Impact of Virtual Exchange on teachers’ and student teachers’ professional development

While the COVID- 19 pandemic presented challenges to the teaching profession, it also catalysed a broader awareness of online opportunities for teachers to engage in professional development to support emergency remote teaching and learning. A recent systematic review of online professional development programs (OPD; Bragg et al., 2021) reveals that online opportunities for teacher development are on the rise and that they positively impact teacher self- efficacy and instructional practices in general. Moreover, they conclude that the common ingredient in successful OPD was teachers engaging in peer- to- peer discussion. In a similar manner, a recent meta- analysis by Kennedy (2016) suggests that successful professional development is characterised by focussing on content knowledge aligned to a broader goal and through collective participation where experts and non- experts work to achieve the goal, for example, to evaluate teaching strategies or develop lesson plans together. Peer- to- peer discussion and collaboration around a task are hallmarks of Virtual Exchange (VE) and, in this way, provide a rich environment to support teacher development. For example, O’Dowd and Dooly (2022) found that VE helped foreign language teacher educators evolve their teaching practices through innovative approaches.