The roles of facilitators and peers in an online support community for first-year teachers

The first year of teaching can be especially difficult for novice teachers. Teachers often have little opportunity to meaningfully reflect on their pr actice with others who are experiencing similar challenges. The Lighthouse Project used a telecommunications network to provide 12 beginning teachers with a forum for engaging in professional problem solving with mentors, uni versity faculty, and each other. The research questions for this preliminar y study included examining the types of issues the teachers discussed as we ll as how they and the mentors and university faculty used the online forum to provide emotional, social, and intellectual support. Over a 6-month per iod there were 48 initiating messages that were coded and grouped into 8 co ntent categories. The 394 responses were coded into 5 categories that descr ibed their function; that is, the type of response that was provided. The c ontent analysis indicated that replies consisted primarily of fostering a s ense of community (34.8%) or providing advice (21.3%). Other responses were coded as sharing knowledge (20.1%), relating a personal experience with th e issue (16.0%), or encouraging reflection (7.9%). An analysis of variance was conducted to determine if the beginning teachers and faculty differed i n how often they provided each of these types of responses. The results ind icate that the first-year teachers were more likely to respond with message s that related a personal experience while the faculty was more likely to s hare knowledge or encourage reflection. The results of this study suggest t hat beginning teachers and faculty serve different functions in an online t eacher support community.