ICT-based School Collaboration, Teachers' Networks and their Opportunities for Teachers' Professional Development - a Case Study on eTwinning

Abstract

In this paper we first investigate how eTwinning and national and local teachers’ professional development schemes interact. eTwinning is the community for schools in Europe that promotes teacher and school collaboration through the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) under the European Union’s Lifelong Learning Programme. The eTwinning Portal hosts more than 137,000 teachers who interact with each other on the European-scale. Second, using this authentic data, we discuss how novel research methods such as Social Network Analysis, information visualisation techniques and future scenario forecasting are used to study eTwinning in the Tellnet-project aiming to sustain and support dynamic teacher networks as a platform for formal and informal teachers’ professional development in the future.