Co-Construction of ELT Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Discussion Forums

English teachers need continuous professional development programs but the problem is that, at least in Iranian EFL context, either teacher trainers have almost no time for such programs or running such programs is not cost effective; therefore, a more practical way out of this problem is for the teachers themselves to discuss pedagogical issues in online peer-to-peer settings. The main purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which virtual peer-to-peer settings successfully help EFL teachers build Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) collaboratively without a teacher-trainer’s intervention. To meet this objective, the postings to three English teacher discussion forums were collected and were coded qualitatively and quantitatively using Beatty (2010) scheme for coding discourse strategies for collaboration. The analysis of the postings revealed that teachers employed collaborative strategies such as explaining the task and offering suggestions effectively and frequently. Thus, the findings clearly indicate that PCK appears to be constructed collaboratively in discussion forums. However, most of the postings offering suggestions or support were in fact the participants’ personal opinions with few of them directing the groups’ attention to a teaching principle or an SLA theory. On the basis of this finding, knowledge building is collaborative in peer-to-peer discussion forums, but it seems that it is some immature, intuitive knowledge that is built rather than PCK. This study has taken a step in exploring the impact of peer collaboration in ELT PCK construction.