| Summary: | The
purpose of the current case study is to explore the influence of online peer
collaboration among Turkish elementary school teachers in order to gain an
understanding of the contributions from online peer collaboration to teachers’
professional development. For the purpose this study, online peer collaboration
is defined as online support provided by teachers to one another through a
web-based professional development platform called “Learner-Teachers”. This
case study involves eight volunteer elementary school teachers who have been
involved in “Learner-Teachers” online peer collaboration professional
development process. Qualitative data collection consisted of semi-structured
interview and utilizing teachers’ online entries on the web-based exchange platform.
Open coding method and entry analyses were done as data analyses. Four main
themes emerged from the current study: 1) Satisfaction with peer collaboration
2) Usefulness of online peer collaboration 3) Improvement of classroom teaching
methods and techniques 4) Improvement of classroom management skills. Overall,
teachers who participated the online peer collaboration appeared to benefit
from this collaboration in their personal and professional development. The
importance of peer collaboration via online tools are discussed.
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