129around teaching practice, they aim to support the development of different types of
knowledge.
A question that we came up against in designing TeachConnect is whether the
ability for a dialogic community to support a high quality of praxis is dependent
upon the affordances of its channels for communication. An argument made by
Clarà, Kelly, Mauri and Danaher ( 2015 ) is that sharing of teaching practice (i.e.
modelling practice, supporting reflection and providing feedback) is best supported
by private, stable and trusted relationships within small groups. From Fig. 8.1, we
have an expectation that interrogation of teachers’ values and the relationship of
those values to practice is unlikely to occur within the community knowledge (large,
unstable membership) but may well occur within messaging and mentorship
circles.
Within the smaller and more stable mentorship circles and messaging spaces,
design decisions were made to promote a high quality of praxis in mentoring.
Firstly, the allocation of members into mentorship circles was designed to have
approximately 30 members; usually 28 preservice teachers were placed with two
experienced teachers. Pragmatic concerns led to these numbers ranging from as few
as 9 members in one circle to as many as 59 in another. The expectation was that
mentorship circles were the place in which a high quality of praxis could best be
developed. Conversations that required more privacy could move from these circles
into the space of one-to-one messaging, whilst realisations that would benefit the
wider community could be replicated within the community knowledge in what
Clarà et al. ( 2015 ) refer to as fractal design.
Secondly, experienced teachers who were placed within the mentorship circles
received 2 days of training in facilitating mentorship. These experienced teachers
were selected through direct invitation and a call for expressions of interest, with
Fig. 8.1 Types of support within areas of the TeachConnect platform
8 Raising the Quality of Praxis in Online Mentoring