Teacher Collaboration Through Digital Tools in the 21st Century—Issues and Challenges: A Comprehensive Literature Review

Teacher collaboration is important for teacher professionalism, student learning and school progress. Understanding the tools, issues, and challenges inherent in teacher collaboration via technology becomes increasingly imperative in addressing the complexities of 21st-century education. However, scarce attention has been paid to using digital tools in teacher collaboration. Therefore, this paper aims to comprehensively review the digital tools employed by teachers to enhance collaboration and the issues and challenges confronted when digital tools were integrated into teacher collaboration. Eleven journal articles from the Web of Science, ERIC and Science Direct in the past five years were comprehensively reviewed. Findings indicate that various digital tools have revolutionized how teachers interact, communicate, and collaborate. However, issues and challenges hinder the smoothness and effectiveness of teacher collaboration via technology. Educational authorities are highly urged to implement various policies to develop digital infrastructure, promote teachers’ digital competence and identify approaches to foster effective, sustained and high-level teacher collaboration through technology. Limitations and recommendations for future research are also discussed.