The relation between schoolteachers' perceptions about collaborative learning and their employment of online instruction

The gap between known benefits of socio-constructivist pedagogies to online instruction, and schoolteacher practices has been widely documented. To better understand the gap this research characterizes the range of schoolteachers’ online practices and the relation between their pedagogical perceptions and these practices. Two groups of teachers were studied: Novices and leaders in online instruction. Data-sources included interviews, researcher's journal and online activities developed by teachers. Findings indicate that leading teachers develop activities that better utilize the technology, require higher levels of thinking, better connect contents to student lives, and scaffold for rich artifacts. However, both groups scarcely utilize collaborative learning in their activities. We claim that this teacher-centered approach plays a critical role in preventing “ordinary” teachers from regular employment of online instruction. Only teachers who considered themselves “online freaks” were able to withstand the demands of this approach to online instruction.