participant

No. of Mentions Times Mentions

35 137

Barry English language teaching and learning & business English 15 26

Average/Mention No. of hashtags Times Hashtags Average/Hashtag

3.9 24 99 4.1

1.7 10 53 5.3

Topics

Amber Academic writing & doctoral research

Carl ELT, EAP, Conferences

Donna Education referencing local emphasis; professional development

Erik

26 384

21 548

18 171

14.8 11 202 18.4

26.0 10 258 25.8

9.5 10 126 12.6

All of the 21 different mentions and 10 different hashtags were related to ideas and relationships related to education and professional learning. Donna explained on several occasions how certain Twitter mentions (i.e., personal contacts) were associated with different hashtags (i.e., ideas) within a typical Twitter discourse. The following is an example where Donna explains part of her PLN – namely ideas and individuals – that primarily stems from her Twitter interactions (all names and mentions are pseudonyms): [@schoolname] is my school and my principal tweets under that name…I also broadcast via her.

118 [@Jenny] is one of our teachers at [School Name]. She´s just getting going on Twitter. [@Violet] is the same thing. [She] is joining me again [for a conference]. She´s one of the presenters. [@Mary] is part of the [#learning] project. [She] and I wrote a book together on [#topic] last year as part of our [#learning] project. And [she] and I were students of Hilari. [@ginnynz01], she´s our assistance principle for New Market school, also my solotaxonomy mentor.

Sonya: [@NZLearning2] is Kat...she´s the national science facilitator in New Zealand.

Sonya: [@Nancy] [Nancy] is from Denmark... I assisted [her] face to face as part of my journey. And she´s well known for school design in modern learning environments. I go to her for that.

Sonya: [@PrincipalName] is a principle I just helped with a distributor of leadership project. He´s studying in Malaysia… I was helping him with his project.

Sonya: [@Scott] Scott is one of [PrincipalName’s] young teachers. I met him face to face last November. He came to visit me at school.

Sonya: [@Sue] is part of the online [#learningcommunity]. I haven´t met her face to face.

Most of mentions Donna included in her Twitter postings were keywords that reflected ideas that were associated with online and public learning communities all in the field of education while most Twitter mentions were individuals’ names.

Erik’s PLN. Erik relied heavily on Twitter as part of an overall PLN, which was similar among all participants of the study. Mentions and hashtags were employed frequently, but Erik – like Donna – had a much higher percentage of mentions to total tweets than hashtags to total

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tweets. Erik included mentions 392 times out of a total number of tweets of 424 (i.e., 93%), and Donna included mentions 1136 times out of a total number of tweets of 634 (i.e., 179%).

Conversely, Erik included hashtags 106 times out of 424 total tweets (i.e., 25%) while Donna included hashtags 360 times out of 634 total tweets (i.e., 57%). Both Erik and Donna had the greatest difference between mention and hashtag ratios than the other participants at 68% and 122% respectively (See Table 7). In addition to Twitter, Erik also maintained a personal blog to share ideas related to the field of English language teaching and learning.

During the data collection period, Erik had only three blog posts that all occurred in January of 2015. He stated in one blog post about being away from his personal blog for most of 2014 due to his commitment pursuing a master’s degree (his last post of 2014 was posted in June), and he also mentioned how others should follow a fellow-colleague publically online who happens to be Carl, another participant of this study. The other two posts related to ideas around using social media to promote academic writing skills and the complexity of language variation when it comes to learning and using English. Although Erik’s personal blog was not used extensively during the study, he provided insight into how he leveraged various social media tools to promote his ideas shared on his blog.

As with other participants, with the exception of Barry, Erik used Twitter to promote his personal blog. He stated that most of the more meaningful conversations happened on his personal blog as opposed to informal dialogs that occurred on Twitter. He explained it as follows: Twitter is more or less for me to share with people and retweet the blog post and have varying commentary on that blog post itself. And the interactions that I've had with people about that particular blog post is more or less [others] thanking me for sharing. So

120 I don't think that there's very much meaningful interaction that's happening on Twitter in that regard. It's a device for curating.

Beyond Twitter and his personal blog, Erik also mentioned that he also used facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn to share ideas related to English language teaching and learning, but to a lesser degree.

The main change that occurred to Erik’s PLN during the study was related to him completing a master’s degree program towards the end of November of 2014. He explained this changed this way: … I think my focus shifted…from using my PLN to talk about my research to moving [to] reading more about what [others in my PLN] were doing. So, I had been subsumed with just my own research for such a long time that I gave up on blogs and I gave up on Twitter and all those things for about a year in terms of interacting. So during that exact time period is when I kind of got back into reading other people's blogs and reading what they were doing and interacting with them more like I had more than a year earlier… I too had started blogging as well, so it was nice to kind of get back in that groove where I had to rebuild relationships…with some newer people in the online universe and then see where all the people who were part of my PLN [before] were and what they were doing. I would say that happened [during the end of November of 2014].

When asked a follow up question related to any unexpected events or occurrences to his PLN during this time, he stated, …I think because I had been part of research for such a long time, my focus had moved from…really just communicating ideas to each other to actually looking for best practices in our field. And I had known of Randy's blog [#EFL topic] for awhile, and we had talked

121 a few times as well, but I think my focus and interests had shifted more towards finding out what he was talking about, and I think that I have come around to caring a lot more about [#EFL topic]-based things that I had before that period. So, the way that focused on Randy’s blog posts, more so than before…maybe it's not surprising there was definitely a shift in my professional development. Not only was I really looking for general commentary on the [#EFL topic] or sharing that type of information with the PLN, I was now looking for and trying to share more commentary that was based on action research or you know dispelling pseudoscience or…those types of topics. So, hopefully that translated in my blog posts as well.

At this point in Erik’s explanation, he transitioned from changes how he interacted with others to social media tools, describing it as follows: But you know [this study] is kind of a short time period, so I would say that there hasn't been a massive change in the way that I use technology or anything like that...I have done some Google+ Hangouts a little bit more often oddly during that time maybe because…more people use Google now than they had a year ago. And I manage that [online community] Google+ plus community as well so during that time I had ample…opportunities to focus on what is likely to happen in that [online community] group…in turn we would have more regular schedules and we'd try to talk about topics that were not just ad hoc…but stuff that had some relevance to what everyone was doing in [English for academic purposes] at the time. I would say that it's true, it's the [#EFL topic]-based shift maybe that has been the most on my mind and that happened as a result of my research and the environment that I work in now where in higher education everything is [based on this topic].

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The main topic Erik is discussing relates to evidenced-based teaching and learning centered around primarily courses related to English for academic purposes.

The way Erik shared ideas publically online were similar to how the other participants shared their ideas. Erik and Donna both felt more comfortable sharing successes and failures with strangers publically online (See Table 8). Erik, Donna, and Carl all had higher frequencies of sharing concepts related to teacher conferences. And when it came down to the four language skills (i.e., reading, writing, listening, and speaking), Erik, Donna, Carl, and Amber shared ideas mainly related to literacy or reading and writing (See Table 17).

Table 17: Key words from Twitter Posts (Tweets)

Blogs

Amber

Barry

Carl

Donna

Erik

9

5

47

45

34

21

15

17

8

6

Business English Conferences

123

4 3

1

Facebook Listening

2

2

18

5

Pedagogy

9

16

107

87

Professional

4

6

1

6

Reading

18

5

36

41

Research

18

25

development

Scoop.it Speaking

38 2

Technology Twitter

18

1

14

4

2 5

Twitter for

12

12

15

31

Android WeChat

3

Wiki material

17

Writing

26

1

14

33

23

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Regarding the educational backgrounds of the participants, Erik, Donna, and Amber shared similar experiences in that each had completed an important milestone in their own professional learning: a master’s degree in the case of Erik, a diploma in the case of Donna, and a doctorate degree in the case of Amber.

Evaluation of Findings This qualitative, multiple case study revealed the complexity of public online interactions between English language educators over a period of 10 weeks. The different themes that emerged from this doctoral study related to how ICTs were resorted to when interacting between individuals, what ideas were shared while interactions took place, and how interactions emerged over time; that is, how language educators cultivated the materialist, ideational, and relational tenets of a PLN emerged over time between five different individuals. The findings indicated that individuals who choose to interact publically online can come from various professional backgrounds and contexts yet still share common approaches as to how ICTs, ideas, and individuals come together for a particular purpose. Although the particular purpose within the context of this study was to focus on professional learning, the intentional and incidental nature of cultivating one’s PLN has been in large part absent in the current literature. Thus, this section is an evaluation of the findings organized around two research questions that address both the theoretical concept under investigation (i.e., the PLN) and the quintain (i.e., the individual case itself). The two research questions address 1) how PLNs emerge through open, online, informal pedagogical dialogues and 2) how language educators explain changes to their PLNs over time.

The five participants of the study demonstrated variations of knowledge in the field of English language teaching (ELT). All participants came from ELT-related areas – content and language integrated learning (CLIL), teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL), and

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teaching English as a second language (TESL) – but each had an ideological approach to the way they revealed their respective knowledge about teaching and learning. Amber, Carl, Donna, and Erik exhibited a great deal of self-knowledge, coming primarily from a learner standpoint in that most of the knowledge being shared publically online related to their own professional learning.

Self-knowledge is one of the six facets of understanding that helps the learner see the big idea or big picture (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005). The willingness to openly share professional-related topics with others requires the appropriate disposition necessary to become a productive teacher leader (Bond, 2011). All five participants shared this willingness even though they each had varying comfort levels when it came to sharing either failures or successes with strangers openly online.

When it came to demonstrating teaching knowledge, Barry’s understandings were unique to the other four participants who were coming more from a learner perspective. Barry’s pedagogical explanation of how an idea for a lesson plan emerged within his PLN displayed examples of higher order thinking when it came to providing a learning experience for his students. Barry’s consideration for his students (i.e., knowing their backgrounds, objectives, and limitations) and the school where he taught was evident in his pedagogical understanding as he provided clear examples of how he applied an idea, showed perspective and empathy for his students with regard to the implementation of the lesson, and interpreted an idea from someone else within his own educational context. Thus, a higher level of understanding of pedagogy came from implementing a learning scenario with students where the professional learner (i.e., the language educator) could explain, interpret, apply concepts, have empathy, perspective, and selfknowledge, which collectively form one’s overall understanding (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005).

Barry’s recollection of how his PLN emerged from being an external idea to a learning

experience for his students, to ultimately a learning experience for himself, exposed his

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understanding and how the role of each of the six facets.

Donna also substantiated high levels of understandings but primarily from her own perspective and the perspective of other educators. The six facets of understandings appeared throughout her description of experiences assisting others, but not quite like to facet of selfknowledge. Even though Donna took on a leadership position by working with other language educators become more interdependent, she shared examples of self-knowledge by explaining how positions of facilitating others can also result in positions of learning from others as well.

Mentoring and coaching others, communicating with other teachers regardless of personal affiliation or preference, growing by bringing in new ideas, becoming a more competent communicator of one’s ideas, engaging in creative and problem-based issues, and sharing with others are representative of a teacher leader (McEwan, 2003). Not only Donna but those educators she came in contact with all shared characteristics that would be considered a teacher leader.

Barry and Donna interacted with their respective PLNs in ways that promoted collaboration through the use of educational technology. Albeit in different ways, both provided evidence of instructional design, educational media, and educational computation – which Newby, Stepich, Leyman, & Russel, (2010) refer to as educational technology – in how they collaborated with others openly online. In this case, tools, open-ended learning environments, and web-based learning were all used as methodologies to facilitate learning (Alassi & Trollip, 2001). Knowledge, understandings, and skills sets were demonstrated with PLNs what could not be possible without an appropriate disposition.

127 With the exception of Amber (with five-to-seven years’ experience), all participants had

over 10 years of teaching experience, at least three years of experience using social media, and various amounts of time each week using social media, which ranged from 10 to more than 40 hours per week. Regardless of these variances however, not one participant felt negatively about sharing successes or failures publically online. One’s disposition underpins one’s teaching practice, value system, and overall commitment to taking action (Carroll, 2012). Without an appropriate disposition, knowledge and skill sets become inadequate when it comes to professional teacher training. Although there is no evidence in this study to address dispositions of teacher trainers or those novice language teachers with less than three years of experience, having an appropriate disposition within the context of this study was key to their open, online participation even though each came from different professional backgrounds. Thus, understandings, skill sets, and appropriate dispositions can collectively be thought of more broadly as a teacher’s knowledge base that surfaces to a degree via a learning community.

The PLN of each participant and how the PLN transpired over time in certain respects can be described as a kind of learning community based on a virtual community of practice (CoP). Participants of this study had between 767 – 2,705 Twitter followers and nearly this amount of individuals whom participants followed themselves, which could only exist by having some common domain. Having a shared domain or ideas around what is being shared publically online provides a common ground from which to build one’s identity, thus giving a purpose for exchanging ideas and generating value among those involved (May, 2009). But from an institutional standpoint, since many of the language educators the participants interacted with were both individuals with whom they had met and those whom they had never met, the degree that a professional learning community existed from an institutional standpoint could be

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questioned. A professional learning community from an organizational point of view rests on establishing four interrelated pillars: mission statement, vision statement, shared values, and common goals (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, 2008). So, within the context of this study, the manner in which participants interacted with others in some ways is characteristic of a CoP and overall professional learning community but from an organizational perspective, to a lesser degree.

In terms of community building, contrasting gesellschaft (society) with gemeinschaft (community), the findings show clearer evidence of the latter. Many comments were made by participants that lend themselves to bonding over contrived personal relationships, developing common goals over contractual arrangements forced onto the individual, and uniting together despite the physical distance between the language educators over separating individuals in spite of perhaps uniting them geographically. Gemeinschaft is essential to building community because it fosters a shared space for individuals to interact and it bonds individuals together based on a common goal, shared set of values, and a shared conception of being (Serviovanni, 1999). There was nothing contrived on the part of the participants in how they connected and interacted with their PLN since each had the freedom to participant however they liked. The emergent nature of connecting and building personal relationships (that can form into professional learning communities) is a simple exercise but complex.

On several occasions, participants shared stories regarding how either a new understanding about something, a new tool they learned something about, or a new relationship emerged from a totally unexpected set of circumstances which ultimate resulted in change.

Donna’s story about connecting a school principal with a particular learning community project, with a collaborative book project, etc. was not uncommon throughout this study among all participants. Given Johnson’s (2007) definition of complexity science as “the study of the

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phenomena which emerge from a collection of interacting objects” (pp. 3-4), and taking slight liberties in accepting a variety of substitutes for the noun objects (e.g., individuals, materials, technologies, and ideas), one can see how the serendipitous nature of cultivating a PLN can be quite multifarious. Specifically, feedback loops – or the interactions between objects, individuals, materials, technologies, and ideas – entail an iterative and recursive relationship between cause and effect (Kay, 2008). Carl, in describing his interactions with others publically online, mentioned how common reflective practice and sharing ideas can inspire professional learning. In this example, Carl exchanging ideas, interacting using different technologies, and conversing with different individuals might begin iterative, circular, and back-and-forth which might not generate a change in behavior or new knowledge. But over time, this iterative process could lead to a recursive process when a change in behavior or change in ideas might result. As memory formation builds over time (as a result of these feedback loops), these recursive relationships have a synergistic effect; in other words, when faced with the nonlinearity of professional learning, the whole becomes more than the sum of its parts which is a key tenet to complex systems (Strogatz, 2003).

The final example of complexity of learning within the context of this study was how Donna used a fractal with helped strengthen the sustainability of the learning experience. She explained how she had teachers create short, three-minute video presentations which were conducted live using Google+ hangouts and subsequently uploaded to a public wiki for anyone to view. In social organizations, this example of a fractal exists when day-to-day leadership patterns connect with similar patterns observed over the course of weeks, month, and years (Dooley & Lichtenstein, 2008). In Donna’s case, the similar (and simple) pattern was having each teacher prepare a three-minute presentation about a particular topic and having them each

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share their presentations openly online via a Google+ hangout. As this fractal is repeated on different occasions with other teachers the process is also iterative and recursive.

The ideas that make up one’s knowledge about teaching, the formation of a professional learning community, and the notion that learning is complex lead to a final theoretical concept that best articulates the fluid nature of a PLN: actor-network theory (ANT). The idiosyncratic quality of how each participant interacted and explained their PLN throughout the study was pervasive. Donna and Erik used and explained social media more than the others while Amber and Barry focused more on an appreciation of human interaction over technology use. From an ideational perspective, Amber focused more on research and writing; Barry on business English; Carl and Donna on pedagogy and blogs; and Erik on blogs, pedagogy, and writing. But without exception, each participant provided clear evidence of how humans and non-humans (i.e., materials) come together as a network. Human and non-human actors are networks and networks are an association of human and non-human actors (Fenwick & Edwards, 2010). The authors also state that these associations of actors not only form agencies but also ideas, identities, rules, routines, policies, instruments, and reforms as well (Fenwick & Edwards, 2010). An actor (i.e., an idea, material, or human being) is anything that has an effect on some other actor (Latour & Harmon, 2010). Much in the same way that feedback loops in complex systems form memories that affect change over time, translation is an ontological frame that recognizes that actors transform from one set of associations to another (Latour, 2005). In terms of a PLN, findings showed that ideas, materials, and human interaction changed shape over time which was purposeful and meaningful for each respective participant of this study.

Summary

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The purpose of this qualitative, multiple case study was to explore how PLNs of educators who teach English as an additional language emerge through open, online informal pedagogical dialogues and how these educators explain changes to their respective PLNs over time. This chapter presented the PLNs of five educators (as individual case studies) from distinct professional backgrounds who chose to participate in this 10-week study and who agreed to take an online survey, to have their online and public posts analyzed, and to take part in a final interview. Themes arose from the findings that supported the two research questions.

Teaching knowledge was the first theme discussed. Having a high degree of selfknowledge was a common theme throughout the study even though each had their own teaching and learning context from which to draw: Amber, Carl, Donna and Erik from more of a learner standpoint and Barry from a pedagogical standpoint. Professional learning communities was another theme that was shared among all participants. Each participant followed other individuals and had others who followed them stemming from shared interests and purpose as opposed to strictly adhering to organizational objectives seen in schools, for instance. Another them to emerge from the findings was framing the act of learning a being a complex phenomenon. In social behavior, the fractal, or a simple behavioral pattern that scales to a broad, more non-linear and dynamic set of behaviors uncovers an iterative and recursive process that is best served when human and non-human objects interact more openly and online. And finally, ANT brings human and non-human agents or actors to the forefront where all things (individuals, ideas, identities, rules, routines, policies, instruments, and reforms aggregate together to form networks that continue to morph around particular purposes. Indeed, the findings show how a PLN is an effect of this aggregation (i.e., network) that comes from

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professional knowledge and professional online learning communities that recognizes learning as a complex endeavor.

133 Chapter 5: Implications, Recommendations, and Conclusions When it comes to professional growth, periodic workshops disconnected from one’s

teaching practice fail to allow educators to accumulate a knowledge base needed to try out ideas in the classroom (Darling-Hammond, et.al., 2009). And although isolated workshops and conferences provide the means for meeting colleagues and discussing professional problems, they still remain far removed from the situational factors affecting local classroom practices (Atay, 2006). In Mexico in particular, the problem of teaching in isolation is amplified when given the fact that only 60-65% of Mexican teachers have no formal induction and mentoring programs, which by far surpasses a global average of 18-20% (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2011). The purpose of this study is to address this problem.

The rationale behind this qualitative multiple case study was to describe how ideas, materials, and social interactions form a personal learning network (PLN) through online and public informal pedagogical dialogues. It is precisely these informal pedagogical dialogues that are conducted using information and communication technologies (ICTs) that contain what educators need to know to better do their jobs within an information landscape (Warlick, 2012).

Recognizing and researching the dynamic set of associations between ideas, materials, and social interactions are often overlooked in educational research (Fenwick, Edwards, & Sawchuk, 2011).

Researching and unveiling PLNs within a local context – as associations between ideas, materials, and social interactions – remain the precursor for reconnoitering professional learning in terms of what individual identities and behaviors are translated in becoming part of a network (Fenwick, 2010). The objective of this study then is to explore emergent PLNs as a way to address the disconnect between the day-to-day practice of teaching and learning and isolated

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learning events such as conferences and workshops that are viewed as the primary source for professional learning in the field of education.

This qualitative multiple case study study investigated five English language educators who agreed to have their open and online interactions with others analyzed over a period of 10 weeks. Participants signed an informed consent form at the beginning of the study and then completed an online survey; participated as they normally would have by interacting with others in online, public spaces; and finished by taking part in a final interview. Pseudonyms were maintained throughout the study in order to protect the confidentiality of each participant, and were chosen not only to provide an alternative to their real names, but also were employed in place of public hashtags and mentions which could subsequently be identified in Twitter. A case study design was used to collect and analyze data for this study because it is ideal for conducting an intensive analysis and descriptions of an individual, event, or group and allows for in-depth understandings of situations and meaning for those involved (Hancock & Algozzine, 2011).

However, as with any study, there were limitations.

Although theoretical saturation was achieved from the collection and analysis of data, this study did have some limitations. Within the context of this study, theoretical saturation was achieved after having identified and applied 458 relevant codes (out of a total of 520) that failed to reveal new themes related to the research questions; however, this is likely due to the type of participants who chose to take part in this study. In the field of teaching English to students of other languages, language educators can be divided into two broad categories: native and nonnative speakers. Far from being absolute terms, generally speaking, a native speaker is one who grew up learning the language within speech communities where the language was dominant and thus gains certain linguistic intuitions around certain syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic uses of

the language (Davies, 1991). The participants of this study, were teachers of English for

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speakers of other languages who were also native speakers of English. A limitation of this study was the absence of any teachers of English for speakers of other languages who were non-native speakers of English. Had this been the case, certain themes that did not appear in this study might have appeared particularly as they pertained to teacher knowledge and skill sets related to the language teacher’s linguistic competencies: listening, speaking, reading, writing, vocabulary, and pronunciation. This limitation (i.e., difference in linguistic competencies) would likely influence the ideas, materials, and social relationships that form one’s PLN. The rest of this chapter details the implications behind each of the two research questions, which stem from a literature review rooted in professional knowledge, community, complexity, and network theory. After the implications of the study have been presented, recommendations follow that divulge practical applications of the study.

Implications This doctoral research set out to answer two related research questions. The first question was how PLNs of EFL educators emerge through open, online, informal pedagogical dialogues, and the second question was how EFL educators explain changes to their personal learning networks over time. Answering these two questions and describing the implications of these answers intertwine; that is, they complement each other in terms of 1) how participants leave evidence of associating ideas, materials, and human interactions in public and online spaces over time and 2) how participants provide perspective related to how these ideas, materials, and human interactions are aggregated together. Also, the answers to both questions complement and influence each other as both are needed to better understand the complexities behind such network formations. The implications for this study are that PLNs depend on the

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type of ideational, material, and social connections that reside both internal and external to the individual, organization, or community; the value of both weak and strong ties foster networks to scale.

Five PLNs were presented in this study from five unique individuals under local teaching and learning contexts. The implications of describing a PLN is less about typology as it is about topology. Latour (2005) juxtaposed two ways of defining the notion of the social as 1) a homogeneous thing to be compared to other notions like economics, biology, psychology, and science and 2) a trail of associations between heterogeneous elements – advocating the latter. To understand how a PLN emerges within the context of this study is to understand how trace associations exist at any given time within any given space. Trace associations or patterns then will be articulated in terms of ideas, materials, and social relationships between human beings that collectively serve a particular purpose for the individual. Each idea, material, and social relationship is an actant that is a result of a heterogeneous aggregate of other actors while simultaneously serving as a single node of a greater network, which can be called a PLN. Theoretically, two individuals sharing exactly the same ideas, using the same materials to share these ideas, maintaining the exact same human relationships, would still be two very distinct PLNs. The overall implication then in discussing a PLN avoids theoretical classifications and produces rich descriptions of relationships between human and non-human entities.

Professional knowledge and community existed within and outside a PLN throughout the study. The five participants belonged to different nationalities, resided in different parts of the world, and taught in different educational situations, yet each formed their respective PLN around ideas, materials, and social relationships. Ideas, materials, and social relationships can also each be defined as an actor (or actant). An actor is anything that has an effect on other

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things – it can be any size, real or unreal, physical or non-physical, and an actor contains other actors ad infinitum (Latour & Harman, 2010). So an individual, an idea an individual has, a relationship an individual has with someone else, a technology an individual uses, all can be considered separate actors resulting from a respective collection of other actors (or nodes). From this vantage point, professional knowledge demonstrated by the participants of this study can be described as an aggregate of actors which are potentially ideational, material, and social.

Similarly, a professional learning community resulted in a network of heterogeneous actors which were both physical and non-physical: different people, different technologies and how they were utilized, and different ideas being expressed throughout each PLN. For this reason, describing one’s PLN could also be highly representative of what most understand as professional knowledge and could also be a subset of a broader notion of what is meant by a professional learning community. Stated another way, instead of placing professional knowledge solely within an ideational sphere, professional knowledge is best viewed in terms of an ideational, material, and social network. Similarly, a professional learning community is also a network of ideas, materials, and social relationships but on a much broader scale than the professional knowledge network.

Networks scale. Professional knowledge, the personal learning network (PLN), and the professional learning community are each ideational, material, and social networks. The difference between these three networks are the types of nodes and the typology of those nodes specifically. In a professional knowledge network, an idea or a set of ideas are central to the network; in a professional learning community, a group of individuals are central to the network; and in a PLN, the individual is central to the network. The same could be said for any social media tool. Taking Twitter as an example, the results of this study show that to understand

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Twitter as a communication tool is to understand the network of ideas, additional materials or technologies, and social relationships that collectively provide the networking concept behind this mental representation (i.e., Twitter). Twitter (like any other tool, idea, or social relationship) then is not the same for any two individuals - it depends on how its used. To say it depends on how it is used is to say it depends on the network of ideas, materials, and social relationships.

Networks are proportionate to themselves (i.e., they scale) as they come together for a particular purpose.

Amber, Donna, and Erik shared similar experiences in that they were either finishing a degree program or a professional development course. For each, their respective PLNs were influences by these activities. In some cases, the PLN was used to assist their endeavors while other times the PLN that took place openly online was less active. Although the scope of this study was limited to interactions that took place openly in public spaces, the theoretical concepts that apply to an actor network apply equally to face-to-face interactions. One of the limitations of this study is separating open and public interactions with those that occur face-to-face – a concept that is antithetical to the scalability factor of networks mentioned above. Amber, Donna, and Erik undoubtedly had face-to-face interactions with others related to their professional learning programs (as well as other pursuits) that easily could have influenced how they chose to interact openly online.

Barry shared an experience where an idea for a lesson plan emerged from his PLN which ultimately translated into a lesson for his business English class that then led to a potential learning experience for his colleagues. In this case, a material semiotic resulted from having a material sustainability in how subsequent interactions took place. A material semiotic comprises of ideational, material, and social relationships that form and exercise force in how they persist,

decline, and mutate over time (Fenwick & Edwards, 2010). Since Twitter was consistent

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throughout the exchange, a strategic durability was maintained that perpetuated ongoing dialogues and the sharing of ideas online. Strategic durability refers to the sustainability of processes or activity patterns within the actor-network over time (Law, 2009). Thus, the sustainability of a PLN relies on the degree of material durability, ideational connections and relevance, and the willingness of an individual to activity participate. When any one of these three cease to exist, then the PLN is likely to decline or morph into something different.

The findings showed that all participants viewed their personal contacts they maintained openly online as being a part of a whole network of personal learning. However, some contacts were more professional in nature while others were more personal; some contacts participants had met face to face first while others participants had never met face to face. Some contacts served a particular purpose around certain goals or projects that participants were interested in while other interactions with contacts were more emergent. Thus, the ties that participants formed with their personal contacts were both strong and weak. Strong ties are those formed among friends or colleagues who sustain close contact with each other whereas weak ties are those one has little contact with and can also include interacting with a friend of a friend, for instance (Granovetter, 1973).

Barry’s weak tie with Fran emerged through a careful selection of technologies. Barry had deliberately selected Falcon Pro, which was a social media tool that he preferred to use when interacting with others publically online. His initial interaction with Fran, a weak tie, led to a classroom experience with his students which led to subsequent interactions with his colleagues from a pedagogical standpoint. Indeed, this small-world effect demonstrated how Barry was directly and indirectly effecting his PLN and how his PLN was directly and indirectly

influencing him. This iterative and reciprocal process of influence provides the basis for

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professional learning that exist within the individual and throughout the PLN. Throughout the study examples of professional learning through a connectivist lens was evident. Interactions involved a diversity of opinion, connections were made with individuals and with non-human devices, potential to interact and learn from others existed outside the individual, interactions evolved around current ideas, and purposeful decisions were made around relevant circumstances. Learning within these parameters align with principals that support a connectivist learning theory that goes beyond what a cognitivist and social learning theory set out to achieve (Siemens, 2005). The PLN of the language educator is where learning affordances reside so that knowing where to find information or skills sets needed to serve some future aspiration become more important than actually having acquired this knowledge or set of skills. In other words, when it comes to professional learning (i.e., development), the act of becoming (i.e., ontology) supersedes what an individual knows or viewing professional knowledge as a static phenomenon (i.e., epistemology).

The implications of this study are that professional development is a collective network of ideas, materials, and social interactions. The unit of analysis of this study is the PLN or individual, but this just provides a starting point for understanding one particular node of an entire network (i.e., the individual). A PLN is a network of ideas, materials, and social relationships where the individual person remains the focus. The same could also be said for Twitter as a social media tool (i.e., a material). Focusing on Twitter would entail understanding the relationships or trace associations between ideational, material, and social relationships that aggregated to form a network. The same could be said for any idea. The implication then is to recognize that even though the PLN was the unit of analysis for the purposes of this study, that

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every entity can be viewed as a material semiotic (i.e., network) and that networks 1) continue to grow, decline, and stay the same and 2) have the potential to scale. As a result, professional development might be better viewed as professional learning since the former implies a dichotomy: developed or not developed. In reality, professional learning implies a more ongoing process that personal growth that depends on ideas being shared, the materials used to share such ideas, and the human relationships that are formed to use the materials to share the ideas. The alternative is to continue to look at professional development as learning about an idea in isolation, or learning about a tool in isolation, or using the term networking to only refer to interacting with others while disregarding the ideas and materials involved.

Recommendations Practical applications. The first recommendation is for educational practitioners (i.e., educators) to assess their own PLN and how it might help assist in ongoing professional learning.

It begins with being willing to share successes and and failures online and perhaps publically with strangers online. It also might mean getting more engaged with others through public online spaces, learning more about social media tools, and learning how to connect what others are doing with what the practitioner is doing locally. The practitioner should retire the term professional development for a term more appropriate for the professional: professional learning.

Assume a leadership mentality based on authority and not on power. Leadership by authority assumes one has the will or desire to make learning and one’s own practice more transparent so that others might benefit. Authority is less about position, rank, or title and more about having the professional knowledge, skill sets, and disposition to help others. Finally, leadership authority recognizes that everyone has the potential to help someone else in some area – the key

is finding the professional context to make it happen. This requires looking at PLNs,

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professional knowledge, and professional learning in terms of a network of scale.

The second recommendation is for instructional leaders, administrators, and supervisors to assess the PLNs of teachers within the school and how they might yield affordances for more effective, efficient, and engaging professional learning experiences for teachers. That is, create an environment where teachers have the potential to continue cultivating their PLN throughout their professional career. The scalability of the individual PLN then becomes trace networks that form an overall organizational learning network. The instructional leader can see how individual ideas, materials, and social relationships work at both the individual level and at the institutional level, and how both relate to each other. Just as individuals are recommended to make their own learning more transparent, so too are instructional leaders, administrators, and supervisors at the institutional level.

The third recommendation is for conference and workshop organizers to assess how individual sessions might integrate within a teacher’s PLN before, during, and after the overall event. Instead of looking at a conference as an isolated event, it becomes more of an extension of professional learning that might mean sharing discussions before a session and extending the discussions via social media after the event. If broadband is available during the conference for example, topics can be discussed via Twitter, Google+, or facebook beforehand which could have an impact on what will subsequently be discussed during the session. And teachers could continue sharing ideas and experiences about the topic after the session, which might also lead to building stronger social relationships that might take the professional learner to new educative experiences.

143 The three recommendations are an integrated approach to ongoing, transparent

professional learning. The teacher practitioner has a responsibility to cultivate a PLN around individual goals and objectives. The school and its instructional leaders have a responsibility to leverage the PLNs with respective individual goals and objectives around institutional mission and vision statements as well as linking them to external organizational learning networks (e.g., other schools and conferences). The cultivation of a PLN focuses on the individual, who maintains much control in how one learns, but also is very much dependent on external forces at the institutional level and forces external to the institution. All actants play a role, but the success of any singular PLN comes from a holistic awareness of how associations are forms throughout the nodal connective.

Future research. For further research, a social network analysis (SNA) could be done to seek greater complexities and patterns between ideational, material, and human nodes within a given network, and would also numerically identify prestige and other power relationships that might exist. Complementing the SNA with qualitative data via a mixed method study would provide even greater insight into how and possibly why networks were being added to, depleted, or remained the same. Also, since using pseudonyms was a limitation in this study, further research should reveal the real names of the participants, the actual hashtags, and anything else that was being shared publically so that the act of participating in the study would have greater potential benefit for the participant themselves. As long as participants are chosen in an unbiased fashion, more retrospective studies of this type will further the literature base on professional learning through a connectivist lens.

Conclusions

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The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore how PLNs immerged and how EFL educators explained any changes to their PLN over time so that alternatives to professional development might be made. Professional development that consists solely of conferences and workshops neglect that potential for how teachers are able to learn publically online. It also does not go far enough in providing the support necessary when providing professional development opportunities for the novice teacher (e.g., via induction and mentoring programs). This study described how five EFL educators interacted publically online and how their respective ideas, materials (i.e., technologies), and social relationships immerged given the individual case and the overall purpose for using the PLN to promote professional learning.

Although processes were put in places to protect the identity of the five participants, this also was a limitation of the study. The nature of this research resided in making professional learning experiences transparent and known throughout the network. Reporting the findings while sharing the real names of the participants would have provided a benefit to them by potentially allowing them to extend their PLN to others. Another limitation was that this study provides little insight into the PLN of a non-native speaking teacher would undoubtedly would look different in terms of the ideas being shared and perhaps the types of human relationships being formed.

The implications of exploring the PLNs of these five EFL educators are that the case study demographics have little to do with specific patterns that result from analyzing ideational, material, and social networks. However, clearly ideational, material, and social actants within a PLN influence one another that is complex. The associations between ideational, material, and social nodes are iterative and reciprocal when it comes to causing the potential to change the

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other. The nodal influence requires understanding that nodes (i.e., actants) are both an effect based on a collection of network nodes and a potential for cause as it might generate a change in other nodes. Establishing a PLN based on complexity recognizes that ideas, materials, and social relationships are each a network and also form a network.

Professional knowledge, PLN, and a professional learning community make up a material semiotic that is continually growing, pruning, or staying the same. The unit of analysis for this study was the PLN, but to understand the PLN is to understand the ideas, the materials, and the social relationships that make up the PLN. In other words, to understand any one of these is to understand the relationships between all three. From a professional development standpoint, but means replacing the term with a more suiting word that better represents the complexity of what it means to learn: professional learning. To cultivate a PLN or to assist others to cultivate their own PLN, understanding ideas, materials, and social relationships as a network phenomenon is essential to designing learning environments that provide the most potential for engagement.

Networks scale, which means that instructional leaders, administrators, and supervisors should learn the relationships between a PLN and professional knowledge, professional learning community, and external organizational networks such as other schools, conferences, and external workshops. A PLN is a result of not only the individual taking responsibility of one’s own professional learning, but also administrators, and others who have a vested interest in contributing to the PLN. The simple premise is that have helping others, we help ourselves. This mantra implies a shift in perspective in that professional learning becomes more transparent at the individual and organizational level. Thus, the three recommendations suggest that 1) the individual teacher should find ways of making one’s learning more transparent by sharing ideas and experiences publically online, 2) instructional leaders, administrators, and supervisors should

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align personal goals and objectives that provide the bases of a PLN with the mission and vision statements of the institution, and 3) that external organizational networks such as schools and conferences find ways to leverage PLNs of teachers within their own goals and objectives they have established for themselves. The PLN begins with the individual but has the potential to influence and be influenced by others according to how external forces of an overall network are formed at any given time and how these forces are organized over time.

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162 Appendix A: Informed Consent Form

Cultivating a Personal Learning Network that Leads to Professional Change Purpose: You are invited to participate in a research study that is being conducted for a dissertation at Northcentral University in Prescott, Arizona. The purpose of this study is to examine the link (if any) between an ongoing development of a personal learning network (PLN) and the pursuit of one’s own professional development. There is no deception in this study as I am interested in obtaining information with regard to current teaching practices in terms of behaviors, relationships, activities, and actions.

Participation Requirements: EFL/ESL educators will be asked to participate in the following way: • • •

•

Complete a survey that takes approximately 15 minutes.

Participate in a face-to-face orientation that explains in greater detail the way English language educators may choose to interact with each other over the next 10 weeks.

Take part in a 10-week interactive period where English language educators will be asked to interact with each other through online spaces of their choice. Participants will be able to discuss the topics of their choice (as they relate to the teaching and learning of an additional language), that relate to current teaching practices that participants are actively participating in during the 10-week data collection period.

Your participation will end with a 30-minute one-on-one interview that will allow each participant to express any overall feelings about the course and any challenges they faced while interacting with other educators over the course of the 10-week period.

Research Personnel: The following person is involved in this research project and may be contacted at any time: Benjamin Stewart, 449.910.8489; email: bnleez@gmail.com.

Benefit & Risk: The risks involved in participating in this study are minimal. There is no direct benefit to participants for participating in this study, but participants may benefit from having networked with others through building professional relationships that may extend beyond this study. Data obtained from the survey and interview will remain confidential to the extent that such data is not shared publically during the 10-week interaction period by the participants themselves.

Anonymity/Confidentiality: Confidentiality will be maintained by 1) assigning a coding system to participants and universities in order to protect the identity of the participants, 2) blocking out any names, emails, or any other identifies in the event that any public websites are shared during the reporting process, and 3) that all data collected for this study will be locked in storage (accessible only by me) for a period of five years.

Right to Withdraw: Your participation is voluntary. Refusal to participate will involve no penalty or loss of benefits to which you are otherwise entitled. Also, you may withdraw from the study at any time without penalty or loss of benefits to which you are otherwise entitled.

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Questions: If you have any questions about your rights as a research participant, any complaints about your participation in the research study, or any problems that occurred in the study, please contact Benjamin L. Stewart, the researcher conducting this study, at bnleez@gmail.com or by phone at 449-155-3246. Or if you prefer to talk to someone outside the study team, you can contact Northcentral University’s Institutional Review Board at HYPERLINK (mailto:irb@ncu.edu) irb@ncu.edu or 1-888-327-2877, extension 8014. We would be happy to answer any question that may arise about the study. Please direct your questions or comments to Benjamin L. Stewart (see above) or Alexandru Spatariu at aspatariu@ncu.edu or by phone at 702-319-1559.

Signatures: I have read the above description for the Cultivating a Personal Learning Network that Leads to Professional Change study and understand what the study is about and what is being asked of me. My signature indicates that I agree to participate in the study.

Participant’s Name: ________________________ Researcher’s Name: ________________ Participant’s Signature:____________________ Researcher’s Signature: _____________ Date: _____________

164 Appendix B: EFL/ESL Teacher Survey

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176 Appendix C: Semi-structured Interview Guide

Curriculum: Reflect on how your classroom experience linked to the written (explicit) curriculum and/or standards. How did you adapt your lesson (content, language, etc.) to account for the students’ readiness levels, backgrounds, and learning experiences in other disciplines (classes)? Were you compelled to share these successes or challenges with others? If so, how?

Assessment: How did you assess your students: informal discussions, homework, academic prompts, performance tasks, tests, quizzes, etc.? Were your assessments predetermined? Did you work with colleagues to determine keystone assessments? How will you share your assessment successes and failures with others?

Instruction: How did the implementation of your class go as planned and what were some unexpected events that transpired? Or what contingency plans are in place for a future class should something not go as planned? Reflect on the differences between the planned and implemented learning progression provides the greatest insight on how one reflects in action. Do you or have you ever shared these experiences with colleagues? If so, explain.

Strategies: What affective, cognitive, and metacognitive strategies are appropriate for this lesson? How much time will you allow for covering such strategies? Or did you have enough time to cover these strategies from a prior class? How have you shared teaching or learning strategies with colleagues in the past?

Reflection: •

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• •

Consider how your lesson plans address an educational challenge with regard to preparation, scaffolding, grouping configurations, etc.), and how this challenge links to any changes to your outlook on teaching or learning.

Consider how the implementation of your lesson plans and the plan itself differ? Does everything go as planned? How have past experiences affected your outlook on teaching and learning in general?

How do the materials you use in class help or hinder your performance as both a teacher and a learner?

How do open and online interactions with other educators help or hinder your performance as both a teacher and learner? What challenges do you face?

Most Significant Change Related questions that address the essential question, Looking back over the last one-to-two weeks, what do you think was the most significant change in your personal learning network that contributed to your own professional learning?

177 Appendix D: Multicase Study Preestablished Themes based on Research Questions

Theme 1: Conceptualizations Subtheme 1.1: Curriculum Subtheme 1.2: Assessment Subtheme 1.3: Instruction Theme 2: Materials (i.e., objects) Subtheme 2.1: Technological Subtheme 2.2.1: Blogs Subtheme 2.2.2: Moodle Subtheme 2.2.3: Ning and other similar online communities Subtheme 2.2.4: E-mail Subtheme 2.2.5: Cellular phone Subtheme 2.2.6: Other (e.g., projectors, non-cellular telephone, fax, etc.)

Subtheme 2.2: Nontechnological Theme 3: Individual Interactions Subtheme: Colleagues Subtheme: Friends Subtheme: Online acquaintances who have never met face to face Subtheme: Online acquaintances who have met face to face Subtheme: synchronous (e.g., live videoconferencing, Google+ Hangouts, Skyping, etc.)

Subtheme: asynchronous (e.g., forums, etc.)

178 Appendix E: Matrix for Generating Theme-based Assertions from Case Findings Rated Important

Case 1 Finding I Finding II Finding III Finding IV Finding V Finding VI Case 2 Finding I Finding II Finding III Finding IV Finding V Finding VI Case 3 Finding I Finding II Finding III Finding IV Finding V Finding VI Etc.

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Appendix F: Matrix for Generating Theme-based Assertions from Merged Findings Rated Important

Merged finding I Merged finding II Merged finding III Merged finding IV Merged finding V Merged finding VI Merged finding VII Etc.

From which cases?

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180 Appendix G: A Matrix for Generating Theme-Based Assertions from Important Factor Clusters

Ratings of From Importance which cases

Themes 1

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181 Appendix H: Predetermined Codes

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Case study o Demographics (Case Study information)

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Quintain (i.e., Personal Learning Network) • Change Stories o Ideations (conceptualizations) § UnderstandingsCS • ExplainCS • InterpretCS • ApplyCS • PerspectiveCS • EmpathyCS • Self-knowledgeCS § Understanding of how languages are learned (i.e., applied linguistics)ALCS • ExplainALCS • InterpretALCS • ApplyALCS • PerspectiveALCS • EmpathyALCS • Self-knowledgeALCS § SkillsCS • English as a foreign languageCS • PedagogicalCS §

DispositionCS

o MaterialsCS § Web TechnologiesCS • BlogCS • NingCS • TILL MoodleCS • Other MoodleCS • Google+ Community ChatCS • WikiCS § OtherCS o InteractionsCS § Intra-institutional interactionsCS § Inter-institution interactionsCS § Types of communication

182 • • •

Asynchronous (e.g., Forums) Semi-synchronous (e.g., Twitter, Google+ Community chats, etc.)

Synchronous (e.g., live video conferencing)

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Ideations o Understandings § Explain § Interpret § Apply § Perspective § Empathy § Self-knowledge o Understanding of how languages are learned (i.e., applied linguistics) § Explain § Interpret § Apply § Perspective § Empathy § Self-knowledge o Skills § English as a foreign language § Pedagogical o Disposition

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Materials o Web Technologies § Blog § Ning § TILL Moodle § Other Moodle § Google+ Community Chat § Wiki o Other

Interactions o Intra-institutional interactionsCS o Inter-institution interactionsCS o Types of communication § Asynchronous (e.g., Forums) § Semi-synchronous (e.g., Twitter, Google+ Community chats, etc.) § Synchronous (e.g., live video conferencing) Note: Codes may also emerge during the data analysis process.

•