Abstract
Teachers’ professional development is a key factor in improving science education, but it shows limited impact when only a small number of teachers is reached, or when it focuses on only one aspect of teachers’ development, such as learning science content, and is disconnected from teachers’ practice. In order to increase the impact of our work on teachers’ professional development, we implemented in 2007 ComPratica, an online network intended to establish a virtual community of practice involving biology teachers and biological education researchers. We present here the results of the first 2 years of this project, obtained through an analysis of the number and distribution of actions performed by the participants in the community, the kinds of activities in which they are engaged, and the themes addressed in their messages. From these data, we conclude that ComPratica is effectively functioning as a community of practice and is leading to changes related to both teachers’ and researchers’ professional development, which seem capable of reducing the research–practice gap in science education.
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Notes
ComPratica can be accessed at http://www.moodle.ufba.br/course/view.php?id=8823. Even though visitors cannot post messages, they can read all the messages contained in the forums of the community and, thus, get a clear picture of how it functions. Those interested in participating in ComPratica should write to the authors of the paper. The language used in the community is Portuguese.
This percentage was calculated considering the number of members at April 2009 (64).
Considering the number of members at April 2009 (64).
As we remarked above, there was a problem in the storage of the data and we were not able to obtain reliable reports of the participants’ actions in the period from April 2009 to February 2010, when we gathered the data for this paper. We did not perceive, however, any important change in the community dynamics throughout these months and, thus, we can infer that the community kept showing the same pattern in the levels of participation observed in the data gathered until April 2009. To sustain this inference, we can look, for instance, at the activity in the forums: from November 2007 to April 10th 2009, 514 messages addressing topics to be discussed were sent to ComPratica, while from April 10th, 2009 to February 21st, 2010, 379 messages were sent. That is, in the first period, approximately 30 messages were sent per month, on average, while in the second, the average amounted to 34 messages/month.
The messages sent in the community were freely translated by the authors of the present paper, with care being exercised with regard to the preservation of their content and, as much as possible, style of writing.
The classification of some participants of the chats does not correspond to that shown in Fig. 1 because the chat took place before April 10th, 2009.
LDB: “Law of Guidelines and Bases for National Education” (Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação, number 9394/96). This is the most general legal background for the organization of education in Brazil.
In Brazil, the seventh-grade corresponds to the year 8 of Primary Education, planned to enroll students around 13 years of age.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank CNPq, FAPESB, IAT and SEC-BA, for financial support. We are also indebted to all our colleagues, pre-service and in-service high school teachers, university researchers, and graduate and undergraduate students who contribute day by day to keep ComPratica alive.
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El-Hani, C.N., Greca, I.M. ComPratica: A Virtual Community of Practice for Promoting Biology Teachers’ Professional Development in Brazil. Res Sci Educ 43, 1327–1359 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-012-9306-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-012-9306-1