The chapter provides an inclusive picture of the two Taiwanese teachers’
blogging experiences. At first I report personal background as well as experiences of the two teachers and provide a brief introduction of their blogs. Then, how the contextual factors intertwined with one another in the two teachers’ blogging process and how the two teachers perceived the blogging experiences are presented.
Case One: Wu
Motivation for Wu to Start Blogging
Having been an elementary English teacher for four years in northern Taiwan, Wu’s ultimate goal of teaching was to make each of her students enjoy learning and enhance language ability from her classes. Wu found that while many elementary students in Taiwan were sent to learn English in cram schools, still some were not.
Teaching a class consisting of 30-40 students with various proficiency levels could be a tough task for elementary English teachers. Wu did not expect the students to pick up everything she taught in class, but she hoped that they could all gain some new knowledge after a class session.
In her class, Wu integrated creative ideas including games, sketchbooks and role plays into teaching. During her first two years of teaching, Wu was always working hard to search for appropriate teaching skills and learning materials. Gradually, Wu realized that being a teacher was a tough job which required investment of time and effort to search resources and plan lessons. She considered that if she could make a record of the teaching resources, it would save her a large amount of time. Therefore, Wu started to write blog entries concerned with English teaching and learning as
references for future teaching.
Wu’s Blogging Process
Wu started to keep blog entries since her first year of teaching. At the time of data collection, Wu had been blogging for four years. Wu’s blog entries were written in Chinese. In addition to texts, Wu also added pictures and uploaded videos to help her both clearly present her ideas and share students’ work with others. In her blog, Wu noted the ideas she used during her teaching process and materials she found from others’ blogs. Wu not only recorded those resources but also constantly tried to revise them to make more effective teaching.
Up to the end of the data collection time, Wu’s blog included over 1,400 entries with various topics. I divided all of Wu’s entries into two main categories, Teaching and Learning Related as well as Daily Life Related. Table 4.1 shows the categories and the frequency of entries in Wu’s blog.
Table 4.1
Categories and Frequency of Entries in Wu’s Blog
Categories Wu’s Classifications of Entries Number of Entries
Subtotal
Teaching and Learning Related
Teaching Diaries 354
Pre-Service Teaching Diaries 62 422
Lesson Plan Examples 6
Daily Life Related Daily Journals 304
Feelings 274
Friendship/Love 285 992
Food &Traveling 118
Music &Drama 11
Total 1,414
As shown in Table 4.1, there are 422 entries related to teaching and learning in Wu’s blog. However, among the 422 entries, except for Pre-Service Teaching Diaries and Lesson Plan Examples which were not opened to the public, only 354 entries in Teaching Diaries are accessible. Teaching Diaries was the one Wu especially put emphasis on and regularly added four to five entries to the category every month. In Teacher Diaries, in addition to recording teaching skills/materials and special events that happened in teaching process, Wu also posted entries related to her feelings as well as attitude toward both teaching and her students. For instance, in her blog, Wu confessed that the first two years as an elementary teacher were extremely hard and tiring. It was her first full time job and she had to learn to adapt to the conventions of the working environments. Nevertheless, as Wu recollected memories of those days, she felt thankful and considered the experience fruitful and valuable. She wrote in the entry titled “The Hardest Two Years; the Most Fruitful Harvests “(最辛苦的兩年，最 甜美的收穫),
我常覺得，開始教書的頭兩年，真的是非常辛苦的……現在回首，真不知道 自己是怎麼熬過來的……謝謝之前的學校，謝謝我的孩子們給我這個機會與 他們一起學習，謝謝可愛的家長們全力的支持...我想因為這樣，我會更肯 定自己...我想我要加把勁，在新的學校努力……(blog entry, 2007/09/12) I always feel that my first two years of teaching were really exhausting…every time when I tried to turn back to review those days, I did not know how I overcame all of the suffering and struggling events…I appreciate the school. I appreciate my students who provided me the opportunity to learn with them. I appreciated the support from my students’ parents……Thanks to the experience, I am more confident in myself… I think I have to continue to work hard in the current school…(blog entry, 2007/09/12)
Also, once Wu described her frustration of teaching the first graders,
沒有想到，一年級的英文課的challenge這樣大，當我發現，我有滿肚子的理 想，想給孩子很多不同、好玩的課程，卻發現怎麼塞也塞不進去課程。因為 我上課得不斷得提醒恍神的孩子，得管秩序……我真正能上到課的時間也或 許只有25分鐘不到……一陣陣無力感無奈感襲上心頭...我是該花些時間調 整自己的心態了，告訴自己slow down……”(blog entry, 2008/09/23)
I have never thought that teaching the first-graders English is such a challenging thing. I was ambitious and had many expectations on my classes. I would like to provide my students a lot of interesting materials and made them learn happily.
However, I have to spend so much time managing students’ behavior…there is little time, about only 25 minutes, left for the class…I feel disappointed and frustrated…maybe I should remind myself to change my attitude and slow down my step…(blog entry, 2008/09/23)
In the entry, Wu not only revealed her feelings of being frustrated but also tried to comfort herself as well as adjust her attitude.
Wu’s blog has attracted over 400,000 blog hits. According to Wu, many of her readers were also bloggers working as English teachers. Wu and these teachers linked their blogs with others’ so that it was convenient for them to visit each other’s blogs and share thoughts. As a result, there seemed to be a network of teacher bloggers (see Figure 4.1). Wu reported that whenever she mentioned some problems or difficulties in the entries, others on the Internet would provide her a lot of suggestions and exchange ideas with her. Wu mentioned that once she was extremely discouraged because of misunderstanding between her and her students’ parents. Many people left messages in her blog to cheer her up and shared their own experiences with her. After reading the feedbacks, Wu reported that she felt inspired and refreshed.
Figure 4.1 The Network of Teacher Bloggers
Being thankful to those who supported her on the Internet, Wu attempted to find ways to build a closer relationship between her and others in the online community.
On certain special dates such as Wu’s birthday, she would play games with her readers.
That is, the first ten replying to the assigned entry would get Wu’s worksheets as presents. Every time the worksheet Wu provided was concerned with different topics ranging from phonics to short English stories. The worksheets were all designed by Wu and had been applied in her classes. Wu reported that not only herself but also her readers enjoyed the games very much. Thus, the assigned entries always received much more responses than usual.
Other teachers’ blogs
Types of Learning Practices in Wu’s Blogging Process
The 354 entries in Teacher Diaries were coded according to empirically grounded practices recognized by Darling-Hammond and Hammerness (2005).
Table 4.2 presents the type of learning practices Wu engaged in during her four-year blogging. As mentioned in Chapter Three, I coded all of the entries of both Wu’ first and last stage of blogging. For the second stage, I coded entries of the odd month. In addition, the second stage was divided into two periods so that I could get a more specific understanding of Wu’s transition of blogging behaviors during the process.
Table 4.2
Types of Learning Practices in Wu’s Blogging Process
The First Stage The Second Stage The Third Stage Time
Note: (n%) refers to the percentage of entries concerning with the learning practice at each stage, the frequency of each category is divided with the sum of the entries in the specific stage.
As shown in Table 4.2, P1, autobiography, occurres most at Wu’s first stage of
blogging. Compared with P3 (0.25) and P5 (0.08), P1 (0.62), P2 (0.40), and P4 (0.51) seemed to play more significant roles at that time. Wu’s first stage of blogging was exactly the time she started to work as a teacher. She shared much about her emotions and attitude toward teaching (P1) accompanied with descriptions of her goals as well as actions for future teaching (P4). In addition, she also explored her behaviors in class and identified the strengths and weaknesses (P2).
However, at the second stage, P3 (0.73) ranked first among the five practices.
The frequency of posts of P1 (0.34), P2 (0.14) and P4 (0.17) drop and continued to decrease in the following two stages. Examining the contents of Wu’s entries at the second stage, it is clear that, compared with the first stage, Wu kept much more entries related to teaching skills and materials. She also timely asked for suggestions or posted information on workshops and invited others to join the workshops with her.
In other words, the type of teacher learning practices Wu engaged in has turned from expressing feelings and beliefs of a novice teacher to sharing teaching resources and interacting with others in the online community.
Factors Influencing Wu’s Blogging
The following is a discussion on factors influencing Wu’s blogging. I first examine the relationship among subject, mediation and object as well as the way online communities shape Wu’s blogging process. Then, how rules and division of labors affect Wu’s blogging process is presented.
Subject and Object
To understand the motives and expectations encouraging individuals to engage in the activity, it is important to examine the subject’s individual historical and
educational background. Being an English teacher, Wu reported that she always hoped
that she could assist every student to gain new knowledge after a class session and make them enjoy the learning process. However, Wu’s past teaching experiences in the summer/winter camps while she was a college student and later a teacher in elementary schools made her realize that it was crucial but challenging for English teachers to constantly design various learning activities to encourage students’
participation, especially when her students were with different proficiency levels. As she stated in an interview,
Either during the summer/winter camps or at school, a teacher has to face a lot of students at the same time. Some of them may have learned English for a long time and some have totally no ideas of the language…it is really a tough job. I have to constantly find appropriate learning materials for different students…(the 1st interview, 2009/08/19).
Thus, initially what motivating Wu to start keeping entries related to English teaching was the intention to record her ideas of teaching. Wu considered that noting down the used teaching ideas and materials could help her build a personal teaching portfolio. It might not only save her a lot of time to search for teaching resources but also stimulate her ideas for better teaching in the future. Wu’s blogs, thus, was built with a hope to serve as a tool to record her professional sources.
In addition to her past experiences, Wu’s personal characteristics had a
significant impact on how she presented her blog and the contents of her entries. As she described herself, Wu was a bright, sensitive and broad-minded person who wanted to enjoy everything in her life. Due to the personalities, in addition to English teaching, she included various topics in her blog such as food, traveling and any other interesting events in her daily life. As a blogger, Wu reported that she would like to demonstrate a funny and fascinating style. In addition to sharing a lot of admiring pictures and interesting videos, she also tried to write things in a humorous way. For
instance, after the winter vacation on the very first day of school, one of the fluorescent lights was broken. It suddenly blew up and made a noisy sound. While being shocked, in the blog, Wu described the accident as a “bombing start” for the new semester which would take away the bad luck from her and her students.
Moreover, noticing that many parents were too busy to care about their children’s schoolwork, as Wu mentioned her wishes of the new semester in blogs, she wrote, “希 望接下來的一個學期能很順利，學生乖乖，家長記得簽名(笑)。(I hope that everything will go smoothly in the new semester. Not only my students will behave themselves but also their parents will remember to sign on their workbooks )”(blog entry, 2010/02/22).
Furthermore, being a teacher is not easy and once in a while it may be frustrating.
In Wu’s blog, there were many entries describing disappointing events that happened in her teaching. While Wu expressed depressed feelings in these entries, at the end of each entry she always ended with a positive attitude and cheered herself up. In an interview, Wu mentioned that,
Although my job is sometimes exhausting, it did not come easy. It is my choice to be a teacher and I have worked hard to achieve the goal. I will never easily give up. While the thing could be extremely disappointed, trying to take it in an easy attitude is the first but important step to solve the problem… (the 1st
interview, 2009/08/19).
Wu knew clearly that, no matter how discouraging the thing was and no matter to what extent she wanted to give up, she would never really dropped from her job. Due to the personalities, instead of trapping herself in setbacks, Wu would rather think positively.
Mediation
In the present study, mediation refers to blogs and languages the two teachers chose to use in their blogs. In Wu’s case, mediation has a close relationship with both the participants’ objects and the subject agency.
For the object, initially, Wu’s goal of blogging was to make a record for her teaching. To achieve the goal, Wu recorded teaching ideas and her teaching process in blogs. Thus, at Wu’s first stage of blogging, there were many entries concerning with her emotional sharing (P1) and reflections on classroom based materials she had used (P4). For the connection of blogging and the subject agency, in addition to writing about her reflections of applying certain teaching skills in class, Wu also express her feelings of teaching when feeling either frustrated or delighted. She reported that expressing feeling in her blog was helpful for her to reorganize her thought. Not only did rewriting frustrating things provide her opportunities to express her negative emotion but also noting down something delighting made her feel encouraged. Both the processes contributed to refreshing her ideas. Wu mentioned that when she was a novice teacher, she was usually restless and anxious. At that time, writing blog entries offered her an opportunity to release her pressure, examine her teaching and plan her future actions of teaching. This explained why many of the entries in Wu’s first-year blogging process were concerned with emotion sharing (P1), reflection (P2) and self-directing (P4).
During Wu’s blogging experience, aside from the topics Wu selected for her entries to fulfill her expectations on her blog, language also played a critical role which mediated the process of revealing thoughts through writing. While being an English teacher, Wu chose to use Chinese, which was her first language, to write blog entries. In the interview, she reported that using her mother tongue made her feel more comfortable when expressing ideas. It is hard to exactly describe the complicated
human emotions and Wu regarded her blog as personal, not for academic purpose. As she remarked in the interview,
Originally I simply intended to make use of a blog to collect my ideas of teaching. Chinese is more effective for me to do the recording…Chinese makes it easier to express my feelings and I think it also enhances the readers’ reading.
(the 1st interview, 2009/08/19).
Thus, she considered the first language would be more convenient than the second language to help her formulate and express ideas. Also, most users of the blogging website were Taiwanese who were used to reading and writing in Chinese.
Therefore, Wu regarded Chinese as the most effective language facilitating her interaction with others.
The Interaction of the Online Community with Other Factors
Originally, Wu kept blog entries due to the intention of collecting useful
resources for future teaching as well as recording her teaching practice. According to Wu, after years of blogging, the interaction with members of the online community gradually became one of the main motives encouraging her to continuously write blog entries. In her blogs, Wu confessed that the impact of members in the online blogging community was significant on her blogging and the online community provided her a lot of support. On the one hand, an increasing number of readers gradually influenced her blogging in terms of topic choice and writing style. On the other hand, support and suggestions from the community not only assisted her to face challenges and difficulties in teaching but also encouraged her to continue working as a productive blogger. Therefore, during Wu’s four-year blogging experiences, P3, community interaction, had occurred most among the six learning practices suggested by
Darling-Hammond and Hammerness (2005) for the last three years. In the following, I
will discuss about the interaction of the online community with mediation, object, and subject separately.
Community and Mediation
Interaction with members of the online blogging community gradually
influenced Wu’s choice of topics and writing styles of her blog entries. Originally, for personal recording, Wu freely wrote everything related to teaching. She simply noted
influenced Wu’s choice of topics and writing styles of her blog entries. Originally, for personal recording, Wu freely wrote everything related to teaching. She simply noted