Affiliation:
1. University of North Texas, USA
Abstract
America's teachers are burning out. The emergence of teacher-centered online professional learning communities (PLCs) is a relatively new phenomenon with unestablished boundaries. The questions to be answered are: (1) What are the opportunities, issues, and challenges associated with online PLCs for K-12 teachers? (2) What are generalizable models for designing, implementing, and managing online PLCs for K-12 teachers? An exhaustive review gathered, organized, evaluated, coded, analyzed, and synthesized 45 relevant studies, dissertations, articles, and reports that examined online teacher PLCs. The goal was to identify and highlight conflicts, contradictory ideas among findings. The intent was to bridge gaps between theories and principles to create a common framework and generalizable models. This study was relevant because it sought to identify opportunities, issues, and challenges associated with online teacher PLCs and successful evidence-based micro-level, meso-level, and macro-level replicable practices for broader generalization.