Using wiki to create a learning community for chemistry teacher leaders

Abstract

This study focuses on using wikis as a learning environment, as part of a professional development program for chemistry teacher leaders. The study was performed in Israel and involved 20 chemistry teachers. One goal was to investigate how using wiki may promote effective science teacher professional development. Various aspects of the teachers' wiki experience were investigated. Based on their contribution rate to the wiki activity, different participation profiles were revealed: 44% of the teachers were defined as peripheral members of the community, 28% as central members, and 28% as leaders of this community. Differences were observed between younger (below the median age of 45) and older teachers regarding their attitudes, feelings of ownership and preferences of working environment. The current study sheds light on the reasons why some teachers were more reluctant and less active in the wiki environment – the findings suggest that it is neither correlated with technical difficulties, nor with the relevance of the content. We believe that it has to do with the perception of the relevance of the wiki environment itself (as a model of other virtual environments) to their teaching in classroom. Small-scale results suggest a correlation between the teachers' personal participation rate in the wiki environment and their perception of their classroom as ‘student-centered’ or ‘teacher controlled’.

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Introduction

This paper explores the potential of wikis to promote and facilitate collaborative learning among teachers. It describes a case study of using a wiki as a form of collaborative learning, and a means for supporting a community of chemistry teachers, in a professional development program for chemistry teacher leaders. We assessed various facets of the teachers' experience with wiki, such as level of participation, technical difficulties, attitudes toward the collaborative aspect, and ownership of the collaborative artifact; we also attempted to specify the complex relation between teachers' beliefs about the roles of a teacher and a learner and their functioning in this community.

Wiki was used as part of a professional development program for chemistry teachers (n = 20). The overall professional development program was aimed at developing teacher leaders in the field of chemistry. The overall program and its relation to the wiki experience will be described in the “program design and characteristics of effective professional development programs” section. This paper focuses on ‘the architecture of participation’, a topic that has increasing importance as social software are immersed in educational processes (Wheeler et al., 2008).

Theoretical background

Two theoretical frameworks guided us in choosing wiki as a central component of the professional development program. The first is the socio-cultural approach, and the second is what we know now on effective professional development of teachers, a field that was extensively investigated in the last two decades (Bell and Gilbert, 1996; Marx et al., 1998; Loucks-Horsley and Matsumoto, 1999; Wilson and Berne, 1999a, 1999b; Garet et al., 2001; Dori et al., 2002; Dori and Herscovitz, 2005; Jeanpierre et al., 2005; Abell, 2007; Hewson, 2007). According to the socio-cultural approach the unit of analysis is no longer the individual's cognitive activity, but rather active participation in socially constituted practices (Vygotsky, 1978; Rogoff, 1991). Establishing a community of practice follows the Vygotskyian theory of ‘mind in society’. Wenger (2000) defined a community of practice as a group of people informally bound together by shared expertise or passion for a joint enterprise. Gomez et al. (1994) used the term ‘learning communities’ to define ‘groups of people who come together for the purpose of inquiry and knowledge acquisition. Informal interpersonal interaction among members of the community can facilitate their construction of knowledge’ (p. 1).

A growing number of science educators define learning as a process in which a community of learners creates knowledge jointly (Scardamalia and Bereiter, 1994), and individual learning as relying on the interaction between the individual experience and socially defined knowledge structures (Wenger, 1998; Putnam and Borko, 1999). Communities of practice allow one individual's knowledge to fuel and support the learning processes of others (Scardamalia and Bereiter, 1994; Kafai, 2006; Cress and Kimmerle, 2008). Communities of practice have been shown to be powerful means for individual cognitive development and for fostering norms of dialogue, group interactions and information sharing (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) allows us to establish virtual communities of practice and new means for collaborative web learning. Virtual communities provide a shared vision and opportunities for co-operation and support, as they also have the potential to develop self-confidence and self-control (Johnson and Dyer, 2005; Trentin, 2009).

We chose to use a wiki platform to support the establishment of a community of chemistry teacher leaders. We based our decision on the characteristics of wiki, and considering its strengths and weaknesses, as will be described in the following paragraph.

Wiki is a Web 2.0 software application that allows users to create and edit web page content. Wiki allows participants to create content, add, remove, edit, hyperlink, change, and comment on content created by others. It facilitates the construction of both individual and public knowledge rather than interacting with an existing body of knowledge. Wikis reinforce the social nature of learning and knowledge building, and provide shared digital artifacts (Moskaliuk et al., 2009). The social nature of learning is more explicit than in other applications such as blogs or forums, since in these applications users can leave a response but not modify and change other peoples' entries. Wikis do not require any special software, and they are relatively accessible and user friendly. In some sites development of a wiki is available free of charge (but they often have an option with added facilities that requires a subscription) and some are only available by purchasing a license. Also, wikis are offered as part of a package within virtual learning environments such as Blackboard or Moodle (Désilets et al., 2005). The other strengths of wikis are collaboration, construction and re-construction, earlier versions and individual contributions that can be tracked, revealing the degree of collaboration throughout the process of writing, and the quality of the final artifact. Wikis assign equal roles to both novices and experts (Reinhold, 2006; Ruth and Houghton, 2009). However, some of these characteristics are also its weaknesses. Wiki pages can be edited and the content changed by any user, regardless of bias or expertise, thus leading to issues of the correctness and accuracy of the information provided (Giles, 2005; Rubio et al., 2007; Ruth and Houghton, 2009).

There is a growing body of knowledge regarding the various ways wikis can be used in education. Many of these deal with college education. The main uses of wikis involve the creation of a course glossary, text analysis, inquiry learning, and problem solving (Mishar and Tal-Alhasid, 2006). Generally, the findings stress the process of co-writing without rigid time constraints as having an added value for the participating students. Because students know their peers are reading what they write, they feel committed to the accuracy and relevance of content. Students also report that they developed their critical thinking skills through the use of the shared spaces (Horizon, 2007; Wheeler et al., 2008; Trentin, 2009; Elliott and Fraiman, 2010). Yalvac et al. (2012) revealed that instructors used wikis to improve student collaboration, to reach an optimal solution to a given problem, to form an asynchronous and egalitarian learning medium, to allow students to negotiate and construct knowledge, and to have students work collectively. Even and Olsher (in press) used teachers' corrections made in a mathematic wiki-book to learn about teachers' mathematical–pedagogical knowledge. Nevertheless, the drawbacks of wiki in the classroom were also pointed out (Wheeler et al., 2008): in terms of learning preferences, wiki activities do not suit students who need more structured forms of learning. Because wikis can be changed, students can be troubled by issues of ownership, intellectual property and may resist having their contributions changed or deleted by other group members.

Most previous research has dealt with the technical aspects of using wikis (Ruth and Houghton, 2009). They called for a different perspective to acquire insights into what students think about what they are doing. They also pointed out that the use of wikis is sometimes limited to facilitating content delivery rather than participatory engagement. Rubio et al. (2007) reported that most faculties still lack sufficient knowledge concerning the uses in teaching of applications such as blogs or wikis.

Reports on in-service teacher's professional development that integrated on-line learning communities have shown positive results in terms of sharing knowledge and collaborative learning (Madeira and Slotta, 2009). Robertson (2008) used a composite learning approach that incorporated wiki technology and face to face meetings in a teachers education program. He found that teachers who self-evaluated their technical skill level as experienced were the most likely to state they would use wikis in their own teaching, but that self-evaluation as a beginner was not necessarily prohibitive. He also called for designing professional development programs that address values and beliefs that support a teacher's practice in addition to technical and instrumental concerns.

Program design and characteristics of effective professional development programs

The professional development program lasted for two years, over which time the teachers met face-to-face for 5 hours every second week (about 45 meetings to get a total of 224 hours). The meetings took place at the national center for chemistry teachers in the afternoon. The teachers also collaborated in the wiki environment between the face-to-face meetings. The main goal of the teacher leaders program was to develop a community of experienced teachers that would be able to support other chemistry teachers in their school or district. To achieve this goal we aimed at deepening and updating teachers' scientific knowledge, focusing especially on chemistry, introducing new curriculum and teaching strategies aimed at promoting students' chemical literacy and developing leadership. These goals, as well as teachers’ feedback and follow-up on the year after the course, will be elaborated in a different paper (Authors, in preparation). The use of wiki as a learning environment was chosen as a means to:

(1) Develop competence for integrating computer-mediated technology in teachers' instructions.

(2) Develop a deeper understanding of how to support collaborative learning in their classes.

(3) Visualize the constructivist process by which teachers' cumulative knowledge develops throughout the professional development program rather than just uploading final products.

(4) Enable teachers to learn and work collaboratively outside the face to face meetings, bridging geographical boundaries.

We decided to use a password-defended wiki environment in order to make the teachers more comfortable in presenting their knowledge, attitudes and beliefs. A three hours long technical workshop was held initially to introduce the main features of the wiki environment. It is important to note that wikis have never been used as part of in-service professional development programs for chemistry teachers in our country before (this statement is based on going over all the professional development programs that were conducted in the National Center for chemistry teachers since 1995, and the authors personal involvement in chemistry teachers education).

The workshop design, including the wiki activity, took into consideration the most effective characteristics of professional development programs, which were identified as a result of the research in the last two decades or so. (Wilson and Berne, 1999a, 1999b). In the following section we will illustrate how the program, and especially the wiki activity, addressed the characteristics of an effective program.

(a) Constructivism. Teachers must be active, learn and construct their own knowledge. This way they develop ownership toward the program products. During the wiki work teachers were expected to locate resources, synthesize knowledge and create a wiki-text using their own words. No “cut & paste” was allowed. The wiki environment allows the visualization of the constructivist process by which teachers' cumulative knowledge develops throughout the professional development program, rather than just uploading final products.

(b) Teachers should be treated as professionals. During the program, the teachers' teaching experience was highly regarded, and played a key role in all activities. They were regarded as capable of analyzing the situation of high-school chemistry, and acting to promote chemistry learning in their communities. They also wrote wiki-papers aimed at their colleagues.

(c) The PD should provide opportunities for the development of different types of teachers' knowledge. These are Content knowledge; Pedagogical knowledge; Pedagogical-Content Knowledge (PCK), which defines the interface between teaching approaches and content (Shulman, 1986; Kind, 2009); and Technological PCK (TPACK). TPACK refers to essential qualities of teacher knowledge required for successful integration of technology into their pedagogy. The program addressed various types of teachers' knowledge: scientific content knowledge by learning about new and cutting-edge chemistry research, their pedagogical content knowledge by learning about new curricula, students' conceptions, teaching strategies for combining the development of thinking skills with chemistry teaching and alternative assessment (Magnusson et al., 1999; Abell, 2007). The wiki experience supported their Technological PCK (TPACK) (Mishra and Koehler, 2008) first by self-experiencing co-writing and editing, and then by reflecting and discussing the challenges, strengths, weaknesses, and appropriate uses in the chemistry classroom.

(d) The professional development program should be related to teacher practice in school. Teachers self-experience as learners should be in line with what we expect teachers to do with their students, since this self-experience has a role in shaping teachers' beliefs (Pajares, 1992; Borko and Putnam, 1995). Schon (1983) has defined Personal Practical Knowledge as the knowledge resulting from individual professional experiences. In our program, the wiki environment seemed to be a suitable environment for developing ICT competences in terms of self-experience as learners. In particular it aimed at developing an understanding that the internet can be used not only for delivering content, buy also for constructivist learning by generating content, developing critical thinking skills, and promoting new ways of communication and interaction (Johnson and Dyer, 2005). As future leaders, the teachers were expected to integrate computer-mediated technology in their instruction, and to support collaborative learning in their classes.

(e) The program should provide opportunities for collaboration and interactions (Putnam and Borko, 1999). In our program, all wiki activities forced the teachers to collaborate. In order to promote collaboration we used the technique of fading scaffolding, which means that the level and means of interactions increase over time, whereas the explicit instructions provided decrease (Shwartz et al., 2008). For example – in the first task – we clearly stated that we expected each one to create at least two different web-pages and to add at least five pedagogical contributions (not to the pages he/she has written), and at least five additional contributions (not necessarily pedagogical) to any pages written by their peers. These contributions could be editing, adding information, adding graphics or pictures, hyper linking pages to each other or to additional resources etc. In the following tasks we did not provide such instruction, and let the teachers themselves negotiate the process of mutual writing and development of activities. Another technique to support collaboration was to create small groups (changing the groups for every task), allowing teachers to meet and work with more peers.

A total of 447 pages were created (an average of 22 pages for a person), at any time, even when they worked in small groups, all the groups could look and contribute to other groups' work. The wiki activities detailed in the paragraph below illustrate how we used the conceptual characteristics of effective professional development in designing specific tasks.

Creating a Wikipedia-style collection of concepts

The Wikipedia-style collection, that the teachers built, is related to chemical bonding. Chemical bonding is a key topic in high-school curriculum and a topic with which many teachers experience difficulties due to its abstract notion, and the relatively large number of concepts that need to be learned and organized. During the first face-to-face meetings the teachers themselves decided on the concepts that they would focus on. As they progressed, additional concepts were added. Their scientific writing was based on their previous academic knowledge, lectures that they heard during the face-to-face meetings and a literature review that they conducted. The teacher's pedagogical knowledge was also targeted by this task: each bonding concept had to include a scientific definition, reference to pedagogical issues such as common naïve conceptions and ways to overcome them, teaching strategies, assessment items to assess understanding, hyperlinks to other related concepts, hyperlinks to other resources, etc. The pages were written at a level suitable for other teachers as readers.

Designing specific learning activities

The participants had to work in small groups (up to four in a group) to design learning activities that would integrate high-order thinking skills (i.e. comparison, argumentation) with a specific chemical topic taken from the obligatory syllabus. Some examples of topics the teachers chose are ‘Making a valid comparison to help me make a decision regarding boiling points of organic molecules’ or ‘Constructing evidence-based arguments regarding the consumption of powdered protein nutritional additives by adolescents’. The learning activity had to be hyperlinked to relevant content-pages in the wiki.

Collaborative thinking and action to promote chemistry education

The teachers were introduced to SWOT as an analysis tool. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. The teachers used it to analyze the state of chemistry education in their communities, and together designed possible actions to promote chemistry education. Following the SWOT analysis, they conducted a mini-survey, and developed 5 different formats to promote chemistry education. They presented the results of their work at the annual conference of chemistry education in Israel. They also implemented some of the formats in their schools and districts.

Collaborative writing of a scientific article for the Israel Journal of Chemistry teachers (Al-Chimia)

The topics for the articles stemmed from the teachers' visit to a large dairy (‘chemistry of milk’) and to a lipid research lab (‘what exactly are sphingolipids’).

During the face-to-face meetings the teachers heard lectures in the field of chemistry and chemistry education, conducted experiments, and visited research labs. (More details about the overall program can be found in the ESI† and in an additional paper by Shwartz and Katchevitch, in preparation.) All these contributed to the wiki activity. When the teachers felt they needed it, we allowed a short time for discussing or planning their wiki work. However, most co-writing and co-editing was done outside the face-to-face meetings.

Research questions

We were interested in finding a way to quantify each teacher's contribution, and if possible, to find patterns of functioning. This would allow us to define “teacher function in the wiki environment”, and then we can look for links between participation patterns to two other variables: “teachers' perceptions of wiki” and “Teacher instruction”. This is in line with the literature which implies links between teachers' perceptions, and their function both in class and in professional development programs (Pajares, 1992; Keren-Kolb and Fishman, 2006; Carwford, 2007).

The last question addressed was to seek evidence on how the use of technology promotes the goals set for the professional development. Therefore, the research questions are:

How did different teachers function as members of a wiki community?

What were teachers' perceptions on their wiki experience? Did different groups of teachers differ in their perceptions?

Is there a relationship between teachers' wiki experience as practitioners and their perceptions of their own classes?

In which ways did the wiki environment support the creation of a community of practice?

Research methodology

Population

20 chemistry teachers participated in the teacher-leaders program. The teachers were chosen to participate in the program by criteria such as at least 5 years of experience in teaching chemistry, recommendations from the school principal and the chemistry professional inspector. In spite of this, we had 2 teachers with less than 5 years of experience as they had very strong recommendations. The teachers differed in terms of age (32–62) and teaching experience (3 to 25 years of experience). They were from different districts ranging from south, north and central districts, as well as teachers from both Arab and Jewish sectors. This was the first time that any of the teachers had actually created content using a wiki environment; however we do not have data regarding the experience of group work in general. Two teachers quit after the first year (one got promoted to a school principal, and another due to health issues). They were excluded from the research population (therefore we have questionnaires from only 18 teachers), but their actual contribution to the wiki was counted.

Data collection and analysis

In order to characterize teachers' personal contributions and pattern of participation we used the following sources:

– A documentation of teachers' statements during the face-to-face meetings that related to their work at the wiki environment, a documentation of the wiki-discussion box option, and of e-mails that were sent relating to the wiki, and finally a documentation of a face-to-face feedback discussion that related to the program in general, but had features that were relevant to the wiki.

– Automatic data obtained from the wiki database: activity logs, pages history data and comments that were posted on the wiki were collected.

– All the teachers' artifacts in the wiki environment were documented and evaluated.

As co-writing results in a single artifact, it is a challenge to evaluate the contribution and participation of each participant. For quantifying the teachers' participation in the wiki activity we followed Trentin's methodology (2009). Trentin (2009) in his paper writes that he assessed students' contribution in the wiki by “formulae developed ad hoc to calculate participation and contribution indexes” (p. 1), for example, his formula for forum messages is P = 3A% + 1.5B% + 0.5C%, where A is the percentage of messages contributing to the content of the group's work (weight 3); B messages involving coordination/co-decision (weight 1.5); and C all other messages (weight 0.5). He also calculated the contribution in other aspects (not only messages) and the total value he obtained is a sum: ΣP = P forum + P review + P links + P contents. Trentin used this methodology in two university courses, and assessed the reliability of this method by comparing the calculated value to students' peer evaluation of each other's contributions. He also encourages teachers to “adapt and build their own simple formulas to facilitate the monitoring of participation and interactions of their students during group work” (p. 53).

In our program there were face to face meetings where some commenting, discussion and peer review took place but no forum for on-line discussion. We chose categories that reflected both the main emphases of the tasks we assigned and the main wiki activity that took place practically in order to be able to quantify and compare teachers' contribution to the wiki.

The adapted formula devised by the authors is 0.2A + 0.2B + 0.3C + 0.3D, in which A is linking to external links or uploading external documents, B is including illustrative visualization aids, C is creating and writing new pages and D is written contribution to pages created by other teachers. It is important to note that the generative aspect C (creating new pages) and the collaborative aspect D (contributing by modifying pages created by others) are given higher weights than other aspects. These weights were discussed and decided upon by the facilitators of the program (also the authors of the paper), and the participants did not know about them so as to not influence the type of contribution they choose.

As a check, the authors also calculated contribution rates based on equal weights (of 0.25) for each contribution and this did not significantly change the contribution rate of individual teachers. However, the authors felt that the weightings chosen for the analysis reflect better the importance of generative and collaborative aspects.

We also conducted an evaluation of the quality of teachers' products by these criteria: scientific accuracy, pedagogical usefulness, innovation and originality. The results of this evaluation will not be reported in the current paper.

For all other research questions we obtained additional data from the following sources:

– A questionnaire that evaluated various aspects of the work in a wiki environment was developed. The questionnaire consisted of four open-ended questions, and 31 Likert-type items, on a one to five scale ranging from ‘completely disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’. Table 1 details the item categories, the internal reliability of each category and a sample item. The answers to the open-ended questions were coded and categorized according to the content of the answer. Primary categories emerged from the data itself. Then we looked for common more general themes, and proposed assertions based on the data (Shkedi, 2003).

Table 1 Item categories, internal reliability and sample items

Category	Sample item	α Cronbach reliability^a
a α Cronbach values are reasonable considering the relatively small number of items per category, and the small number of participants. b The items in this category deal with the time spent during face to face meetings and outside meetings, so the internal correlation is meaningless.
Time devoted to work in wiki (4 items)	I had enough time at home to work on my wiki assignments	N/A^b
Technical difficulties (4 items)	I need a lot of technical support to function in the wiki environment	0.78
Scientific contribution of the wiki artifacts (3 items)	The wiki artifacts did not include any scientific knowledge that was new to me	0.61
Pedagogical contribution of the wiki (4 items)	I will use the pedagogical artifacts in my future teaching	0.89
Future use of wiki (3 items)	I think I will use the wiki environment as part of my future teaching	0.78
Attitude toward the collaborative aspects of wiki (7 items)	I do not like to contribute to wiki pages that were written by others	0.67
Preferences for type of working environment (2 items)	I prefer not working in a wiki environment	0.69
Ownership and affective attitude toward wiki (4 items)	I feel proud of my contribution to the wiki	0.77

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– Interviews: three teachers were invited to be interviewed, and were asked to reflect on their teaching and their experience working in the wiki environment as part of the professional development program. They were selected in a way that each one of them represented a different pattern of functioning in the wiki environment, based on findings from the other research tools. The interview was a semi-structured one, and included key questions and prompts. For example, Describe a recent chemistry lesson that took place in your class; In what ways this lesson is a typical one? Today “student-centered” teaching and learning have become a common slogan. How this slogan is manifested in your classes? Do you plan to integrate collaborative learning in your classes in the future? How? What is your understanding of “pedagogy in the era of technology”? Can you describe your past experience with integrating computers in your instruction? What kind of computerized activities do you wish to implement in your classes? What conditions and resources do you need to implement these activities? Appendix 1 contains interview questions. Each interview lasted for about 90 minutes.

The interviews were analyzed using a procedure recommended by Shkedi (2003): each interview was segmented into units; each unit was categorized by its content. Primary categories emerged from the collected data. Then we looked for common more general themes, and proposed assertions based on the data.

Findings

How did different teachers function as part of a wiki community?

Overall, 447 pages were created (an average of 22 pages for a person), and there were over 12 238 viewings and 2685 editing actions. These numbers imply that the group was quite active in co-writing and co-editing in the wiki environment. Issues with group dynamics were not noticed. However, we asked how the wiki activity was divided between individual teachers?

The contribution rate of each teacher was calculated using the formula as explained in the data collection and analysis section. We obtained contribution rates ranging between 0.1 and 9.2. Therefore, the teachers were divided into 3 groups: low contribution, average contribution and above average contribution: 44% of the teachers had a low contribution rate (smaller than 3) and were considered as peripheral members of the community, 28% had an average contribution rate (between 3 and 6) and could be considered central members, and 28% had an average rate that was higher than 6, and even spontaneously took the role of leaders of some tasks. We noted specific preferred ways of contributing: some teachers preferred to contribute mostly to the graphical and representational features of other pages by adding pictures, models and animations. Others preferred linking existing pages to external links, and finally some teachers preferred pedagogical contributions such as lab procedures, exercises, etc.

Table 2 illustrates the contribution profile of the three groups and the significance of the differences regarding specific types of wiki actions.

Table 2 Contribution profile of the three groups

	1	2	3	P
	High contribution (n = 5)	Medium contribution (n = 5)	Low contribution (n = 8)
	Average contribution rate (SD)	Average contribution rate (SD)	Average contribution rate (SD)
Uploading external files and links	8.2 (3.11)	1.6 (1.34)	0.25 (0.46)	P < 0.0001
				1 > 2,3
Visual contributions (photos, graphs etc.)	16.4 (8.0)	9.4 (3.21)	2.12 (1.55)	P < 0.001
				1 > 2 > 3
Creating and writing new pages	5.8 (2.49)	3.8 (1.79)	1.87 (0.35)	P < 0.001
				1,2 > 3
Contributing to pages created by others	10.4 (5.41)	4.6 (2.7)	0.62 (0.52)	P < 0.001
				1 > 2 > 3

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Jimbo Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, conducted a simple study to find out what is the contribution pattern to Wikipedia. He counted who made the most edits to the site. He reported that “I expected to find something like an 80–20 rule: 80% of the work being done by 20% of the users, just because that seems to come up a lot. But it's actually much, much tighter than that: it turns out over 50% of all the edits are done by just 7% of the users” (Wales, 2006). The pattern of participation in our program is definitely a more collaborative pattern of contribution. Combining the groups of high and medium contribution rate we found that 56% of the participants created about 90% of the artifacts. These results support our conclusions that the scaffolding we offered and the type of the designed tasks were perceived as meaningful by most teachers and engaged most of them to participate. The need to scaffold and support teachers' work while they build new competencies in computer-mediated technology is well established (Fishman et al., 1997; Olsher, 2011). Another assumption is that most teachers felt part of a community of practice and were committed to their peers, therefore contributed in a more collaborative pattern than that found in the literature. This conclusion will be supported by more data answering the last research question.

What were teachers' perceptions on their wiki experience? Did different groups of teachers differ in their perceptions?

To answer this research question, we analyzed differences according to three independent variables, based on what the literature implies is affecting the teachers' ability to use a new technology effectively. The first variable is age (below and above the median of 45). It is a common assumption that young people are considered ‘digital natives’, while older people are considered ‘digital immigrants’ (Prenski, 2001) and that it influences their functioning in virtual environments. The second variable is their responses to questions on technical difficulties (those who had an average of 3 or more out of 5, in this category, and those who had an average score of less than 3). Technical difficulties are also mentioned as barriers to successful integration of technologies (Bingimlas, 2009). The third variable is a different actual pattern of participation, as we looked for correlations between conceptual perceptions and actual functioning in the wiki environment.

Since the number of participants was relatively small (n = 20) we used the non-parametric Kruskal–Wallis test to analyze the teachers' answers to the questionnaire.

Table 3 summarizes the categories in which significant differences were found between younger and older teachers.

Table 3 Different perceptions among different age groups

Category	Teachers younger than the median	Teachers older than the median	P
	Mean score (SD) N = 10	Mean score (SD) N = 8
Time devoted to work in wiki	3.9 (0.59)	3.09 (0.60)	<0.05
Ownership and affective attitude toward wiki	3.45 (0.99)	2.70 (0.49)	<0.05
Technical Difficulties	3.30 (1.01)	2.84 (0.98)	NS

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The relatively younger teachers (below the median age of 45) devoted significantly more time to wiki work, and showed stronger agreement with the statement that if they had more time they would work in the wiki environment even more. The younger group also demonstrated a significantly higher level of ownership and a positive attitude toward the collaborative artifacts. Interestingly, there was no significant difference between the groups regarding technical difficulties. Ages of teachers experiencing technical difficulties ranged from 35 to 61. This finding contradicts the common opinion that older teachers experience more technical difficulties. The teachers experiencing technical difficulties scored significantly lower on questions concerning preferences for wiki as a working environment, as shown in Table 4.

Table 4 Differences in preferred working environments, depending on perceived technical difficulties

Category	Scored 3 or more in technical issues category (N = 8)	Scored less than 3 in technical issues category (N = 10)	Z	P
	Mean (SD)	Mean (SD)
Technical difficulties	3.94 (0.48)	2.42 (0.68)	3.53	<0.005
Preferences for type of working environment	3.94 (0.62)	2.95 (1.09)	1.89	<0.05

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Differences between groups with different participation rates

The teachers were split into three groups according to their contribution score. Significant differences were found between the groups with high and medium contribution rates to the low contribution rate group regarding their perceptions of the collaborative aspects of wiki, their preference for a working environment, and affective aspects including ownership toward the artifacts. Table 5 summarizes the differences between the groups. Interestingly, no significant differences were found regarding categories such as technical difficulties (which could explain why some teachers had a low contribution rate) or the intention to use the wiki artifacts in their future instruction. In fact, all teachers stated that they use or intend to use the materials developed in the wiki in their instruction.

Table 5 Affective differences between the groups

Category	Group 1	Group 2	Group 3	P
	High contribution (n = 5)	Medium contribution (n = 5)	Low contribution (n = 8)
	Average rate (SD)	Average rate (SD)	Average rate (SD
Attitude toward the collaborative aspects of wiki	3.46	3.88	2.75	P < 0.01
				1,2 > 3
Preferences for type of working environment	3.7	4.2	2.69	P < 0.01
				1,2 > 3
Ownership and affective attitude toward wiki	3.2	3.8	2.63	P < 0.05
				1,2 > 3

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These findings demonstrate the strong relation between perceptions and actual functioning. The teachers who functioned well tended to appreciate the collaborative aspect (all scores were above the median). As reflected in their rating of specific items, they liked to see others contributing to a page they created, they liked to contribute to other pages, felt proud of the overall artifact and saw the wiki experience as a positive one.

The same parameters scored low (below the median) for the low-functioning teachers. They did not like others editing and changing their work, and felt that working collaboratively did not suit them. Below are some quotes from teachers' answers to open-ended questions in this group:

‘The most difficult thing for me was to critique or edit what others had written’ (Sara)

‘The experience was very frustrating. I felt that I contributed much more than others, so as time went by I was less active’ (Yoram)

‘I feel that I still need to get used to, and internalize this form of communication. I could not react to what others wrote in the way I was supposed to’ (Nir)

In the open-ended part of the questionnaire, 30% of the teachers indicated that experiencing a new technological environment was the most important thing for them; 17% of them indicated that the interaction and collaboration with other teachers was mostly meaningful. Others mentioned the artifact itself, and the possibility of using wiki with their high-school students.

A teacher with a medium contribution rate reflected on his wiki experience:

‘First I thought only about wikipedia. I thought of it as a source of knowledge. I did not realize there is a place for a student to express himself, do something, write… Working with others was an interesting experience; however the only disadvantage is that others can delete something that you invested a great deal of effort writing… I may try using it with my students in the future’ (Idan).

Another indication of the different perceptions of the wiki experience became evident in an open-ended questionnaire reflecting on the whole professional development program by the end of the second year. In this questionnaire they were asked to reflect on activities that were most meaningful and important for them, and a second question asked them to think if there were activities or course components that they recommend the course designers not to include in future programs for other teachers. While 60% of the teachers with medium and high contribution wrote that working at the wiki was one of the most meaningful activities for them, 50% of the teachers with a low contribution rate recommended omitting this component from future courses.

Is there a relationship between teachers' wiki experience as practitioners and their perceptions of their own classes?

This question was investigated qualitatively. Three teachers were interviewed, each one representing a different pattern of contribution – one was a leader of the wiki activity, the second a medium active teacher, and the third had a very low contribution score. The teachers were asked to reflect both on their experience during the professional development program and on their teaching of high school chemistry classes.

While we are aware of the fact that the number of interviewed teachers is very small, it is still valuable to see the differences between Rina, a teacher who took responsibility and leadership in many of the activities in the wiki environment, and Sara, a teacher who hardly participated in the wiki.

Rina is 48 years old, has a MSc Diploma in chemistry and has 20 years of experience in teaching chemistry to 7th to 12th grades (age 13–18 years).

Sara is 36 years old, has a BSc Diploma in chemistry and is teaching chemistry for 11 years to grades 9th–12th.

During discussions and activities both of them stated that seeing students as individuals and promoting each student is a very important goal for them.

Rina, with a high contribution score in this research, described a typical lesson in her classroom:

‘I usually start by presenting the lesson topic, and then the students are active in many ways – they can become engaged in problem-solving… we can have a discussion, or they can work independently on the computers… I often give a preparatory task (done individually or in pairs). For example, before I started teaching electrochemistry, I asked them to read and investigate the topic of electric cars. The first lesson was based on their work – discussing advantages and disadvantages of this technology’.

Sara with a low contribution score had a very different description:

‘Usually the lessons are frontal…. In 10th grade it is always a frontal one, in 11th grade they sometimes work independently on exercises. I usually go briefly through the main points of the previous lesson, sometimes through an exercise or simply by writing the main points on the board….

(Answering the interviewer's question): I talk a lot, about 75% of the time, after all, I have the main responsibility for their learning’.

Since in wikis the participants construct their own knowledge collaboratively, we were interested in seeing how this aspect was manifested in the teachers' classrooms. Rina with a high contribution score says:

‘I carefully set up working groups of strong and less strong students – that way the strong students actually act as my assistants, I keep changing the groups during the school year… We also have students' forums. All students, including students from other classes, can answer other students' questions. My only rule is that if you are not sure – you can answer, but say explicitly that you are not sure. I log in to check the answers, refine them and provide feedback. Also I have some students who bring laptops to class. They often share their notes by uploading them to the forum’ (Rina, A high functioning leader in the wiki activities).

In contrast Sara, the low functioning wiki teacher simply said:

‘I am the source of knowledge… I cannot think of other situations in which this is not the case’.

Another difference in teachers' practice concerned the use of computers in their classes. All teachers reported on using computers but differed in the frequency (from once a year to routine use) and type of activities (from demonstrating animations, to many different uses in which the students are active).

Interestingly, both the teacher leading the wiki activity and the non-active teacher critiqued aspects of their wiki experience; the active teachers also acknowledged the advantages and disadvantages:

‘Self knowledge construction is a fundamental aspect of wikis, you really assimilate and internalize what you have learned when you create your own content…. The collaborative aspect is a bit problematic. In our group shy people did not take part, also there is no immediate feedback…. I think it would be hard to use wiki with younger students, but I do think that there is dynamic collaborative learning in my classes and at a very high level’ (Rina, leading the wiki activities).

Sara, the non-active teacher referred only to the disadvantages and did not see any benefits from her experience:

‘I didn't like the wiki experience at all. The most difficult thing for me was to edit or change other peoples' work… I do not think I'll use it in the future’.

Overall, Rina, the teacher who was an active member of the wiki community tended to describe her classroom practice as more ‘student-centered’. Sara, having a teacher-centered approach, perceived herself as the source of knowledge for her students, and was less willing to accept the idea of a community of learners who build their own knowledge, both during the professional development program and when relating to their practice.

In which ways did the wiki environment support the creation of a community of practice?

This question was investigated qualitatively by following and analyzing both the discourse between the teachers (face to face, discussion box option in wiki and emails) and their uses of the wiki environment that went beyond completing the programs' tasks collaboratively.

We can conclude that some of the teachers developed a genuine sense of community of practitioners and promoted collaborations in other frameworks than the wiki tasks. For example, toward the end of the first year a teacher approached her wiki colleagues to ask for their advice in assessing inquiry activities, and received many responses. Later on, David, one of teachers, participated in a discussion (which was not part of the professional development program) on the need to design new learning activities for 10th grade chemistry. He wrote the facilitators of the workshop: ‘I suggested that our group (i.e. the teachers participating in the program) should take the lead in designing these activities collaboratively. What do you as facilitators think?’

During the first semester of the second year David sent out a call:

‘I realize that we have not taken full advantage of some of the potential to collaborate as a community of practitioners. We should create more opportunities to exchange views about our teaching (not necessarily related to the professional development topics) and share teaching activities with each other. The wiki provides us with a practical platform for sharing. I suggest we use the wiki to share more teaching materials. I also suggest using the face-to-face meeting to discuss issues that are meaningful to us…’

In less than two weeks more than 55 activities, presentations and tests were shared by most of the participating teachers. This initiative is still ongoing, and teachers share knowledge almost on a daily basis. Furthermore, some issues for discussion were raised by the participants. Interestingly, David's contribution rate in the collaborative tasks was scored as medium. In the year following the program, some of the teachers promoted a collaborative national educational initiative that will not be reported here. However, in a reflective interview, the teachers leading the national educational initiative clearly indicated that their natural partners for their project were the teachers they collaborated with in the program, and that they got the norms and skills from working together in the wiki environment.

Discussion

As indicated before, wikis have never been used as part of in-service professional development programs for chemistry teachers in our country before. In previous programs, teachers' artifacts were usually printed or uploaded to a course site as a complete work. For the first time the issue of teachers co-writing, co-editing, changing and deleting each other's work became a central feature of their work. For all participants, the collaborative learning required by the wiki-designed tasks was a new experience. In the first part of the discussion we will discuss teachers' wiki experience in light of their perceptions. In the second part we will discuss what we, as the designers of the program, have learned regarding the contribution of wiki to the goals we set, and what others can learn from our experience.

This study demonstrates that while the average and overall functioning and satisfaction were high, different patterns of contribution can be defined. Differences were observed between younger and older teachers regarding their attitudes, feelings of ownership and preferences for a type of working environment. An average level of technical difficulties was reported regardless of age or rate of contribution. These findings suggest that not an objective and trivial parameter such as technical difficulties is preventing teachers to become active in virtual communities, but rather it is likely to be an effective and somewhat vague parameter such as fear of technology. This assertion is in line with the literature. Bingimlas (2009) and Keren-Kolb and Fishman (2006) indicate that lack of confidence, lack of skill and resistance to change are the main obstacles to successful integration of ICT. The findings contribute to our PCK as designers of teachers' professional development programs in that they provide information on what perceptions and attitudes teachers bring to a new learning situation.

Interviews revealed a correlation between teaching style of teachers in their classrooms and the role they played in the professional development community. Teachers with a traditional teacher-centered approach, mainly holding a transmission perspective, expected the professional program facilitators to be the source of knowledge, and be responsible for the learning (as they are in class). Such an approach can explain the limited contribution and their disappointment with the wiki experience. These findings are consistent with theoretical assumptions concerning the influence of teachers' beliefs on their practice, both as teachers in their classes, and as learners taking part in professional development programs (Pajares, 1992; Borko and Putnam, 1995; Robertson, 2008). In this case, teachers' beliefs regarding teaching were either facilitative or dysfunctional to their wiki experiences and shaped their place in the practitioners' community. However, taking into account the small number of interviewees, this possible correlation needs to be reinforced in future studies.

Our study sheds light on how teachers' beliefs might be one source of “resistance to change”. According to the findings of our research the “resistance to change” is not necessarily correlated with technical difficulties (as other studies claim, see introduction). It is also not correlated with seeing the chemical and pedagogical content of the activities as irrelevant to their practice, as all of them indicated that the tasks and developed materials are very relevant, and that they use them in their instruction. We believe that it has to do with the perception of the relevance of the wiki environment itself (as a model of other virtual environments) to their teaching in classrooms and their beliefs about what constitutes good teaching practice.

What have we learned as designers from our case-study of integrating wiki into our professional development program? Did it support the goal of creating a community of practice? The findings provide solid evidence that the teachers turned from a group of individuals into a collaborative functioning team, in ways that went beyond the professional development requirements. Not only that they have created written artifacts together (wiki pages, journal articles, motivational activities, instructional materials), but they also collaborated in issues outside the program such as their students' assessments. The collaboration regarding new educational initiatives continued in the years after termination of the program. Do they perceive the development of a genuine community of learners as a teaching goal in their classes? And what exactly is the role of the teacher in establishing and supporting such a community? Here the findings are not conclusive and further research is needed in order to answer this question, however, the gap between their own experience in the programs and their classroom instruction maybe explained by the assumption that integrating ICT into classroom practice to help establish communities of learners and collaborative knowledge may need to be supported by a more comprehensive change in the education system. Carmon (2007) claims that the current educational framework prevents the implementation of any changes that would fundamentally alter the current school culture and structure. An example of a successful systematic change could be the educational reform that took place in Finland. The reform included organizational changes of the school year, replacing the two annual semesters by five or six periods, in order to allow schools more flexibility to allocate lessons into different periods. Another organizational change was grouping of students with a non-graded-organizational system, providing more choice to students in planning their own studies, in terms of content and time sequencing. The reform framework is characterized by flexibility, creativity and various methods of studying, such as co-operative learning, through the use of community networks and ICT rather than concentrating on passing tests and exams (Sahlberg, 2009).

In the current ‘traditional’ school structure, only minor and non-threatening changes are supported and thus are possible. Such a perspective takes a less optimistic view of the role of traditional professional development programs, and suggests that science educators should be more involved in reforming school frameworks and structures to allow meaningful changes to take place.

We conclude the paper by summarizing what we have learned from the study: we provide evidence that integrating a collaborative on-line platform into teachers professional development program can meaningfully contribute to the efforts of constructing a community of practice and to the overall quality of teachers' artifacts. However this contribution depends on two parameters: the type of scaffolding and support that the facilitators provide, and the teachers' beliefs regarding collaborative learning. While for the first parameter – scaffolding – we provided a successful model, we suggest that a deeper thinking about conceptual change should take place. We identified quite stable patterns of participation, and did not notice moves from peripheral members into more central places in the wiki community. These stable patterns of participations are in-line with their perceptions of classroom teaching and learning. Such a conceptual change should be promoted not only by the professional development designers and facilitators, but also by an external reform policy and the actual structure and culture of schools, where the teachers actually work.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Prof. Avi Hofstein and Dr Rachel Mamlok-Naaman for their support. We also thank Dr Ruth Ben-Zvi for her insights, interesting and useful discussions, and suggestions.

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Footnote

† Electronic supplementary information (ESI) available. See DOI: 10.1039/c3rp20180e

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