Unpacking themes of integrating telecollaboration in language teacher education: a systematic review of 36 studies from 2009 to 2019

Abstract

The goal of this synthesis is to review literature on the use of telecollaborative pedagogy for the purpose of language teacher education in order to identify themes in teacher intercultural telecollaborative learning. The synthesis reviews 36 telecollaborative studies that were published between 2009 and 2019 and focused on teacher professional development. Thematic analyses of the 36 studies revealed six themes: (a) changes in the focus from exploring telecollaborative learning to examining its application for teacher learning of new competences related to intercultural learning, technology integration, and telecollaboration integration; (b) conceptualization and design of telecollaboration as experiential learning for teacher professional development; (c) intentional enhancement of the transferability of new competences to future teaching; (d) teaching presence and expanded roles of project instructors; (e) explorations of teachers’ changing attitudes and perceptions of telecollaborative learning; and (f) teacher preparedness for addressing challenges occurring in telecollaboration. Finally, this systematic review discusses the interrelationship among the six themes and offers implications for future research and practice in line with the current findings.

Keywords:

• Language teacher education
• teacher telecollaboration
• intercultural learning
• technology integration
• telecollaborative competence

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank all the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions that have greatly contributed to the improvement of the article. I am also grateful to Dr. Paige Ware, Dr. Ruslan Suvorov, and Mr. Paul McGinty for their constructive feedback and proofreading support.

Notes on Contributor

Sumei Wu is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Southern Methodist University in the United States. Her research focuses on the development of intercultural communicative competence, language teacher noticing, the use of technology in language teacher education (especially Virtual Reality Simulations program), and language teacher education.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.