Blurb:

While systemic functional approaches to literacy development have grown in popularity, there is still a lack of consensus on how to effectively build teachers’ knowledge and how that knowledge then translates into practice. Access to materials is also a concern, sparking renewed interest in online and digital materials for teacher education. Thus, our study’s purpose was twofold: First, it aimed to show how online materials development using the Knowledge Framework (KF) and the teaching–learning cycle (TLC) show promise for helping build teachers’ understanding of form-function relationships. Second, it attempted to gauge to what extent these online professional development opportunities carried over into teachers’ curricular planning. Informed by a socially motivated framework for the professional learning of teachers, we designed a situated, online training curriculum and evaluated the impact of the content on ten participants in a graduate-level literacy development course. Results showed that participants made a shift to a functional perspective after a two-week training involving pre-module activation, post-module reflection, and learning-to-teach activities. This functional shift was evident in their final assignment, an instructional case study/literacy plan, which served to connect learning-to-teach activities to the social practice of classroom teaching. Our research provides implications for supporting teachers’ use and transfer of SFL theory into practice.