Online Support for Action Research in a Teacher Education Internship in Rural Australia.

A new final-year teacher education unit at an Australian university uses action research as a learning process for teacher-interns in rural schools. This year-long unit requires support in the first semester as on-campus students explore action research and identify potential areas for their improvement. Online work at this stage builds the quality and quantity of students' reading as they reflect on their reading on online bulletin boards. They also post their reactions to other students' reflections on the readings online. In the second semester, interns are placed in 10-week internships almost exclusively in rural schools and are supported as they undertake action research to improve their practice. Examination of 75 postings of six students taking their internship found that over half of postings concerned the action research directly, about one sixth were associated with critical friendships, and about one third concerned other postings. Thus, in broad terms, more than two thirds of the postings were related to supporting completion of the project. Online communication has been adopted as the university's key support medium for interns at distant workplaces and as an on-campus learning strategy. The reflective nature of the act of writing, the students' desire to post pieces that could not be 'shot down' by peers, and well-scaffolded online support were effective project elements. (Contains 32 references.) (TD)