Designing ESL/EFL Teachers’ Online Professional Development Programs in Indiana and Beijing, China: “Crossing the River by Feeling the Rocks in the Riverbed”

Abstract

The manuscript describes the designs of two teachers’ online professional development (PD) projects to support teachers of English-as-Second/Foreign Language in Indiana and in Beijing, China. We provide descriptions of each of the contexts; judgments and decisions we made along the way; the contextual/cultural and pedagogical factors we took into consideration; and finally, the design countenance of the projects that emerged from our efforts. In designing the projects, we took a sociocultural “post-method orientation” in that contextual/cultural factors determined the projects’ pathways of practice. Thus, they were context-sensitive and based on local understandings; they involved the collaboration of an interdisciplinary group of individuals knowledgeable in the discipline and the medium of instruction. Nevertheless, as designers, we kept a steady focus on our own perspectives of teaching and learning inclusiveness through Culturally Responsive Teaching, differentiated and scaffolded instruction, and the need to enact online presences in online PD courses. The manuscript describes how we approached the enactment of these perspectives differently in each PD’s design.