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Introduction and background: Towards social constructivism and community in online teaching and learning

I believe that all education proceeds by the participation of the individual in the social consciousness of the race... I believe that the only true education comes through the stimulation of the child's powers by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself. (Dewey 1897, p. 77)...only through communication can human life hold meaning. The teacher's thinking is authenticated only by the authenticity of the students' thinking. The teacher cannot think for her students, nor can she impose her thought on them. Authentic thinking, thinking that is concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication. (Freire 1970)

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Both Dewey and Freire recognised and frequently highlighted in their work the critical importance of the social experience in education and the crippling effects of transmissive pedagogies and the systems that support them. Dewy (1938) argued that education that offers a pre-organised body of knowledge for transmission bred docility, receptivity, and obedience while Freire (1970) called for an end to the "banking" model of education which he saw as a process resulting in people being "filed away through the lack of creativity, transformation, and knowledge". While their perspectives and contexts varied significantly, Dewey looking for enlightenment in Victorian England and Freire striving for freedom from the "ideology of oppression" in 1970s Brazil, these objections and their proposed solutions of social participation, through communication, have influenced generations of theorists and practitioners.

Primary among these theorist have been those who ascribe to a social constructivist perspective, defined by Prawat and Floden as "distinctive in their insistence that knowledge creation is a shared rather than an individual experience," where "knowledge evolves through a process of negotiation within discourse communities" (1994 p 48). Particular to these, Stacey (1999) observed a number of researchers and writers concerned with teaching and learning online who have "described the potential of the medium as an interactive environment that would enable collaborative group learning and would change the nature of distance education from an autonomous, isolated experience to a potentially social constructivist environment". In addition to this, Brook and Oliver (2003) identified several authors who have pointed to the importance of the social phenomenon of community on online learning.

Developing on social constructivist perspectives, in specific reference to the online environment, Garrison and Anderson in their 2003 publication E-Learning in the 21st Century: A Framework for Research and Practice put forward that "a community of learners is an essential, core element of an educational experience when higher order learning is the desired learning outcome" (p 22) and that "the idealised view of higher education, as a critical community of learners, is no longer just an ideal, but has become a practical necessity in the realisation of relevant, meaningful and continuous learning" (p 23). To achieve this, however, a prerequisite is effective communication as it is this which is "at the heart of all forms of educational interaction" (p. 23) and it is the degree to which effective online communication can be facilitated in order to develop a successful community of enquiry that this paper examines.

This is not to say, however, that effective communication is the sole contributor to successful teaching and learning. The social, economic and cultural context, expectations and the attitude of teachers and learners to the process play enormous roles in defining the success or otherwise of any learning experience whether it is online or face to face. Nevertheless, while a learning experience may succeed in spite of the challenges presented by one of these factors, it is almost inconceivable that it would do so without successful communication