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This study sought to answer the following questions: (a) Why do literacy teacher educators use online professional development web seminars within their courses? (b) How do literacy teacher educators use online professional development web seminars within their courses, especially those presented by GCLR? and (c) What value do literacy teacher educators see in working with the web seminars in their classes, especially those presented by GCLR?

From data analysis of participants’ semi-structured interviews and supported by their course syllabi, five findings emerged in relation to teacher educators’ use of professional development web seminars, especially those such as GCLR:

1. Past experiences and open access led to web seminar integration.

2. Purpose and intent of use related to how web seminar integration occurred. 3. Specific instructional practices fostered authentic professional development. 4. Web seminars offered authentic and situated online professional development. 5. Professionalism emerged and offered access to a community of learners.

In the following sections, I discuss the role of online professional development guided by this study’s research questions and through the lens of critical situated learning.

Open Access Is Critical When Integrating Web Seminars

Researchers have illuminated that teacher educators are often torn because they feel stifled from using what they believe are best practices for supporting the development of their student teachers in lieu of mandated standards and curricula (Cabaroglu & Tillema, 2011; Grossman, 2005, Loughran & Russell, 2002; Tillema & Kremer-Hayon, 2005). To help teacher educators negotiate these tensions, today’s professional development need not be limited solely to university

preparation programs or delivered only in the context of stand-alone professional development venues. Rather, extrinsic professional development may be integrated as a component of teacher education courses, making it a new approach to blended learning, which eliminates the either–or thinking that situates traditional professional development. Examining professional development web seminars through the concept of open access helps explain why participants integrated the web seminars in their stand-alone teacher education courses in relation to (a) their own experiences with GCLR, (b) a desire for their students to be connected to world-renowned literacy scholars, and (c) wanting their students to have broader perspectives from which to consider literacy.

From their own past experiences and connections with GCLR, Geena, Grace, and Lin determined to integrate the web seminars because they provided open access to globally- recognized literacy experts who shared a variety of perspectives about literacy. All three

participants, for example, had attended the web seminars over a period of several years and had gained a familiarity with the overall GCLR project, becoming vested in it as an effective online professional development venue. Their own social and cultural experiences as web seminar participants, in part, supported why they chose to integrate the web seminars (Brown et al., 1989). In particular, Geena’s allegiance to her friend, the founder of the GCLR project was significant in why she incorporated the web seminars in her courses. Both Grace and Lin shared a fondness for the web seminars, starting from when they were doctoral students. That the teacher educators supported the GCLR web seminars with such fidelity could be a contributing factor to how effective professional development emerges and sustains itself.

Through open and live access, the web seminars afforded the participants an opportunity to connect their students to literacy scholars that otherwise would have been impossible in the teacher education courses alone. All three participants required their students to attend at least one GCLR

web seminar. Geena and Lin, though, gave their students a choice of which seminar they would like to attend, which past research has highlighted as an affordance of online professional development since teachers choose the learning that fits their needs (Foote, 2013). That the participants in this study required their students to attend the web seminars opens the possibility that their experience, if a positive one, could lead them to attend future professional development web seminars (Brooks, 2012). Providing favorable professional development experiences, such as GCLR web seminars that afford open access, the opportunity to collaborate with literacy experts and other pre-and in-service teachers, and a space to raise a question or voice a concern, create favorable conditions that may encourage teachers to want to engage in professional development.

On the other hand, the fact that Grace selected the web seminars for her students also provides important pedagogical considerations for how teacher educators integrate professional development web seminars. Choosing which seminars students would attend allowed her to purposefully plan instruction situated around specific GCLR web seminar topics and dates.

Simultaneously creating classroom learning opportunities that coincided with the live presentations in which scholars presented their lived experiences made conditions fruitful for authentic, situated learning. Latta and Kim (2010) argue, “Investing in lived curriculum entails purposefully creating contexts for professional learning. Teacher educators must assume leadership roles for supporting and advocating for the learning contexts that best enable lived curriculum within the particularities of given contexts” (p. 693). How Grace integrated the web seminars is characteristic of situated learning, that is, knowledge co-constructed through interaction within specific embedded activity (Borko, 2004; Brown et al., 1989; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Putnam & Borko, 2000).

Third, participants incorporated the open access web seminars within their courses, with the intent that the presentations would provide an avenue for their students to think more broadly