Teacher talk in an early educator blog: building culture circles for exploring ethics

ABSTRACT This paper examines teacher discourse and the building of culture circles in an asynchronous collaborative blog that combined two different classes in an Early Childhood MS Ed program. Social speech is often considered non-rational. Coupling grounded theory to analyze speech patterns with relational ethics, we argue that teachers engaged in relational discourse that was reflective and social simultaneously. The collaborative blog served as a vehicle for the teachers as they engaged in ethical meaning making.