Gains of e-collaboration in professional engagement initiatives

Abstract

This paper presents a single case study of SR Teaching and Learning community, initially established as an English teacher professional development company in Baku, Azerbaijan. Since July, 2020, the company has determined to enhance its geography by cooperating with academicians and practitioners from different countries by engaging official representatives from Kazakhstan, Georgia, Russia, Poland, Panama, Iran and Uzbekistan through e-collaboration processes, which aims to meet the needs of in-service and pre-service English teachers in their home countries. By investigating ongoing e-collaboration created by the community we attempted to provide a better understanding of the benefits of teachers' online collaboration and its role in teacher professional engagement initiatives. The community members' responses about the nature and extent of e-collaboration they experience served as empirical data for our study. A significant role of moderators in teaching partnership has been noted. The minority of teachers were negative about teamwork claiming that online sessions had led to increase in their personal workload.