Online Learning Networks for Pre-Service and Early Career Teachers

How can we improve support for teachers as they negotiate the pathways into the profession? This books highlights how strong networks of connections with other teachers and with resources have been shown to make a big difference. Online learning networks are one way to help pre-service and early career teachers to foster these connections and the greater community of teachers has an interest in helping new teachers to enter the profession. New technologies have allowed teachers to be connected anywhere, anytime; this book discusses principles for the design and implementation of learning networks that can use this connectivity to improve support for beginning teachers. It addresses foundational principles of types of teacher communities (online and offline), types of knowledge relevant to beginning teachers, the idea of presence within a network and methodologies for studying and nurturing communities of teachers, providing recent examples of each.

Nick Kelly is a Research Fellow in Digital Futures in the Australian Digital Futures Institute at the Springfield campus of the University of Southern Queensland, Australia.