Moving away from comfort zones: Working in community with teacher educators to promote e-learning classroom-based research

Teacher educators are considered by many as a source of hope and leaders of change in education, especially in challenging times and contexts. It is little wonder given the responsibility they have to form future teachers of potentially, generations of young people over the next half-century. Being a model, guide and promoter of effective teaching practices increasingly involves e-learning-based tools. With the advent of e-learning has come tremendous pressure on teacher educators to change their established ways by adopting ICT tools in their daily practices. Research in the last decade has indicated the enormity of the challenge to change teachers' practices with regard to ICTs. In our experience, promoting the integration and choice of effective e-learning practices among teacher educators, has been an even greater one. To reverse this trajectory, we have sought to establish an alternative scenario. In this paper, we report on a 5-month Action Research Study conducted with teacher educators in the context of an English Pedagogy Program in Chile. Self-selected teacher educators were encouraged, guided and supported in a virtual community space to conduct their own classroom-based research involving social media tools, in order to address the challenges they were facing in their teaching. The study is framed by our beliefs in sociocultural theory, the power of community meaning-making along with reflective practice to lead to social transformation and learning. This Action Research builds on and was inspired by our earlier study in this context that led to an adapted TPACK model which underlined the connection between teacher educators e-practices and sustained changes to those of pre-service teachers. Using a variety of ethnographic tools at the level of the Action Research and the classroom-based studies, we describe how this project led to new understandings in the use of e-tools in Teacher Education and the influence they had on learning and practice on several levels.