What kind of difficulties may teachers encounter, in the process of constituting a virtual learning community?

We studied a virtual teacher community that had some crucial attributes that could lead to disruption of outdated learning and professional development norms. An analysis of factors that prevented the emergence of a learning community leads us to point to the crucial role of some moderator practices: open negotiation of hidden tensions, the sensitive use of learning opportunities to build personal interest for the subject matter to the community members, the bringing in of experts in a way that respects the members prior contributions Short description of ‘Friktories’ “Friktories” is a virtual teacher community (www.komvos.edu.gr/fryktories/index.php), constructed by the Centre of the Greek Language (C.G.L.), in order to support teachers of Greek language in Universities around the world. These teachers are appointed by the Greek Education Department and are selected among Greek secondary education teachers. “Friktories” is a special virtual teacher community in three respects: a) the members have much higher academic credentials than the average Greek secondary education teacher b) the members have strong motivation to collaborate: they are isolated in different countries having to build their own curriculum for teaching Greek as a foreign language (Loughran & Russell, 1997), and c) the virtual community is not mediated by their hierarchical seniors (the Department of Education) but by a research center (C.G.L.), which is also responsible for their initial training through a two week long face to face course prior to their travel.