Online Community of Practice Co-constructed by EFL Teachers: A Case of Hong Kong Pre-Service Teachers
View Slides ↗Summary
This exploratory study examined the digital literacy of 27 Hong Kong EFL pre-service teachers at a university, assessing their awareness and use of digital technologies, their self-perceived competence, and the factors affecting their adoption of technology for language learning. Despite high self-reported digital confidence and positive attitudes, the study revealed significant concerns about teacher knowledge and skill gaps — and a perceived need for learner training — as preconditions for building effective online learning communities.
Background & Rationale
The growing importance of digital literacy in language education has been well-documented. Learners and educators face increasing demands to develop digital literacy skills and technology-enhanced language learning (TELL) strategies. Effective online community-building among pre-service teachers — the kind of collaborative professional development that communities of practice (CoP) aim to foster — requires participants who are both digitally aware and ready to engage with technology purposefully.
Yet readiness cannot be assumed. Before designing an online community of practice for pre-service EFL teachers, the researchers needed to understand where participants actually stood — what they knew, what they used, how confident they felt, and what was holding them back.
Research Questions
- To what extent are the participants aware of digital technologies for language learning?
- What kinds of digital tools do they use and how often do they use them?
- What are their attitudes toward the use of digital technologies?
Participants
27 Hong Kong EFL pre-service teachers — all fourth and fifth year undergraduates majoring in English Education at a Hong Kong university. The group was predominantly female (74%) and Cantonese-speaking (96%), with an average age of 21.7 and approximately 15 years of computer experience.
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Gender | Male: 7 (26%) · Female: 20 (74%) |
| Average age | 21.7 years (range: 20–23) |
| Native language | Cantonese: 26 (96%) · Chinese: 1 (4%) |
| Computer experience | Average 15.1 years (range: 12–19) |
| Primary computer teacher | Family: 43% · Teacher/trainer: 36% · Self-taught: 21% |
Findings: Digital Tool Use & Awareness
How They Discovered New Technologies
Friends (24%) and social networks (22%) were the top sources for learning about new digital technologies — far ahead of teachers (3%). This suggests that pre-service teachers' digital awareness was shaped more by peer networks and social media than by formal teacher education programs.
Most and Least Used Tools
Participants were highly active with everyday digital tools. All 27 (100%) used social networking services and computers for learning purposes. Text chatting and word processing were near-universal and frequent. However, tools directly relevant to language learning and pedagogy — concordancers, language learning software, blogs, wikis, video conferencing, and learning management systems like Moodle — were used rarely or not at all by large proportions of participants.
Self-assessed skill levels reflected a similar gap: participants rated themselves "Very Good" or "Good" on social networking (100%), web search engines (92%), and video sharing sites like YouTube (96%), but large shares had never used or didn't know how to use wikis (48%), virtual worlds like Second Life (44%), podcasts (26%), learning management systems (26%), and photo sharing sites (26%).
Digital Literacy Test Results
On a 10-question digital literacy test, participants scored a mean of 7 out of 10. Easiest questions were basic hardware knowledge (96–100% correct). The most difficult were evaluating website information quality (37% correct) and identifying phishing (40% correct) — pointing to gaps in critical digital literacy skills that go beyond technical operation.
Findings: Attitudes & Barriers
Attitudes Toward Digital Technology
On a 5-point scale (1 = Strongly Disagree, 5 = Strongly Agree), participants showed positive attitudes across the board: they enjoyed using digital devices (mean: 4.22), felt comfortable with them (4.09), believed their learning could be enhanced through digital tools (4.04), and felt training in technology-enhanced language learning should be included in teacher education programs (4.00). Only 7% felt threatened when others talked about digital technologies, and fewer than 10% felt behind their peers.
Factors Limiting Technology Use
Despite their confidence and positive attitudes, participants identified a striking set of barriers to using digital technology for language learning:
| Factor | % Who Selected It |
|---|---|
| Lack of budget | 85% |
| Lack of knowledge of teachers | 70% |
| Lack of facilities | 63% |
| Lack of supporting resources | 63% |
| Lack of training | 63% |
| Lack of skills of teachers | 63% |
| Lack of time | 63% |
| Lack of interest of students | 41% |
| Lack of interest of teachers | 33% |
| Lack of knowledge of students | 26% |
The most noteworthy pattern: participants were far more concerned about teacher knowledge and skills (70% and 63%) than about student knowledge and skills (26% and 22%). This diverges from the existing literature, which typically emphasizes learner training as the primary need (Hubbard, 2013; Romeo & Hubbard, 2008; Son & Kim, 2015). Pre-service teachers in this study saw themselves — and their in-service teacher colleagues — as the more significant bottleneck.
Discussion & Implications
The picture that emerges is a cohort of digitally confident, enthusiastic pre-service teachers who are nonetheless concentrated in a narrow band of consumer-facing digital tools. They are fluent in social media, web search, and document creation, but largely unfamiliar with tools specifically designed for pedagogy — LMS platforms, concordancers, wikis, or video conferencing in educational contexts.
This has direct implications for designing online communities of practice for pre-service EFL teachers. High general digital confidence may mask specific pedagogical gaps. An effective online CoP would need to scaffold participants' use of educationally relevant tools, not assume transfer from social media fluency. Budget constraints and institutional resource gaps are real structural barriers that technology enthusiasm alone cannot overcome.
The finding that teachers' knowledge is seen as a greater barrier than students' is a call for teacher education programs to make TELL training central — not an elective or add-on — to pre-service preparation. Participants themselves recognized this: 100% agreed or strongly agreed that such training should be part of their programs.
Conclusion
This study provides a baseline portrait of digital literacy among Hong Kong EFL pre-service teachers at the time of the TESOL presentation — a group that was digitally active, attitudinally positive, and institutionally constrained. The gap between general digital comfort and pedagogical digital readiness underscores the need for targeted TELL preparation in teacher education programs. For online communities of practice to function as genuine sites of professional learning — rather than just digital social spaces — that preparation must come first.