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Are Electronic Conferences a Solution in Search of an Urban Problem?

University of Nevada-Las Vegas, Cari.Klecka{at}ccmail.nevada.edu

Renee T. Clift

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Yu-Ming Cheng

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

This article briefly reviews initiatives that have attempted to create communities of educators using Web-based, electronic conferencing. The authors critically analyze the advocacy for electronic communication as a medium for bringing educators together across time and distance with an emphasis on what is known about urban schools, access to Internet connections, and teachers’workloads. Although not a research report, the analysis is grounded in 4 years of ongoing research and development of the Novice Teacher Support E-mentoring Project and in the evaluation of the expansion of this concept to institutions in the Greater Chicago area. The authors raise questions about the role of technology and the intensification of expectations of urban educators.

Key Words: electronic conferences • electronic mentoring • online mentoring • new teacher induction • distributed communities of practice

Urban Education, Vol. 40, No. 4, 412-429 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0042085905276434


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