Fan Xu, Deborah Hewlett & Ana-Paula Correia
Computational thinking (CT) has been incorporated into K-12 education worldwide. However, the lack of learning resources for embedding CT concepts across the curriculum is challenging. Researchers argued that it is innately essential to provide teachers with high-quality CT resources that can be adapted in their classrooms and ultimately increase children’s exposure to CT in school education (Meerbaum-Salant et al., 2013).
Teacherpreneurship plays a vital role in educational transformation or innovation. Teachers-Pay-Teachers is one of the most popular online educational marketplaces and communities of practice. Teachers from different education levels frequently visit the online community to acquire resources and advice related to their profession. However, a limited number of studies have investigated the use of online communities like this to support CT innovations. To fill the research gap, this project collected a large amount of data and analyzed how teachers have used CT resources on Teachers-Pay-Teachers.
Teachers Pay Teachers filtered search screenshot.
Socialized Knowledge Communities like Teachers-Pay-Teachers are virtual communities where teachers use social media to engage in interactions about their professions and obtain considerable insights into the physical world (Hu et al., 2018). The preliminary results of this study have been presented at the AECT Annual Convention (virtual) on November 6, 2021.
Poster presented at the 2021 AECT Annual Convention (virtual).
The completed study has been published in the Journal of Interactive Learning Research.
Cite as:
Xu, F., Hewlett, D., & Correia, A.-P. (2023). Investigating Socialized Knowledge Communities: How Computational Thinking Resources on Teachers-Pay-Teachers are Impacting Education. Journal of Interactive Learning Research, 34(1), 9-36.
Reference:
Hu, S., Torphy, K. T., Opperman, A., Jansen, K., & Lo, Y. J. (2018). What do teachers share within socialized knowledge communities: A case of Pinterest. Journal of Professional Capital and Community, 3(2), 97–122. https://doi.org/10.1108/jpcc-11-2017-0025
Meerbaum-Salant, O., Armoni, M., & Ben-Ari, M. (2013). Learning computer science concepts with Scratch. Computer Science Education, 23(3), 239-264. https://doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2013.832022