Online Learning Networks for Pre-Service and Early Career Teachers, 1st ed. 2016

How can we improve support for teachers as they negotiate the pathways into the profession? This books highlights how strong networks of connections with other teachers and with resources have been shown to make a big difference. Online learning networks are one way to help pre-service and early career teachers to foster these connections and the greater community of teachers has an interest in helping new teachers to enter the profession. New technologies have allowed teachers to be connected anywhere, anytime; this book discusses principles for the design and implementation of learning networks that can use this connectivity to improve support for beginning teachers. It addresses foundational principles of types of teacher communities (online and offline), types of knowledge relevant to beginning teachers, the idea of presence within a network and methodologies for studying and nurturing communities of teachers, providing recent examples of each.

Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. Supporting Teachers as a Wicked Problem.- Chapter 3. Characterising Communities of Teachers.- Chapter 4. developing Teacher Knowledge and Reflection.- Chapter 5. Presence, Identity and Learning in Online Learning Communities.- Chapter 6. Analysing Learning Networks of Pre-service and Early Career Teachers.- Chapter 7. Developing a Learning Network for Pre-service and Early Career Teachers.- Chapter 8. Designing and Evaluating Online Networks of Teachers.- Chapter 9. Conclusions.

Nick Kelly is a Research Fellow in Digital Futures in the Australian Digital Futures Institute at the Springfield campus of the University of Southern Queensland, Australia.