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Student-teachers’ sense of belonging in collaborative online learning

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Abstract

Recent years have seen a sharp increase in the transition from traditional teaching methods to online distance teaching and learning in all educational institutions including schools and higher education institutions. This change means that student-teachers need to have online learning experience and acquire professional skills needed to become online distance teachers. In the last two decades, research has investigated various aspects of online teaching but a main subject which has not been studied in depth is the learners’ feeling of belonging in an online distance course, especially among student-teachers. The research investigated the contribution of student-teachers’ self-perceived readiness for learning online and a collaborative online learning environment to the learners’ sense of belonging. For this purpose, quantitative and qualitative data were gathered from pre- and post-tests and personal and collaborative blogs from 172 student-teachers’ studying in two large teacher-education colleges in the center of Israel, to measure their self-perceived readiness for online collaborative learning, their sense of belonging and the learning experiences and changes they underwent along the course. It was found that a student-teacher, who had previously enjoyed a good experience in a collaborative online course, and had strong technological literacy for online learning, performed better in an online course, operated optimally in collaborative task performance, and felt a strong sense of belonging to the group at the course’s end. These findings can inform future teacher training, the formation of new pedagogic models and teaching methods for collaborative online environments and their implementation in teaching-learning.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The research was conducted with the support of the Mofet Institute Research Fund.

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  1. Faculty of Education, Kibbutzim College of Education, Technology and the Arts, Tel-Aviv, Israel

    Tami Seifert

  2. Faculty of Education, The Academic College Levinsky-Wingate, Tel-Aviv, Israel

    Smadar Bar-Tal

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  1. Tami Seifert
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Seifert, T., Bar-Tal, S. Student-teachers’ sense of belonging in collaborative online learning. Educ Inf Technol 28, 7797–7826 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-022-11498-3

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