Abstract:

The purpose of this study was to demonstrate how pre-service teachers can achieve self-regulation while engaged in collaborative instructional activities of an ELL using Skype. Skype is an Internet-based video conferencing program that allows users to see each other by way of a webcam. In this study, a group of pre-service elementary education majors seeking a state required ESOL endorsement used Skype to instruct a Level 2 ELL. The purpose of this study was to demonstrate if and how pre-service teachers form pedagogic identities and concomitant professional knowledge while participating in simulated professional development activities using Skype (Skype Limited, 2009). An ongoing gap between what an ESOL-endorsed or ESOL-trained teacher actually internalizes and alters by way of reflective practices and what is left unaltered has generated an ongoing dialogue among educational researchers (Freeman, 1996; Wallace, 1996). What is consistently either missing from research or is heavily debated among scholars is how these teachers become self-regulated, given their routine engagement in traditional face-to-face professional development activities. Also of interest is how collaborative and in-the-head learning among teachers engaged in these development opportunities become cognitively unpacked through reflection and practice (Erben, 1999). Evidence of this gap in the research and variance among researchers and their findings is demonstrated in the writings of Cole (1991); Elmore (2002); Hiebert, Gallimore, and Stigler (2002); and Lave and Wenger (1991).

Keywords:

Microgenetic Regression, Pedagogic Identities, Skype, Simulated Professional Development.