Developing Critically Thoughtful e-Learning Communities of Practice

In this paper, we consider an approach to developing critically thoughtful e-Learning communities of practicewhere participants are deliberate about the use of specific intellectual tools supporting critical thinking. We address Garrison & Anderson's (2003) argument that such critical thinking should play a central role within the ecology of eLearning communities and provide our view of what such communities might look like. To do this, we offer four categories of strategies helping to develop such communities-collaborative agreement on goals; facilitator(s) modelling and teaching the tools supporting critical thinking; and shaping communicative interactions within the e-Learning environment to encourage thinking. We provide examples from a current study involving 36 kindergarten to grade 12 teachers' blended use of information and communication technologies (ICT) and face-to-face sessions to illustrate our view.