ONLINE PRACTICE COMMUNITY FOR SPECIAL EDUCATION TEACHERS

ABSTRACT

This project work is based on the need to design a collaborative way of working among teachers, particularly in the Special Education group and for this reason it started started by doing some research around the concept of Communities of Practice (CoP) based on networks of deliberate knowledge sharing.
In this sense, this project aims to explore the theoretical assumptions of the CoP, from its precursors Wenger and Lave, among others, that support our larger goal as to design a community of learning (online), that promotes a systematic and intentional way based on a situated and rich learning of the teachers of the Department of Special Education of a public grouping of schools.
The methodology was based on the theoretical research that supports the design of the project by introducing the context to a grouping of schools in the municipality of Odivelas, Lisbon district, and the Special Education teachers were constituted as the main target group which was directly involved with students with special educational needs. For the construction of the social structure, we used a free LMS such as the Moodle of the school where, according to the structure of the ADDIE model, we designed a set of activities that aimed the involvement and commitment of the Special Education teachers, solidifying the empathy and the identity of the group. It is also intended, in addition to the commitment, the collective process of negotiation of meanings, through a common enterprise that would strengthen the shared repertoire, within the scope of the development of professional competences.
From the projection of the CoP and its results it is expected that the community will be a privileged background to acquire useful and situated knowledge of real life in the context in which it is used, as a way of joining in common activities, as an expression of an own style and identity. The COP, as a professional development engine of the group, which, although sometimes is based on the informal but with a formal work object, happens in a collective and in social processes that consolidate the organizational culture of the group and the school.

KEYWORDS: Communities of practice, social structure, special education teachers, situated and shared learning, professional development.