Building a Community of Practice with Pre-Service Teachers: A Study Using Asynchronous Communication
Dorothy E. Blanks, Patricia Davis-Wiley

Abstract
Asynchronous communication, such as the use of blogs, can be a powerful vehicle to create a community of practice for teachers. This article presents a qualitative study in which a cohort of pre-service world language (WL) teachers at a large university wrote and responded to blogs during the final semester of their year-long internship and were subsequently interviewed a half-year following completion of their program. The questions driving the study were: What topics were the most important for the participants to write about? How did these topics continue to be of primary importance in their initial teaching experience? What impact did a free choice of topic have on the blogging experience? Results of the study report how asynchronous communication was effectively utilized to build a peer-generated community of practice providing insight into how teacher preparation programs might support beginning teachers.

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