TACT: A
virtual community of
support and communication for professional development
Thérèse Laferrière
(Laval University),
Alain Breuleux & Robert Bracewell (McGill University), Gaalen
Erickson (UBC)
The TL*NCE researchers working on the theme Educating the Educators
aim to take hold of the pedagogical advantage of telelearning
technologies. Toward this aim, the teacher education research
team is progressively establishing the TeleLearning Professional
Development School (TL*PDS), a concept grounded in both physical
and virtual settings: professional development schools (PDSs)
or associated schools on the one hand, and professional development
webs (PDWs) on the other hand.
TACT is a response to a new vision of the learner. The acronym TACT stands for TéléApprentissage Communautaire et Transformatif (French), and for Technology for Advanced Collaborative Teaching (English). It stresses that successful integration of web-based facilities into the learning and, later, working environment implies extensive reconceptualization of the professional teacher's pedagogy.
TACT is a professional community. TACT is a professional development community
on the web. Its designers builds on computer-mediated communication
(CMC) research and on computer-support for collaborative learning
(CSCL) research which increasingly reveals the potential for support,
communication, and joint ventures as knowledge-building, collective
understanding, and co-construction of meaning occur (Schlagal,
Trathen & Blanton, 1996; Laffey, 1995; Koschmann, 1994; Levin,
Waugh, Brown & Clift, 1994). Pre-service and in-service teachers
who use this professional development website (PDW) are encouraged
into a more collaborative type of learning and instruction. Once
they graduate, they have a new mean to stay connected to the research
team and this professional community.
TACT is a window on emerging educational practices. Schools
of Education are under pressure to prepare future teachers who
will take advantage of the potentials of networks to improve learning
outcomes. PDSs is where pre-service teachers are likely to observe
and participate in leading-edge emerging new pedagogical practices.
But the merging of leading-edge technologies and of top-down and
bottom-up innovative educational practices are still too rare
events for preservice teachers to get wide exposure to such practices,
and this is where the TL*PDS comes into play.
TACT is a collaborative knowledge-building
instrument. Interconnected learning
communities is the practical strategy we have come to adopt. We
envision the virtual community of communication and support (TL*PDS)
to give rise to the unique opportunity for collaboration that
TeleLearning tools provide to the Teaching profession. Such a
strategy calls upon, and may enable a culture of learning to be.
TACT is an attitude. Researchers design the TL*PDS and
its activities in close cooperation with innovative educational
practitioners (teachers, school principals and teacher educators
integrating information and communication technologies into their
own respective learning environments). Few teachers believe that
a major educational transition is in progress, or feel enabled
to face the prospect of having to transform their ways to think
about content (knowledge-building), to organize the learning environment
and the coordination of the learning activities (the learning
community approach), and to practice teaching (isolated versus
collaborative). Pedagogical tact (Van Manen, 1991) has meaning
in teacher professional development. In our perspective, it refers
to thoughtfulness, and to sensitivity to teachers' sense of self,
and personal power in an era of educational change where technology
is often getting all the attention.
Thérèse Laferrière,
Laval U
Alain Breuleux and R. Bracewell, McGill U
