Negotiating Differences: Instructors' Reflections on Challenges in International Telecollaboration

Abstract

This collaborative inquiry is based on university instructors' reflections on their experiences in negotiating and facilitating an international telecollaboration that connected their English as a second language and English as a foreign language students in Canada, Mexico, and Russia. The central themes that emerged from the instructors' reflections were the tensions related to their different views of the project, research versus pedagogical agendas, securing the participation of ‘have-nots,’ and instructor participation versus non-participation in online interaction. The underlying reasons for these tensions were found in the mismatch of instructors' educational philosophies and in the affordances and constraints of the local contexts that informed their individual decisions. The study concludes with pedagogical implications for improvement of facilitation and teaching practice in online environments.