Keywords

1 Introduction

With the advance and popularity of information and communication technology, social media has become a prominent digital technology used for the purpose of global digital communication (Luo et al., 2020). There is an international trend of researching the emergence of social media within the past few decades to investigate the possibilities and opportunities that social media offers for learning and professional development (PD). In the ‘new normal’ period, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, social media is widely used as a vital part of professional learning and communication. Nevertheless, missing in the literature is how social media has become a new way to research early childhood teachers’ sustainable PD. social media–supported professional learning is still in its infancy (Luo et al., 2020). Traditional forms of PD include teacher participation through face-to-face conferences, training sessions, workshops and focus group discussions. Thus, PD may become time consuming and costly owing to the formal learning process (Francera, 2020). Further, the researchers wonder how the learning process can become personally meaningful for teachers and ensure that teachers find value in their learning (Rehm & Notten, 2016; Durksen et al., 2017). Thus, social media-based PD has been promoted to reduce the cost and time associated with traditional forms of PD and create a flexible learning space and personalised PD content, thereby meeting the needs of teachers (McNamara et al., 2021; Francera, 2020; Prestridge, 2019; Prestridge & Main, 2018; Carpenter & Krutka, 2014). WeChat, a public social media platform, has been used in China since 2011 (Statista, 2016). It offers text messages, hold-to-talk voice messaging, video conferencing, and sharing of photography, videos and location. WeChat has also been used as a mobile payment application (app) and social media platform; it can be identified as an app for everything and a ‘super app’ owing to its variety of functions. Recent studies have explored the functions and role of WeChat in the educational research, including building an online community of practice to support teachers’ professional learning (Xue et al., 2021); exploring language teachers’ PD through the WeChat group (Qi & Wang, 2018); investigating early childhood teachers’ engagement in WeChat-based communities; and contributing to better practice for PD engagement (Zhou et al., 2022). Research has shown that social media–based PD has promoted participants’ sense of belonging because they share concerns and exchange knowledge on a set of problems in the context of ongoing communication through unsynchronised engagement in the online communication (Zhou et al., 2022; Xue et al., 2021). However, there is limited research on how WeChat-based PD can be promoted to support physical meetings for teachers’ learning and development (Xue et al., 2021).

Owing to the impact of the COVID 19 and the researchers’ overseas location, this study used WeChat as a research tool to communicate with teachers and provide online professional engagement throughout the educational experiment. This chapter explores how WeChat, as a premier social media platform in China, aligns with face-to-face communication, creates motivating conditions to promote early childhood teachers’ development and professional agency.

2 The Hybrid Educational Experiment

To investigate how early childhood teachers engage with curriculum reforms in China, we designed a study that brought researchers and teachers together to focus on the central problem of how to bring play practices into teaching programs. We drew upon Hedegaard’s (2008) educational experiment as the key methodology. An educational experiment is a collaboration between researchers and teachers to solve a theoretical problem, not a problem of practices. In this educational experiment, we focus on the theoretical problem of how play could be the core dimension of the curriculum to meet the demands of curriculum reforms and the Chinese Government (Li et al., 2022).

An educational experiment as a methodology was conceptualised from within cultural-historical theory (Vygotsky, 1997). The central cultural-historical concepts important for our educational experiment are derived from Hedegaard’s (2008) wholeness approach. In a wholeness approach, societal values (curriculum reform), institutional practices (need for play in teaching programs) and personal motives of teachers (how to bring play into a learning program) are studied relationally. Teachers enter the activity settings of the new practices. Through the educational experiment, with its focus on the theoretical problem of how to bring play into learning, teachers and researchers as collaborators study the new demands and change in teacher motives. For the purpose of the study, Fleer’s (2018) Conceptual PlayWorld (CPW) has been applied to bring the possible intervention for the practice changes.

Because the researchers are overseas and in light of the pandemic (in the later stage of data collection), travelling was a challenge during the data-collection period. A hybrid (online and onsite) educational experiment was applied in this study to address the research aims. The digital mode of educational experiment, using WeChat, led collaborative actions while supporting teachers’ ongoing PD. In this chapter, we focus on the exploration of the WeChat-based hybrid educational experiment and explore how it creates the conditions to promote teachers’ professional agency and expertise in the implementation of the CPW.

3 Overview of Research Context Over the Hybrid Educational Experiment

The hybrid educational experiment took place within three public kindergartens, in Chengdu, Guangzhou and Beijing, respectively. For this chapter, three focus teachers (Teacher Jing, Teacher Li and Teacher Chen) were selected to illustrate their PD experience. All three teachers had a Bachelor of Early Childhood Education. Teacher Jing had seven years’ teaching experience and Teacher Li had eight years of experience. Teacher Chen had 10 years’ teaching experience. In this project, we followed three teachers for over 1.5 years. Ethics approval was received from the researchers’ university (Project ID: 7851), and full informed consent was obtained from teachers, and the principles of the kindergartens for the use of data collected in the field of education and research. Pseudonyms were applied to protect the privacy of the participants.

3.1 Face-to-Face/Onsite Professional Training Workshop

A two-hour face-to-face professional training workshop was developed with the focus group teacher to discuss the concept of play and learning and the new practice (CPW approach). The workshop was digitally video recorded.

3.2 Video-Based Observation

Along with the workshop, researchers captured three hours of videos of current teaching practices and teacher–child interaction before the implementation of the invention to establish Period 1 baseline data. A selected video clip was used as a prompt to support the reflective pre-interview with the teachers to learn their views of play and learning. In Period 2, the implementation of the CPW was video-recorded by researchers (if the researchers were onsite) or teachers. A total of 136 hours of digital video observation was collected.

3.3 WeChat-Based Researcher–Teacher Conversation

Over the period of the educational experiment, to better support teachers’ continuing PD, the WeChat group was established to enable ongoing conversations between researchers and teachers. Teachers digitally recorded their interventional CPW activity settings and uploaded them to the WeChat group, which informed the online discussion. The researcher–teacher conversation was generated as part of educational experiment in this study. In this chapter, the focus is the WeChat-based hybrid educational experiment to promote teachers’ development.

The characteristics of the WeChat-based hybrid educational experiment create possibilities and motivating conditions in promoting early childhood teachers’ professional agency in their intervention.

The hybrid educational experiment promoting teachers’ relational expertise.

The research began with the initial early stage of establishing the online communicative platform—WeChat group—and building a close relationship through conversations related to participants’ relational expertise in the new practice. In promoting teachers’ development and capturing the developmental process, the researchers used the WeChat Group as a channel to communicate with the teachers related to their challenges and negotiated conflicts or concerns while implementing the intervention. Figure 6.1 shows their willingness to share concerns with the researchers via the WeChat group whenever needed, thereby creating common knowledge of the new practices to meet policy demands in play-based learning.

Fig. 6.1
A screenshot of a We Chat conversation between researcher and teacher Zhao in Chinese. A translation is given alongside. It has 3 exchanges between them discussing the implementation of play-based learning in schools where the researcher addresses the teacher's concerns and provides guidance.

The relational expertise formed through WeChat discussion

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As argued by Edwards (2011), ‘relational engagement with the knowledge and motives of others can produce a form of common knowledge which comprises a partially shared understanding of what matters for other contributing experts’ (p. 39), thereby creating responsive professional actions. In this case, common knowledge of new interventional practice was created through the WeChat group discussion because it offers space to share concerns and exercise relational agency. WeChat group discussion provides educational affordances through the exercise of relational agency. First, Teacher Jing recognised her professional expertise in practice and realised the demands posed by the CPW approach in changing her role from teacher to play partner. Second, Teacher Jing shared her concern about an aspect of the implementation of the CPW related to the role of the teacher; she understood her classroom children very well. Through the timely response of the researcher, Teacher Jing built her relational agency, which included her own core expertise and additional expertise. In-depth communication was afforded through the WeChat group because it enabled the teachers to discuss the challenges with the researcher on the basis of confident engagement and enhanced their theoretical understanding of the child development. Authentic educational collaboration was shaped to transform professional learning because both the teacher and the researcher recognised and responded to the offerings of others in the system of the new practice. Furthermore, the WeChat communication built a trusting relationship between the researcher and teachers, which enhanced the face-to-face professional discussion. As commented by Teacher Zhao in her reflective interview:

The whole educational experiment is a slow learning process towards the new practice. I found myself only very interested in the Conceptual PlayWorld approach at the beginning, but with a lot of concerns and questions to implement it. Via the collaboration through WeChat and face-to-face sessions, I found I was able to master some foundational teaching methods. Then at the final stage of the experiment, I became more creative and was able to dramatise the conceptual problem. So, I believe for me, it was a great, slow but meaningful professional learning towards the new practice. (Interview, Teacher Zhao, 28 May 2020)

Teacher Zhao’s reflection of this practice highlights her slow and meaningful learning practice. One of the features of building and forming the basis of common knowledge is to create and develop better tools for collaboration (Edwards, 2011). In this case, the hybrid educational experiment (WeChat-based and onsite meetings) drove the process of collaboration between the teachers and researchers. It aligns with the argument of Edwards’s (2011) ideas of common knowledge, and the exercise of relational agency supports the understanding of motives in inter-professional working practices. The collaboration through the hybrid educational experiment not only promoted the professional agency but also motivated further exploration of the new professional practices (although it was a slow process).

3.3.1 Hybrid Educational Experiment Creating the Social Situation of Development

The WeChat discussion was part of the teachers’ social situation in relation to PD. WeChat created motivating conditions to promote collaborative acts and sustain relational expertise, thereby building common knowledge in the implementation of CPW in their kindergarten practices. Within this process, a collective social situation for the teachers was formed through the supportive relationships in the WeChat group. Through the formal PD training, Teacher Li was slightly concerned about developing a CPW in her classroom because she encountered challenges in choosing mathematical concepts to dramatise the problem to be investigated in the CPW. The follow-up WeChat discussion increased her confidence to overcome the challenges, as shown in Fig. 6.2.

Fig. 6.2
A screenshot of a few exchanges in Chinese between a researcher and teacher Li on a messaging app. The translation is given alongside, and it discusses P C K's merits. The researcher guides the teacher to be open to new methodologies and surprises while using it.

Collective social situation

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Vygotsky (1997) explains how and why there is a qualitative change in the psychological structure, stating ‘The social situation of development represents the initial moment for all dynamic changes that occur in development during the given period’ (p. 198). In the social situation of development, the contradiction between the individual’s needs, desires and capabilities, and the demands and possibilities of the environment as a moving force drives the development (Chaiklin, 2003). This can also be recognised through the engagement of teachers and researchers in this study. Such online communication was of great importance when the researcher and teacher were not able to physically meet onsite. The educational demand can still be made through the WeChat discussion in a timely manner. For instance, in Fig. 6.2, Teacher Li was motivated to discover more relevant teaching content in mathematics (e.g. PCK documents) to inform her implementation of the new practice. Reassurance from the researcher motivated her to continually conduct the educational experiment. As indicated in the findings, the teachers applied what they have explored through collaborations with researchers in WeChat, to their own teaching practice, thereby helping them enhance their teaching outcomes. The theoretical problem of how to bring play into learning has been explored over the educational experiment. The hybrid communication assisted the better quality of professional development as it strengthened teachers’ theoretical learning and practical knowledge that developed in their own experience (Chen, 2008), to a large extent, transformed their teaching practices. Furthermore, through the online conversation, the participating teachers reflected their Conceptual PlayWorld teaching practice and shared their concern of whether they should directly tell the answer of the conceptual problems to the children when they observed the children’s challenges in solving the problem (see Li et al., 2022). They worried that they couldnot meet their teaching goal in their lesson as children could not solve the problem themselves by using the concepts. Meanwhile, to some degree, they did not believe that the children had the enough capacity to solve the problem through the exploration within Conceptual PlayWorld. It can be noticed that they experienced a conflict between the demands to the new approach in child-centred practice and their traditional pedagogy in direct instructional teaching. Through the hybrid educational experiment, under the support of researchers, the teachers addressed the challenges and coped with the conflict. They realised there is a great need to shift their pedagogical practice, understood the change to impact children’s learning, and built up their new teaching knowledge through the implementation of Conceptual PlayWorld. As argued by Defermos (2022), the conflict the teachers experienced, might not be something negative or positive itself, but “a critical moment of a dynamic, contradictory, development process” (p. 6).

We argue that the hybrid educational experiment ensures opportunities and possibilities that contribute to the growth of teachers. Teachers and researchers shared a common goal in the implementation of the new practice. By using the WeChat group as an informal method and formal face-to-face PD training to mediate each other to engage in conversation, they achieved their goal. In addition, WeChat as a social media platform overcame the geographic, temporal and economic barriers, which supports the hybrid educational experiment to ensure continual collectiveness between researchers and teachers. In alignment with the argument by Stetsenko (2012), through the active engagement in the collaborative transformative practices with researchers by hybrid educational experiment, teachers learn and develop to transform their practices within their own social situation, thus supporting their professional growth.

3.3.2 Hybrid Educational Experiment Supporting Researchers to Revisit and Discuss Critical Reflective Moments with Teachers to Develop the Transformative Practices

Previous research of teachers’ PD in early childhood education has focused on professional in-service training, follow-up consultations or critical reflections (Fonsén & Ukkonen-Mikkola, 2019; Jensen & Iannone, 2018). Conversely, this study found that PD training requires ongoing collaboration and collective reflections between teachers and researchers through shared understanding of the intervention to stimulate teachers’ professional inquiries. The power of collaboration through different platforms (e.g., WeChat or onsite) provided the collective social situation for teachers to address conflicts or concerns in the innovative practices, as shown in Figs. 6.2 and 6.3, thereby enabling a deeper understanding of the intervention, avenues of interpretation and the ability to create qualitative changes in teaching. Furthermore, the hybrid educational experiment enabled researchers to understand the process of teachers’ PD and traverse the complex, shifting and uncertain areas of pedagogical roles and practices.

Fig. 6.3
A screenshot of a few exchanges in Chinese between researcher and teacher Chen on We Chat. The translation is given alongside. The teacher expresses concerns about the intervention, while the researcher reassures them with instances from children's activity.

Critical reflective moments between teachers and researcher

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To better understand the challenges Teacher Chen faced, the researcher and teacher revisited and reflected upon her previous practice. The reflective conversation through WeChat supported Teacher Chen to understand the meaningfulness of the new practice by emphasising the process of problem-solving instead of focusing exclusively on the correct answers to the problem. Critical reflection was formed. Figure 6.3 shows the mutual practice that demonstrates the appreciation and reflections on the collective acts and strengthens the purposeful response. As commented by Principal Qian from Teacher Chen’s kindergarten at the post interview:

I feel that after the first training [onsite], teacher might just have an initial impression of the PlayWorld. Therefore, the following communication and collaboration helps Teacher Chen a lot … I feel this kind of training process is very rare. Therefore, we do appreciate the guidance and help you provided to Teacher Chen. (20 June 2020, post interview)

Principal Qian valued the process of the educational experiment and observed the growth of Teacher Chen in this project. The hybrid educational experiment created a process that supported the researchers to identify the teachers’ PD, making visible their purposeful and meaningful educational intervention to solve the theoretical problem. Vygotsky and Luria (1994) suggest that ‘we were studying on and the same activity each time in its new concrete expressions, but that, over a series of experiments, the object of research changed’ (p. 144). In studying teachers’ PD process, the conditions and their growing capabilities are always in the process of the development. Thus, the WeChat and video-recorded onsite professional training and conversations within the digitally recorded educational experiment enabled the researchers to capture the changes and teachers’ developmental process of transformative practices.

This study reveals that engaging with social media (e.g., WeChat) provides a foundation for researchers to observe teachers’ professional agency in a new way and process teachers’ sustainable PD in play-based learning programs.

4 Conclusion

The hybrid educational experiment reported in this chapter explained how teachers promoted their PD while collaborating with researchers through a WeChat conversation and onsite training, to meet government and societal demands in the play-based teaching program, cope with the conflicts and develop transformative practices. This chapter contributes to the digital methodology and literature by investigating the characteristics of hybrid educational experiment towards teachers’ professional development. It highlights that the hybrid educational experiment creates motivating conditions in supporting the collaborative work between the teachers and researchers. It expands our understanding of teachers’ transformative learning process through ongoing sustainable educational experiments and extending the literature on PD limited in Chinese kindergarten teachers’ self-reflection (Yang & Rao, 2020), or mainly referring to practical knowledge and less to theoretical learning (Chen, 2008; Zhang, 2012). Furthermore, the hybrid educational experiment creates the possibilities for the ongoing collaboration between teachers and researchers for the sustainable change in PD. The timely communication through hybrid mode ensures the PD training is appreciated by teachers. This chapter presented the snapshots illustrating the power of the hybrid educational experiment as a research methodology to enhance teachers’ confidence and competence in developing play-based learning programs and ensure the quality and validity of the research as it enhances researchers’ meta-awareness of teachers’ meaningful PD.