Keywords

Reflective Practice and Rethinking Teacher Leadership Identity in Telecollaborative Environments

In recent years, technological developments such as the use of individual learner devices in the classroom, instructor usage of presentation software to structure and teach lessons, and overarching learning management systems have caused rapid changes for both teachers and learners, and reflective practice has provided an important way for many to process and manage these changes. This chapter explores reflective work done by a cooperative dyad of teachers undertaking the integration of telecollaboration programs which are based on such technology into first-year Japanese university English as a foreign language (EFL) communication courses.

In telecollaboration, learners in different geographical locations interact online in a formally structured manner for mutual benefit (O'Dowd, 2013). Through analysis of data produced during reflective practice based on structured dialogue and written tasks, the chapter examines how these telecollaborative programs have impacted on the teacher’s leadership identity and helped establish a more collaborative and participatory learning environment for both teacher and students. It focuses on a two-year period, beginning in April 2020. This data collection method “bring[s] together a range of work, ideas, and strategies on ways of knowing, telling and enacting caring relationships” (McCallum & Price, 2010, p. 25). Here one teacher’s journey is presented.

Background and Context

The exploration of classroom roles undertaken in this chapter was conducted in Japan, and, as such, it is important to understand not only the educational background and needs of the students, but also their cultural approach to the classroom. Japan follows a Confucian philosophy of education which encapsulates a hierarchical relationship between teachers and students (Egitim, 2022; Matsuyama et al., 2019). English language education in Japan has also generally followed this teacher-centered approach using the grammar-translation method (Sato et al., 2019), which encourages passive learning habits (Loucky & Ware, 2016). As Japanese teachers have themselves been educated in this atmosphere, it seems that many practice the same methodology when they enter the teaching profession (Sato et al., 2019).

Another reason is that because receptive skills are tested in the university entrance examinations, school EFL lessons tend to focus on them, meaning that this teaching pedagogy is seen to be appropriate (Egitim, 2022). As learners move into university, and beyond, however, productive and communicative skills become more important, and language programs seek to balance learners’ skills. While it is still common for Japanese teachers to employ traditional pedagogy in the university context even as they are expected to use more English in their teaching, foreign teachers in Japanese schools and universities are now often expected to use more communicative and interactive teaching methodologies (Reed, 2020; Thompson & Woodman, 2019).

This is problematic for several reasons. When first-year students find that they are to be taught by a non-Japanese teacher, they must suddenly change their ways of being in the classroom which limits their active participation in learning. By establishing open and participatory learning environments through collaborative leadership classroom practices (Egitim, 2022), teachers can help students overcome these difficulties and become more active, effective learners. To enact these changes, teachers need to examine their own leadership identity through reflective practice (Egitim, 2022).

Literature Review

Traditional classrooms worldwide have historically developed particular interaction orders or social arrangements in which actions and discourse are embedded (Scollon et al., 2004). The development of teacher identity, including teacher leadership identity, is a part of this process. In traditional classrooms, teachers often have a central, authoritative role. The introduction of telecollaboration can be described as both disruptive and transformative, and can lead to the redefinition of traditional teacher-student roles through a change in the way that interaction is organized (Ensor et al., 2017) with students collaborating independently using what once were considered to be informal methods of communication, for example, social media. Reflection is vital in this process of change.

Egitim (2021) suggested a new kind of pedagogical framework, Leaderful Classroom Practices which support teachers to establish a more open, democratic and participatory learning environment in their classrooms. His process suggests practitioners: reflect on their leadership identity as teachers, develop an empathetic lens, build scaffolding and structure, create a psychologically safe learning environment, share power with learners, give them a voice in pedagogical decisions, negotiate for Leaderful Classroom Practices, and promote reflective practices in the classroom (Egitim, 2021).

By changing expectations surrounding the interaction between the people involved, leadership can become increasingly shared. Raelin (2021), writing about human resource development described four tenets of leadership: collective, concurrent, collaborative, and compassionate, which will lead to a more “dynamic co-constructed democratic process” (p. 2). Collective leadership sees all members as able to function in any role, and, importantly, that the group does not rely upon any one person. Concurrent leadership is when there are several people leading at any one time. Collaborative leadership sees people working together towards mutual goals that are set together. Finally, compassionate leadership ensures that all are treated with dignity and respect.

Reflective practice was first explored by Dewey, who suggested that teachers could better support the learners in their care by thinking about their teaching and its effects (Dewey, 1933). Since then there have been many additions, particularly notable Schön’s (1983), which was more intuitive and focused on experiential knowledge. He described reflection-in-action, in which teachers work to become aware of their teaching in the moment, and reflection-on-action, in which teachers think about events after they have occurred.

Killion and Todnem (1991) built on this, focusing on reflection-for-action, sometimes called reflection-as-repair, which aimed to find ways to improve future teaching. Much of this work, however, focused on improving either the learning experience or its efficacy and did not address more holistic issues such as the teacher's experience of the classroom or their personal well-being. Acton and Glasgow (2015) defined professional well-being as “fulfillment, satisfaction, [and] purposefulness” (p. 102), which Farrell (2015) noted can be achieved through reflective practice.

Farrell (2015) described an integrated, evidence-based reflective model that recognized the personal, spiritual, and emotional aspects of reflection called the framework for reflecting on practice for TESOL teachers. The framework guides reflective practitioners through five different stages of reflection: Philosophy; Principles; Theory; Practice; and Beyond Practice. In Philosophy, teachers explore how their own life experiences have contributed to who they are in the classroom. In Principles, teachers think about their own assumptions about teaching and learning, their approaches and the decisions that they make in the classroom. In Theory, teachers reflect on what they feel to be ideal pedagogy. In the Practice stage, teachers take the reflective process into the classroom with them to explore how effectively they engage in their personal theory in practice. In the final stage, Beyond Practice, teachers consider the wider implications of their teaching choices because of the multi-dimensional nature of language teaching.

In this chapter, Farrell’s framework was used as it recognizes that teachers must understand who they are as “human beings first” (Farrell, 2015, p. 25), before they can consciously develop into professionals who are not only effective at delivering learning objectives but also happy and confident in their practice. It is important that the whole person is considered, not only their efficacy in the classroom. Learners, too, must be recognized in this way, as human beings first.

Julian Edge’s work, detailed in his book Cooperative Development (1992), encourages peers to work together to better understand their own situation while being enriched by the experiences, thoughts and ideas of others. He writes, “Sometimes it is exactly when I am trying to formulate my ideas that I see properly for the first time just exactly how they do fit together: by exploring my thoughts, I discover something new” (Edge, 1992, p. 7). Through attempting to express ourselves we merge our intellectual knowledge with our experiential knowledge.

As such, the Cooperative Development method emphasizes the importance of cooperation between colleagues, and “depends totally on the idea of an agreement between two people to work together for a certain period of time according to the rules that they both understand and agree on” (Edge, 1992, p. 11). In this method, the Speaker and Understander have clearly defined roles in the reflective process. The Understander’s role is to help “develop the Speaker’s own ideas by clarifying and following them where they lead” (Edge, 1992, p. 7). This process may seem simply like the actions of a helpful friend or colleague, but in practice goes much further: “the Understander deliberately sets out to make as much space as possible for the Speaker while at the same time actively working to help the Speaker use that space creatively” (Edge, 1992, p. 10). With discovery being the aim of all reflective interaction between the partners, any argument or adversarial elements are abandoned. Respect, empathy and honesty are also very important principles that are necessary for both parties to commit to in order for effective Cooperative Development to take place.

These practices underlie many of the choices that we, the authors of this chapter, have made throughout our teaching careers, and we have also worked to introduce elements of reflection to our students. The ways that we incorporate reflective journaling into intercultural literature courses are introduced in Kennedy (2019). Our efforts to guide the teaching staff whom we mentor towards better support of students with learning differences are outlined in Kennedy (in press). It was a natural step, therefore, to blend our reflective practices and the affinity that we have as friends creating the foundation of our new reflective dyad.

Methodology

The authors of this chapter are both full-time university professors and work together at a science-focused university in Western Japan. They both originally come from English-speaking countries and have been teaching for 30 years and 20 years respectively in various educational settings in the Japanese context. As noted above, one of the authors is referred to throughout this chapter as the Speaker and the other as her Understander, terms introduced by Edge (1992).

The 72 students were all first-year undergraduates at the national university in Japan where both of the authors work. All first-year students at the university take two types of EFL classes each week. One, taught by Japanese teachers, focuses on receptive skills. The other, taught by non-Japanese teachers including us, the authors of this article, is designed to improve students’ productive EFL and intercultural communication skills. Teachers design their courses in line with their own philosophy and interests, following course guidelines and focusing on the development of 21st-century skills, defined here as the four learning skills (critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication, the three literacy skills (information, media and technology), and the five life skills (flexibility, leadership, initiative, productivity, and social skills) (van Laar et al., 2020).

The teacher described here has been using telecollaboration for many years to connect Japanese learners with students in various countries including Burundi, Belgium, Malaysia, China, Columbia, and the Philippines. These programs aim to improve students’ English and intercultural understanding. This chapter focuses on changes in teacher leadership during four such telecollaborative projects.

Reflective tasks were undertaken to create opportunities for the Speaker to reflect upon and, in doing so, to better understand the ways that her classroom practices impacted the learners in her care. Written reflective tasks were undertaken monthly over a two-year period from 2020 to 2022 in a Google Doc file shared between the two participants. Twenty four texts were produced with entries ranging from approximately 250–3000 words. Twenty dialogic tasks were undertaken either online or in person depending on COVID-19 restrictions in either of our offices, and lasted between 18 and 87 min. All dialogic sessions were recorded using the Voice Record application on our smartphones and digitally transcribed using Otter.ai.

Open coding (Cohen et al., 2011) was then used to process both data sets, and recurrent codes pertaining to leadership were established as themes. Open coding “is composed of pithy, descriptive restatements of issues taking place in the data. Open codes are usually written as gerunds to focus on the words of informants at face value, and their observable actions,” (Hadley, 2019, p. 267). Each piece of data, written or audio, was coded and reflected on in chronological order, before moving to the next one for consideration. After coding 10 items, we looked back and found the emerging patterns and were then able to make groups and label them. For example, when establishing the theme of teacher well-being, a statement regarding the impact of the support of teaching peers would be coded as supportive colleagues, which would be further subsumed under the category of workplace support.

Finally, aspects of thematic analysis (Clarke et al., 2015) were then used. Thematic analysis (TA) is a tool for analyzing qualitative data by identifying, interpreting, and organizing patterns of meaning (themes) without being tied to a particular methodology. It emphasizes an organic approach to coding and theme development and the active role of the researcher. TA provides accessible and systematic procedures for generating codes and, later, themes from data. “TA can be used to identify patterns within and across data in relation to participants’ lived experience, views and perspectives, and behaviour and practices; ‘experiential’ research which seeks to understand what participants think, feel and do” (Clarke et al., 2015, p. 2). These processes allowed us to make sense of the findings, and directed understanding of the research question:

How did implementing telecollaborative programs impact teacher leadership practices during the two-year period of this study?

Results

The results pertaining to the four themes that emerged from the data: Change, Trust, Community, and Well-being are set forth here. The results reported in this section will be explored, explained, and contextualized in the discussion section.

Change

The theme of change was noted in many different aspects of the telecollaborations, including course content and assessment, when and where classes were conducted, who was present, and what their roles were. These changes also brought about transformations for both the teacher and the learners.

“What we do, where we do it, and how we do it are all changed.”

“The traditional timetable in which class times are dictated becomes blurred especially if large time differences are involved. Students need to contact their partners outside of the designated class times and often have to work at home in order to engage in synchronous meetings.”

“[T]he teacher is no longer the focal point of the teaching and learning environment.”

“They [the students] cannot rely on me for support during their online interactions and have to develop some level of independence.”

“It is a pleasure to see the changes in the students as they develop good relationships with each other and increase their independence, autonomy, and confidence in their learning.”

Trust

Trust was another concept that the Speaker returned to many times in both reflective written and dialogic tasks. She described the importance of building trustful relationships between the members of her classroom communities, and in the telecollaborative process itself, and reflected on how such trust then allows learners greater autonomy.

“We spend a lot of time at the beginning getting to know each other. I set up activities in which they can share information together, changing partners and groups often.”

“The students often say at the end of a course that they made a lot of friends in this class.”

“We do reflective activities regularly so we can all see how the course is going.”

Team-building activities “were even more important to create a foundation for successful collaboration with the students.”

“Letting the students do more Zoom activities as they had asked increased the level of trust and was an example of collaborative leadership that changed the design of the course making it more meaningful for everyone involved.”

“It is really by participating in the collaborative leadership of their classrooms that learners take the reins of their own learning journeys.”

“The students really direct the course of their own learning and because of that, assignment topics become more flexible, and their interpretation open to more and more imagination and creativity.”

“The students will do their best. Of course, some will look for the easy way out, but I think the majority don’t, and want to work with the teacher and their friends to get better at English and intercultural communication.”

“In the telecollaborations, I can’t see the communication that takes place between the students and their international partners and so I just have to trust that they are committed to the process and that they are getting on with what they are supposed to be doing.”

“It [trust] comes from the relationship I have built with the students and the structure provided in the course itself. I’ve supported them initially so that they know how to go about the tasks. They’ve practiced lots with their partners here in the classroom, so they know how to go about the next steps.”

Community

The data analysis showed that both the physical and online classroom communities provided active learning spaces where both teachers and students could learn from each other. The Speaker was willing to learn from students and was committed to fostering a sense of community by putting in extra effort outside of class time. All members of the communities were considered important and their contributions were valuable to the learning experience.

[The physical and online classroom communities are] “active learning spaces for us all, in which we can all learn from each other.”

“I have learned a lot from the students and the way they use technology. We often learn from each other to find the best ways to use the tech. For example, they prefer to use Instagram videos and so I have learned how to do that too.”

“I can’t ask them to work outside the classroom, if I am not willing to do the same so I am active in the LINE group even in the evening or on the weekend.”

“We have all become communities interwoven together like cloth with the teacher as only one of the threads, no more or less important than any other.”

Well-Being

Professional well-being was another theme that ran through much of the data. As the learners’ autonomy developed and confidence grew, so did the Speakers’ professional well-being, leading her to recognize that the two were deeply interconnected.

“I really like the teaching part and feel joy and happiness when I'm in the classroom.”

“The students have a lot of passive knowledge which they now need to learn how to use. It is so important for their linguistic and social development.”

“I have an enormous amount of freedom to do whatever I like, which is fantastic. The negative side of that is that there is a kind of lack of interest in what I do and I am pretty much on my own doing this.”

“I think one of the key issues is learner autonomy and freedom, which up until now the students haven’t had much of. But I think if they are going to go further they need to have more freedom and create their own learning paths.”

“When COVID-19 removed opportunities to study abroad, ... it was seen [by the institution] that telecollaboration could provide a viable alternative.”

“It feels good to have my work recognized.”

Discussion

In this context, the introduction of telecollaborative projects engendered changes in the learning environment leading to changes in teacher leadership with increased levels of collaboration, trust, and power-sharing between the teacher and students, as well as the development of students’ self-directed learning and engagement. Designed to improve the linguistic and intercultural proficiency of students, the programs had unforeseen, far-reaching impacts on the relationships and teaching and learning methodologies of all the people involved. Here, the interplay between how the teacher’s leadership identity influenced her pedagogical beliefs, decisions, and practices, and how those practices in turn reshaped her leadership identity, is explored through each of the four themes that emerged through analysis of the data: change, trust, community and well-being.

Change

Farrell (2013) stated that “Over their careers, teachers tacitly construct and reconstruct a conceptual sense of who they are (their self-image) and what they do (their professional role identity)” (p. 91). This interplay between a sense of ourselves and the activities we engage in is seen in the context described here. Reflective dialogue allows practitioners to more easily identify changes in themselves and their teaching practice, and how these changes impact their teacher leadership identity. “What we do, where we do it, and how we do it are all changed,” the Speaker said, referring to how these changes had moved the classroom towards a space of concurrent collaborative leadership, fostered learners moving towards the autonomy and skills necessary for this to be possible, and allowed her to share leadership and undertake the role of facilitator.

The first change that the Speaker described relates to course parameters. In a reflective task in the Practice stage (Farrell, 2015), she wrote:

The traditional timetable in which class times are dictated becomes blurred especially if large time differences are involved. Students need to contact their partners outside of the designated class times and often have to work at home in order to engage in synchronous meetings.

She did not have access to the students’ online interactions as they took place either in direct messaging or in closed online groups, so her usual means of overview and guidance were removed. “They cannot rely on me for support during their online interactions and have to develop some level of independence.” This role of the teacher as a facilitator was also seen in the physical classroom, where the students worked together in small groups, supporting each other with their various tasks. Collaboratively accomplishing tasks with peers was a move away from the traditional teacher-centered classes to which the students were accustomed and positioned the students into a more central, active, and participatory role. They could no longer be passive, but needed to collaborate and create with their new communities. English, studied as a foreign rather than a second or additional language, previously only spoken in the classroom during class time, suddenly moved into the students’ personal spaces, and learners felt a new sense of ownership.

Whilst these changes could be seen as disconcerting for both learners and teachers, the Speaker found them to be positive for both herself and for the students, saying, “It is a pleasure to see the changes in the students as they develop good relationships with each other and increase their independence, autonomy, and confidence in their learning.”

It is clear that implementing the telecollaborative programs positively impacted teacher leadership practices. By moving learning activities from a standard timetabled classroom course undertaken by the students of one university to a telecollaboration and project-based interaction with learners in other geographical locations, the teacher was able to facilitate rather than direct learning. The students in her classes were then able to step into more active roles, and leadership became more collaborative and concurrent.

Trust

Another theme that emerged from the data concerns trust, not only between teacher and students, but also between learners in the classroom, and in telecollaboration itself. Trust is at the foundation of positive relationships, which are in turn at the heart of collaborative classroom practices. Research suggests that positive relationships between teachers and learners are based on closeness, liking, warmth, support, and trust (Roorda et al., 2017), and that students view teachers whom they feel care about them more positively (Lavy & Naama-Ghanayim, 2020). Many of these concepts are interwoven, and it seems that improving one will have a positive effect on others. For example, throughout many of her reflections, the Speaker recognized how spending time getting to know her students as people and also where they are on their learning journeys had allowed her to build positive relationships both with and between them. “We spend a lot of time at the beginning getting to know each other. I set up activities in which they can share information together, changing partners and groups often.” These team-building activities are vital in telecollaborative spaces where the usual social cues are absent and students need to create an online social presence (D’Angelo & Schneider, 2021). The Speaker concluded, “These steps were even more important to create a foundation for successful collaboration with the students.”

As online meeting programs, specifically Zoom in this study, became increasingly normalized, students requested to meet up more often synchronously as a class so they could get to know one another better. The teacher's acting on this request “increased the level of trust and was an example of collaborative leadership that changed the design of the course making it more meaningful for everyone involved.”

Trust is also important for learners to feel safe in their role so as to be able to invest fully in learning activities. By sharing knowledge and skills, learners gradually build their own and one another’s abilities. As Egitim (2022) states, “What really brings out the best in each individual is an open, participatory, and democratic classroom environment where all the members are given psychological safety and freedom to take the initiative” (p. 66). Egitim recognizes that learners’ academic learning needs must be met alongside the need for their voices to be heard. The Speaker also acknowledges that, “It is really by participating in the collaborative leadership of their classrooms that learners take the reins of their own learning journeys.”

Nguyen et al. (2019) noted that “teacher leadership is exercised on the basis of reciprocal collaboration and trust” (p. 66). Where teachers trust their students to work independently towards course goals, they also feel confident to allow them to develop autonomy. In the context described here, the Speaker described how students “direct the course of their own learning and because of that, assignment topics become more flexible, and their interpretation open to more and more imagination and creativity.” As she gradually relaxed control, the students accepted more responsibility for their own learning.

In a reflective writing task focused on Farrell’s (2015) concept of Principles, the Speaker uncovered her belief that “The students will do their best. Of course, some will look for the easy way out, but I think the majority don’t, and want to work with the teacher and their friends to get better at English and intercultural communication.” Later in a dialogue connecting this Principle to her Practice (Farrell, 2015), she described how:

In the telecollaborations, I can’t see the communication that takes place between the students and their international partners and so I just have to trust that they are committed to the process and that they are getting on with what they are supposed to be doing.

A high level of trust is required for this to be possible. Exploring this more deeply, the Speaker continued, explaining that “It comes from the relationship I have built with the students and the structure provided in the course itself. I’ve supported them initially so that they know how to go about the tasks. They’ve practiced lots with their partners here in the classroom, so they know how to go about the next steps.” The Speaker’s faith in the solid structure of the course that she has designed allows her to trust that her students will undertake their work in a diligent manner. Her students’ similar understanding of the course structure and goals allows them to approach each task with confidence, safe in the knowledge that it will move them further toward the competencies that they are hoping to achieve.

Implementing telecollaborative programs brought increased trust, which in turn allowed students to work independently outside of the traditional classroom parameters to complete learning tasks. As they became increasingly comfortable with one another, the course tools and expectations, and with their teacher, the students stepped into more active roles resulting in a more collaborative learning environment with leadership shared concurrently.

Community

Another theme that was common in both written and dialogic reflections was that of community. In this context, the teacher facilitates the development of communities by setting up various ways for the students to interact with partners in other countries, and with Japanese peers within the physical classroom. These classroom-based communities and safe online spaces are vital to the success of telecollaborative experiences which can otherwise be, as the Speaker described, “anxiety-inducing” for learners.

As such, the teacher supports students through the gradually more unfamiliar tasks, from the first meeting and interacting with Japanese peers in the physical classroom to engaging with their international peers online. The Speaker described both the physical and online classroom communities as “active learning spaces for us all, in which we can all learn from each other,” including herself as a learner here. In the physical and virtual spaces, the students commonly use multiple devices while they are learning how to use various applications such as Miro, an online visual collaboration tool, Flip, a video discussion and sharing application Padlet, a platform where users can share content in virtual bulletin boards and Canva, an online graphic designing tool, often using two or more devices simultaneously. They also bring in their own digital tools to share which can be incorporated into the resources for everyone to use, including the teacher. A shared Padlet allows everyone to add tips on things related to the class including technological resources. The Speaker reflected on the learners’ growing independence, autonomy, and freedom as well as their increased sense of trust and community, saying, “I have learned a lot from the students and the way they use technology. We often learn from each other to find the best ways to use the tech. For example, they prefer to use Instagram videos and so I have learned how to do that too.”

Learners were also supported when they are not in the physical classroom by an online component. At the beginning of the courses, the teacher set up a group on Line, a social networking service popular in Japan, where students could quickly communicate whenever they needed help. The Speaker reflected, “I can’t ask them to work outside the classroom, if I am not willing to do the same” and so made herself available to her students whenever reasonably possible. Learners typically asked and resolved problems amongst themselves, prefacing their messages with “Sensei (the Japanese word for teacher) please help” when their peers could not provide workable solutions or information, or writing privately if they felt it was necessary.

A virtual community was also developed with the students’ online partners in other countries. While many choose to use Instagram, the students were free to choose any social networking service to communicate and were required to contact one another regularly outside of class hours to work on tasks together. Such contact was particularly necessary when the exchanges took place with countries that have a large time difference because shared class time was minimal. The active and participatory nature of the telecollaborative spaces encouraged the creation of these new, supportive communities through which language and culture become an “integrated, embodied, experimental and transformational” (Shaules, 2019, p. 132) experience for students. The Speaker reflected that instead of there being only one physical classroom community, multiple physical and virtual communities overlapped creating a complex change in the traditional roles of teacher and student resulting in “communities interwoven together like cloth with the teacher as only one of the threads.”

Implementing the telecollaborative programs impacted directly on the Speaker's leadership practices and the development of communities by creating psychologically safe spaces in the physical classroom, which laid the foundation for the successful development of virtual learning environments. Learning to use different digital tools together created a strong sense of collaboration and community. The use of these new communicative tools created new ways to interact, allowing the Speaker and the students to negotiate pedagogical decisions and participate in a more equal and collaborative learning environment. The students could choose the tools they preferred and introduce new tools that better suited their needs thus personalizing their own learning experiences whilst at the same time strengthening their communities.

Well-Being

Teacher well-being, and its importance in creating collaborative teaching and learning spaces, was another dominant thread. Defined as “an individual sense of personal professional fulfillment, satisfaction, purposefulness and happiness constructed in a collaborative process with colleagues and students” (Acton & Glasgow, 2015, p.102), “teaching and learning are done by human beings, whose well-being is not an optional or superfluous consideration but central to the whole process” (MacIntyre & Ayers-Glassey, 2020, p.70). In both written and dialogic reflection, the Speaker made connections between changes in her own level of professional well-being and the extent to which she has been able to foster collaborative leadership with the learners in her classroom.

Many times during this project the Speaker mentioned that she “really like[s] the teaching part and feel[s] joy and happiness when [she is] in the classroom.” This positive feeling is one of the factors that allowed her teaching to focus directly on her students’ needs. Teachers who feel positive about teaching and towards their students are more able to adapt their pedagogy to the students in their classes (Trigwell, 2012). Research has also shown that when students achieve course goals, teachers are more aware of the efficacy of their teaching, which in turn leads to higher levels of well-being (Zee & Koomen, 2016).

In Farrell’s (2015) framework in the stage called Principles, teachers think about their own assumptions about teaching and learning and one of the Speaker’s assumptions was that students needed to be active in the classroom if they were to improve their productive language skills. “The students have a lot of passive knowledge which they now need to learn how to use. It is so important for their linguistic and social development.” As students displayed more active attitudes in the classroom and submitted their shared efforts, she recognized that students on both sides of the exchange were benefitting from the project and found her own sense of achievement growing. All were building their well-being “in a collaborative process with colleagues and students” (Acton & Glasgow, 2015, p.102).

Many studies have also shown that having a supportive working environment influences teacher well-being levels, with positive relationships between management, colleagues, and administrative staff shown to be particularly significant (Dewaele et al., 2019; Toropova et al., 2021). In the context described here, while departmental colleagues were positive, with one instrumental in providing technological assistance, and the relationships that developed with international teaching peers a source of eudemonia, a lack of institutional recognition and support sometimes resulted in feelings of isolation. “I have an enormous amount of freedom to do whatever I like, which is fantastic. The negative side of that is that there is a kind of lack of interest in what I do and I am pretty much on my own doing this.” The Speaker recognized that it was this lack of interest that initially gave her the freedom to set up telecollaborations and thereby teach a curriculum reflecting her Principles (Farrell, 2015). It should be noted here that the Speaker felt that freedom for herself, but also for the learners is central to leaderful practice, and that telecollaborative pedagogy allows for this. “I think one of the key issues is learner autonomy and freedom, which up until now the students haven’t had much of. But I think if they are going to go further they need to have more freedom and create their own learning paths.”

Whereas previously the telecollaborations were seen to be collaborative efforts between individual teachers and appeared to be undervalued as a sound pedagogical method at the institutional level, “When COVID-19 removed opportunities to study abroad, and it was seen that telecollaboration could provide a viable alternative,” the level of institutional recognition changed. Recent efforts by the Japanese educational ministry to promote active, project-based learning (MEXT, 2018) have also led to validation at both the national and institutional levels. The Speaker noted her lifting well-being: “[i]t feels good to have my work recognized.” This institutional recognition also meant that there was more acceptance of this pedagogy from the students, increasing levels of confidence in both herself, and in the methodology.

The implementation of telecollaborative programs in this educational setting had a significant impact on teacher leadership practices. By shifting a standard classroom course to one based on online projects, the teacher was able to facilitate more collaborative learning with leadership shared between members concurrently. It was found that this pedagogical approach relied on trust and encouraged students to take on more active roles in their own learning experiences. The introduction of new technological tools and online communities also contributed to the more personalized and collaborative learning environment. Additionally, the Speaker incorporated the reflective practice she and the Understander undertook together into her classroom practice which in turn amplified the students’ voices and allowed her to proactively share leadership with them. These changes in teacher leadership practices led to increased well-being for both the teacher and students.

The reflective tasks undertaken during the two-year period allowed the Speaker and the Understander to better understand the impact of introducing telecollaboration into the classroom and how it transformed the interactional patterns and teacher leadership identity. In the future, increased normalization of technology in education will require teachers to re-examine their roles and to do this successfully they will need support from their colleagues and institutions. Whilst this study is longitudinal, it is small and therefore generalizations are difficult to make. It is hoped, however, that in the future critical reflection becomes a larger part of teacher education and the process of examining teacher leadership identity so that we can gain a greater understanding of the multiple influences and experiences which create who we are.

Conclusion

This chapter describes how structured dialogic reflective practice was used to examine the impact of telecollaborative programs on one teacher’s leadership identity, and how engaging in telecollaboration has allowed her to develop a more collaborative and participatory learning environment in her classroom. Four themes emerged from the data: Trust, Community, Change, and Well-being as core elements of teacher leadership identity.

Overall, telecollaboration has the potential to greatly impact the leadership practices of teachers by providing them with new ways to connect with colleagues and students. It can enable teachers to stay current with the latest trends in education, build stronger relationships with their students, and deliver lessons and support in new and innovative ways, thereby increasing the levels of participation and democracy in their classrooms.