KDI: The Internet Learning Forum: Fostering and Sustaining Knowledge Networking to Support A Community of Science and Mathematics Teachers

拟议的项目将设计和评估一个电子知识网络——互联网学习论坛（ILF）的显著特征，以支持一个由在职和职前数学和科学教师组成的虚拟社区，使他们能够分享和改进教学实践。ilf的设计围绕着一个社区的愿景，在这个社区中，教师可以虚拟地访问彼此的教室，观察和讨论数学和科学主题的教学方法，并分享人工制品。ilfi旨在支持一组分布的教师，使他们的教学中涉及的隐性知识明确，以便与他人分享，反过来，帮助教师将这些显性知识作为其实践的隐性部分。这个项目的研究目标是理解培养、维持和扩展实践社区的原则，在这些社区中，分享实践和参与对话的参与者的价值超过了参与的“成本”（例如，时间、技术访问；让别人看到自己的教学的担忧）。虽然技术的有效利用（ILF）是本研究的重点，但很明显，技术环境只是整体社区战略的一个组成部分。因此，该研究着眼于影响社会网络动态的各种变量，教师通过社会网络寻求改进和分享他们的教学实践。这项研究的目的不是产生抽象的测量或分数，而是建立一个丰富的关于知识、资源利用、实践和社区的历史发展的故事。研究问题集中在教育学、技术、社会信息学和学习理论的交叉点，并对每个领域都有重要的影响。反映这一交叉的跨学科方法将是为解决下列每一类问题而进行的研究的特点。(1)如何使用网络和电子技术来代表和促进教学实践的共享和传递？(2)在ILF社区中出现的共同意义是什么？这些意义是如何演变并扩散到课堂实践中的？(3) ILF成员如何组成社区，我们如何促进跨界？

The proposed project will design and evaluate the salient features of an electronic knowledgenetwork, the Internet Learning Forum (ILF), to support a virtual community of pre-service and in-servicemathematics and science teachers, allowing them to share and improve pedagogical practices. The ILFdesign centers around the vision of a community in which teachers can virtually visit each other's classroomsto observe and discuss approaches to teaching mathematics and science topics and to share artifacts. The ILFis meant to support a distributed group of teachers in making the tacit knowledge involved in their teachingexplicit so that it can be shared with others and, in turn, to aid teachers in using that explicit knowledge a tacit part of their practice.The research goal of this project is to understand the principles for fostering, sustaining, and scalingcommunities of practice in which the value to participants of sharing their practice and entering in thedialogue outweighs the "costs" of participation (e.g., time, technology access; the concerns of letting othersview one's teaching). While the effective use of technology (the ILF) in supporting a community of practice isa focus of this research, it is clear that technological environments are only one component of an overallcommunity strategy. Thus, the research looks at the variety of variables that impact the dynamics of thesocial networks through which teachers seek to improve and share their pedagogical practices. The intent ofthis research will not be to produce abstract measures or scores, but to build a rich story of the historicaldevelopment of knowledge, resource use, practices, and community. The research issues converge at theintersection of pedagogy, technology, social informatics, and learning theory and have important implicationsfor each. An interdisciplinary approach, reflecting this intersection, will characterize the research carried out to address each of the following categories of issues.(1) How can networking and electronic technologies be used to represent and facilitate the sharing andevolution of teaching practices?(2) What are the taken-as-shared meanings that emerge in the ILF communities and how do thosemeanings evolve and diffuse into classroom practices?(3) How do the ILF members structure themselves into communities and how do we promote boundarycrossing?