“…, educating novice teachers in thoughtful technologies use needs to begin with the development of concepts - a complex process of implementation and reflection that can be greatly informed by the voices of experienced practitioners.” (ibid.: 55) A similar view which calls for training is brought by Lund (2003): “… expertise is needed when making ICTs in education conducive to learning. However, expertise is not easily defined, nor is it a timeless, universal, and abstract construct. In the short history of ICTs in education, expertise has often been understood as having superior technological skills. … technologies are fundamentally social, i.e. they bring individuals into contact with other individuals and with resources produced by others. Thus, teachers’ ICT-related expertise needs to be addressed in social and relational terms.” (p. 265).
The common features in the two previous quotations are that they both call for a kind of training which is different from providing teachers with formal instruction in technological skills. Also, they both insist on teachers learning from one another. This same view is held by Tsui (2003) in a wider context of ESL. She suggests that teachers should collectively develop two types of expertise in the professional growth. “The notions of “multiple expertise” and “distributed expertise” highlight the importance of fostering a culture of collaboration in which expertise can be pooled, and the importance of encouraging teachers to participate in professional discourse communities so that they can learn from each other.” (pp. 181-2)
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CoPs boost collective learning and put virtuous professionals together to construct knowledge. Their strong point is the social capital generated by the synergy of individuals during their interactions within the group.
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The second way of teacher training which is closely related to the first is community of practice (CoP). CoPs boost collective learning and put virtuous professionals together to construct knowledge. Their strong point is the social capital generated by the synergy of individuals during their interactions within the group. There are many CoPs but two are worth mentioning here. One is the Webheads in action community (http://www. webheads.info/) whose members are scattered throughout the world. This community organizes its own conferences online using cutting-edge technologies for the sake of sharing and learning. Also, it has a mailing list on which new innovations by the members of the community share their findings and how-to practices. Another is Open Source Initiative community (http://opensource.org/) whose mission is to serve the underserved communities by providing free distribution software programs that can be customized to meet the users’ needs. Both communities, and others alike, have online interfaces which link members from different backgrounds. Actually, there is a need for such communities locally and across our region through which less served countries can share contriving measures of overcoming the lack of hardware and software especially in public schools and universities. Ideally, the major actors in each country can get together in a community in order to share good practices and then create links with regional and international networks. Strategies and action plans of teacher training are beyond the scope of this paper. Teacher trainers must be aware of all the aforementioned variables, particularly when they are designing their formal training programmes.
The Tunisian English Language Teaching Forum
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