This qualitative study used a narrative inquiry approach to conduct in-depth interviews of eight distributed learning educators who designed and offered online English courses in British Columbia during the 2011/12 school year. There were three research questions: (1) How do teachers describe their professional experiences of teaching in a full time online environment? (2) What are the enablers and inhibitors for online teacher development? (3) Do teachers feel their teaching practice has changed over their career as online educators? Findings were examined through the lens of Korthagen’s (2004) Onion Model. Six themes that comprised this model, provided a framework for data analysis and insight into the process by which teachers made sense of their lived experience. The findings revealed that online educators valued their online experience because it removed the constraints of a regular classroom. They expressed frustration with some aspects of the current model of online education in BC because it prevented them from engaging in synchronous, highly connective learning projects with their students. Recognition of the fact that online educators work in a different milieu with a different set of environmental pressures is necessary to ensure the success of distributed learning in BC.

This diploma thesis focuses on the role of social network Facebook in the process of English teaching and learning at the second level at Czech primary schools. The theoretical part concentrates on the methodology typically used in TEFL during 20th and 21st century, online teaching and learning as well as communication, describes the history and development of Facebook and deals with the question of online safety. The practical part firstly informs the reader about the development of the research procedure, states the aims and describes the research background. Secondly it deals with the data collection, assessment and evaluation and presents the results acquired from the research. The research was designed to reveal the possible benefits of the use of Facebook in the TEFL process; it consisted of a questionnaire and two types of observation performed by the author of this thesis.

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