Developing critically thoughtful e-Learning communities of practice

In this paper, we consider an approach to developing critically thoughtful e-Learning communities of practice-where 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 e-Learning 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) modeling critical thinking teaching the tools supporting a critically 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.