Online learning communities in teachers’ professional development: a systematic review

Abstract

This paper aims at contributing to an understanding of using online learning communities in teachers’ professional development in the context of lifelong learning. To investigate that, this study is designed as a systematic review. Research questions of this study are indented to reveal what the most repeated keywords combining with learning communities and/or teachers’ professional development are, what the main characteristics of participants are, what the trends and difficulties in published works on teachers’ professional development are. The results have been discussed in the context of learners and learning and it is aimed to map the studies on learning communities in teachers’ professional development in the context of lifelong learning. It was found that online learning communities was also used under different names such as community of practice, computer-mediated communication and participatory media frequently. Researchers mostly used discussion boards as online communities. The other specific platforms to build an online communities were found to be learning management systems including Moodle, WebCT and D2L, Facebook groups and asynchronous platforms such as blogs. When the trends and difficulties in the published works on online learning communities in teachers’ professional development were investigated, it can be said that using online learning communities to provide a constructive space for both collaborative learning and reflection on teaching, using an asynchronous space in addition to synchronous one, and getting support from peers if participants provide support were the trends.