Teacher education online : towards inclusive virtual learning communities

Abstract

Inclusive education has long been associated with the idea of learning communities. Inclusion is first of all a social phenomenon that enables all students to belong fully to their classrooms and schools by being called upon and supported to participate in collaborative learning. Such a process entails a responsive and constructivist approach to teaching and learning (Bartolo et al., 2007). Psychological constructivism calls for learner-centred teaching that encourages and enables meaningful learning by giving each learner an opportunity to link new knowledge to prior experience; and social constructivism calls for collaborative social interaction as an indispensable tool for learning. These inclusive and constructivist approaches need to be reflected also in pre-service teacher education (Bartolo and Smyth, 2009). Collaborative learning has taken a new meaning through the use of social networking tools that are enabling the creation of VLCs, i.e. virtual communities of learners who share a common interest, idea, or goal and enter into an electronic communication network of interactions “through which the process of knowledge acquisition is collaboratively created” (Palloff and Pratt, 2007, p. 5).