The Effectiveness of a Listserve for Teacher Preparation

Abstract

As technology becomes both more accessible and more pervasive in teaching, there has been an increase in the use of listserves in coursework at universities [1]. A listserve, or electronic discussion group, is a list of individuals who send and receive e-mail messages either simultaneously or in a delayed manner. These e-mail messages are generally focused on a particular topic of interest to the members of the listserve. As with the use of any new method, technique, or material, it is critical for educators at all levels to understand the effectiveness of the item. In other words, because of the current emphasis of high stakes assessment and testing in the school system, educators want evidence that any method, technique, or material helps them to increase the efficacy of their teaching. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of a listserve for teacher training. This is an initial discussion of preliminary findings; therefore, at the end of this article, information about future research directions will be mentioned. The guiding research questions for this study are: 1) Is the use of a class listserve an effective technique in teacher training? 2) Does it create opportunities for the development of language teacher discourse? 3) Do teachers-in-training engage in instructional conversations [2] on a listserve, and how? 4) What are the problems associated with the use of a listserve for reflective dialoguing?