Videoconferencing in the contact zone: technology and discourse in teacher professional development

<p dir="ltr">Teachers are increasingly turning to online education to fulfil their professional learning needs due to its convenience and cost efficiency. Research into online teacher professional development (TPD) is largely focused on understanding the impact of technology on teacher learning outcomes and experiences, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Few studies have examined the relationship between technology and teachers' online discourse, and even fewer have done so using critical discourse analysis (CDA) as the analytical lens. My aim for this study was to develop understanding of the nuanced ways that professional discourse differs in online and face-to-face contexts, with the overarching aim of developing insights that strengthen TPD design in both, particularly when the goal is to transform institutional power structures. Using Fairclough's (1992) seminal overview of language features pertinent to the enactment of power, I draw from ethnographic methodological approaches to examine a community-based TPD opportunity, Quality Teaching (QT) Rounds, that is available both in situ (i.e., within a school context) and online (i.e., teachers connect via videoconferencing). I conducted a comparative analysis of texts produced and navigated within both environments: QT Rounds teaching and learning documents, observations of online and face-to-face QT Rounds workshops, focus groups with QT Advisers (workshop facilitators), video- and audio-recordings of teachers' discussions in professional learning communities (PLCs), and participant interviews.</p><p dir="ltr">In Chapter 4, I use Swales's (1990) lens of "discourse community" to explain how in-school hierarchies and collegial relationships influence the direction of conversations in situ. I show that because these hierarchies are notably absent in digital environments, teachers instead defer to the contextual knowledge of the observed teacher to guide their conversations. In Chapter 5, I employ Wodak's (1996) theory of "disorders of discourse" to show how participants navigate ideologically complex content differently based on their environment. I introduce the notion of global and local presuppositions to explain how participants in situ rely upon shared contextual knowledge to dismiss challenging pedagogical concepts, while those in digital contexts rely upon general assumptions about the teaching profession. In Chapter 6, I leverage van Dijk's (2008) concept of mental models of context to explain how participants' perceptions of pre-existing relationships impacted their overall perception of QT Rounds in situ. In digital environments, teachers' perceptions of online TPD influenced a variety of behaviours that disrupted the ways they were "present" within workshops and Rounds conversations. Chapter 7 explains the implications of these findings for TPD practitioners. </p><p dir="ltr">Rather than attempting to make an argument in favour of one form of TPD over another (i.e., face-to-face over digital), I argue instead that it is critical for TPD designers to use understanding of discursive differences in digital and face-to-face environments to inform design. I introduce the concept of personalised technologies of discourse to explain how practitioners can leverage the affordances and drawbacks of each environment to enhance their capacity to support teachers in realising more emancipatory approaches to education.</p>