Community of Practice: Supporting EFL Pre-Service Teachers in Conflict Resolution

Abstract

This study was carried out to explore and describe the results of building a community of practice with a group of English pre-service teachers aiming to boost new educators’ professional development by addressing conflicts among students, a frequent issue in public schools. On the other hand, technology was integrated into the process not only as an instrument to build the community, but also as an instrument to gather information throughout this study. In this regard, a blog was created, taking advantage of characteristics that online communities of practice have over traditional face-to-face communities. This study takes a descriptive-interpretative qualitative research method in order to analyze and describe data obtained from the members. The community members were seventeen pre-service English teachers from a public University in Bogota, Colombia, who were working on their pedagogical practicum in a public school in the same city. Findings suggest that building a community of practice with the PSTs improved their abilities to identify issues in their classroom resulting in an improvement in their profession. Moreover, it was observed that building an online community created a comfortable environment that enhanced members’ confidence when sharing anecdotes, experiences, and knowledge with others.

Keywords

• Community of Practice,Online Communities of Practice,Conflicts among Students,; EFL Pre-service Teachers

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