A qualitative study of mentors´ scaffolding in a teacher professional development online workshop

Taiwan´s Digital School (DS) was established to support online K-12 Teacher Professional Development. At the core of the online TPD center is a platform-independent, web-based environment designed to meet the needs of a large and diverse community of education professionals. DS provides a powerful set of synchronous and asynchronous communication systems, and support tools. DS offers the teaching community a variety of online TPD activities hosted by universities and educational organizations. Professionals design their own programs, take online courses experiment with new teaching methods, and expand their circle of colleagues by participating in community-wide events. In this study, we report findings from the Professional Development Online Workshop for Mathematical Capacity (Mathematical Capacity Workshop, MCW). We analyze the effects of electronic mentors´ scaffolding and the interactive quality of preservice/inservice mathematics teaching at a Web-based professional development workshop. MCW was the first workshop offered by DS to provide teachers online professional development. Three senior elementary mathematics teachers co-mentored the workshop and provided apprenticeship and online mentoring for pre- and in-service mathematics teacher´s professional development. The study contributes to an understanding of teaching participants´ assessment of the value and efficacy of online workshops as a tool for creating professional learning, and provides a basis for empirical study of the acquisition and maintenance of professional knowledge in Taiwan´s web-based professional teaching community. The study identifies several factors essential to delivering effective professional development programs. Insights gained in this pilot study will help teacher-educators continue to refine better intellectual tools to augment professional growth.