Determinación y desarrollo del proyecto

This section addresses the second research question (RQ2) that guided this study: What does freelance language teachers’ professional development on…and with…and through Twitter produce?

Tweet and hashtag assemblages are capable of producing becomings that pertain to both non-humans and humans alike. Becomings are transitionings, i.e. they are never final but always happening in-between. This is also true for (teaching) resources, which are produced through and within Twitter chats, such as chat transcripts, chat summaries, Padlets or Google documents. These becomings have a material existence, but they are open processes that continuously evolve into something different by connecting with thought and action. #ELTchat Moderator1 spontaneously created a Padlet poster wall with chat participants’ favourite ELT teaching tools during a chat and shared the link in a tweet assemblage with the #ELTchat hashtag. This constituted a new opening for further contributions to the collection of teaching tools by chat participants and non- participants alike. A language teacher who had not taken part in the chat contributed a post on this wall with a link to an article on the role of mobile phones in the classroom, which he had co-authored. This post functioned as a self-promotion but also provided a new opportunity for connecting with thought about teaching practice. Heather

Padlet wall, thereby connecting the tweet assemblage to her followers and

simultaneously strengthening the dissemination of the link in the #ELTchat network.

Instances of the entanglement between FLTs’ professional practices and becomings associated with Twitter chats could be observed through relational cross- reading of data. Hanna stated in her interview that she learnt about the software Quizlet in a #ELTchat Twitter chat (see section 5.6.1). In a #ELTchat Twitter chat Hanna’s teaching experience with Quizlet entered into conversations about helping students to learn new vocabulary and was reported in the chat summary, which was written by Maria. The summary, which also contains Maria’s own experience with technology that supports students’ vocabulary learning, was Maria’s first chat summary. Maria’s chat summary provided a detailed and well-structured account of the chat, showing that the discussions ranged from the importance of recording vocabulary for language learner autonomy to teaching strategies, such as the use of cards, portfolios or even songs (with young learners), and the use of software to help apply these strategies in language teaching. Maria’s chat summary was praised in tweet assemblages and retweeted to such a degree that it showed in the #ELTchat network analysis of word pairs that co-occurred most frequently two weeks after the chat. In a tweet Maria referred to her experience of writing a chat summary and stated that this might start her to blog about her teaching. Even though further relational cross-reading of data did not show whether becoming-blogger actualised, becoming-chat-summary-writer worked with the elements of connectivity and popularity within the Twitter machine in making a new subject position available to Maria.

The chat summaries also function as a “useful” (Heather, interview) resource and substitute for the chat tweets, because “if you just follow #ELTchat chat and look at the chat tweets, it’s a bit overwhelming, especially if you are not involved in the

conversations” (Heather, interview). The summaries and the Padlet walls as products of #ELTchat Twitter chatsare assemblages in their own right and provide new

opportunities for (re-)connections through commenting (on the #ELTchat summaries web page) and through contributing content (on the Padlet).

Within #TBLTchat becomings pertain both to teaching practices (see 5.6.2) and to subjectivities. Becoming-chat-organiser made new subject positions available for Marc, such as enacting ideas of democratic and experimental teacher PD:

“I see #TBLTchat, or what I imagine it as being […] a lot more…kind of grassroots: teachers talking to teachers and organising with teachers, discussing things, talking about practices. And it might be a bit more… a bit more…evaluating, and a pragmatic reflection, picking and choosing and rejecting what works in this context and what doesn’t work. Or what you think might be a good idea but perhaps doesn’t work in your context, but you give it a little try, just in case” (Marc, interview).

Marc’s goal was “to become a participant rather than a leader” (Marc, interview). However, sustaining the Twitter chat conflicted with Marc’s teaching commitments: “We were a bit overambitious. We started with a wiki that we kept for ourselves and a Padlet, and basically the last chats took me over a month to get that going ‘cause I was so busy” (Marc, interview). The existence of the #TBLTchat network is further endangered by its size: since the #TBLTchat network is a much smaller network than the #ELTchat and the #LTHEchat networks (see section 5.6.2), its existence relies almost entirely on the tweets of the chat-organiser, i.e. on Marc’s tweets.

For Rachel, the #LTHEchat tweet and hashtag assemblages provided

opportunities to connect with her professional practices, both as a language teacher and as a doctoral researcher (see section 5.6.3) and produced new subjectivities. After the data collection time Rachel became a member of the #LTHEchat organising group and helped organise #LTHEchat Twitter chats for a period of three months. She also co- authored a blog post about LTHEchat as a community of practice.

After summarising the ‘findings’ from my research with regard to the two research questions, I will turn to my own researcher-becomings and report the

challenges and opportunities of the Deleuzo-Guattarian inspired research approach in the final two sections of this chapter.