Reflective Online Community of Teacher-Researchers Across Different Educational Contexts

Reflective Online Community of Teacher-Researchers Across Different Educational Contexts

Atsuko Watanabe (Bunkyo University)

Chitose Asaoka (Dokkyo University)

Akiko Fujii (International Christian University)

Daisuke Miura (Toho Gakuen Music High School)

Daisuke Miyahira (Toyo Eiwa Junior and Senior High School)

Ayumi Yoshihashi (International Christian University)

When engaging in professional teacher development, it can be difficult to balance our identities as educators and as researchers. In conducting research on reflective practice, the main author of this study often felt uncomfortable as she thought she had to play the role of a researcher only, preventing her from connecting with the teachers in the study. In this presentation, we will share our experiences of conducting this study and juggling our identities as teachers, researchers, and teacher-researchers.

The aim of the study is to create a collaborative reflective community of teachers from different educational institutions where all the teachers participate in the study as teacher-researchers. The online community comprises 8 teachers from different educational institutions: 1 junior high school, 4 high school, and 3 university teachers. The teachers were divided into two subgroups based on the educational institutions to secure diversity. All of us engaged in the following procedure: we shared points of improvement in the practice, recorded a segment of a lesson, uploaded the recording of the lesson to the web, watched the recordings of other members in the subgroup, and exchanged comments about the lessons in an online reflective discussion group. Each subgroup had completed three sessions. In this presentation, we will share our experiences of participating in the online community in our own path in our journey, especially in terms of participation as teacher-researchers, positionality in the study, and perception of the community.