Teacher-centered professionalism: a feminist perspective on supported access to digital knowledge

Abstract

This qualitative study creates a case for teacher learning through increased access to digital knowledge and information made available through the Internet. I ask how reading environments, supported through online access to scholarly texts, might create intellectual engagement and transformative possibilities for teachers within their professional learning communities. This study is based on the experiences of six female teachers’ participation in a research project in a large urban center in Western Canada. Through individual and group interview data, I present three examples of how the teachers engaged in a discourse of social justice. This paper demonstrates the value of providing teachers with digital access to public knowledge through the Internet as a new and distinctive approach to teacher learning that can deepen understanding of the profession within a collective association of learning.