Supporting and changing practices of nested and overlapping educational communities

Applications of information technology to support systemic reform in public school systems have taken several forms. Instructional applications include attempts to more effectively convey information to students, to empower students' own agency in accessing information and constructing knowledge, and to aid teachers' classroom management, lesson preparation, and assessment. Technology has been proffered as a change agent in itself: teachers will need to change their practices in order to use technologies designed for doing authentic inquiry and communicating or collaborating with others [10]. Information technology can also support professional development through access to online courses, and enable participation in distributed communities of practice. The work reported in this paper has taken this latter strategy. Because today's school systems operate in an environment of constant change, professional development requires a paradigm shift from a scripted training approach to a more fluid approach that encourages the incorporation of networks, coalitions, and partnerships. The capacity to network with other professionals is essential to the notion of communities of practice. McLaughlin and Mitra argue that sustaining large-scale theory-based reform efforts "requires a community of practice to provide support, deflect challenges from the broader environment, and furnish the feedback and encouragement essential to going deeper" [7]. Barab defines a community that advances ongoing and open-ended professional development as a "persistent, sustained network of individuals who share and develop an overlapping knowledge base, set of beliefs, values, history and experiences focused on a common practice and/or mutual enterprise" [1]. These communities change the relationships among teachers, breaking the isolation that most teachers have found so confining.