Development Of Learning Communities Research Articles

Identifying factors contributing to the development and sustainability of professional learning communities in Malaysian secondary schools

The aim of this research was to develop a Professional Learning Communities Model in Malaysian secondary schools. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was conducted to identify the underlying factors whereas Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was used to examine the measurement models. A total of 532 and 1062 respondents completed the survey with usable data for EFA and CFA, respectively. With normed χ² = 3.223, TLI = .950, CFI = .953 and RMSEA = .046, the results suggested that the model can be explained by two factors: Organisational Factor and Non-Organisation Factor. The Organisational Factor consists of four indicators: Shared Norms and Vision, Principal Commitment and Support, Structural Support, and Collegial Understanding and Trust whereas Non-Organisational Factor encompasses four indicators: Collaborative Learning, Reflective Dialogue, Collective Inquiry and External Support System.

Identifying factors contributing to the development and sustainability of professional learning communities in Malaysian secondary schools

Identifying factors contributing to the development and sustainability of professional learning communities in Malaysian secondary schools

Teacher Learning Community and EFL Teacher Professional Development

This study explores the impact of teacher learning community on EFL teachers’ professional development. The participants are 17 EFL teachers from Hebei University in China. A year-long study was conducted on these teachers' group leaning activities through participatory observation and in-depth interviews. The preliminary results are as follows: 1) Generally speaking, through conversation, interaction and online peer evaluation in learning community, participant teachers have improved professionally in terms of critical thinking, academic writing, reflective thinking and research awareness; 2) In learning activities of the community, the experienced teachers focused more on the construction of knowledge regarding research methodology, through interaction with others and participation in teaching-based research activities, to reconstruct their knowledge about teaching and research; while the novice teachers placed more emphasis on the reconstruction of knowledge regarding pedagogical theories and the way these theories are applied in teaching practice, through social interaction with other teachers.

A capital idea: exploring the relationship between human and social capital and student achievement in schools

PurposeAs accountability policies worldwide press for higher student achievement, schools across the globe are enacting a host of reform efforts with varied outcomes. Mounting evidence suggests reforms, which encourage greater collaboration among teachers, may ultimately support increased student learning. Specifically, this study aims to investigate the relationship between human and social and student achievement outcomes.Design/methodology/approachIn exploring this idea, the authors draw on human and social capital and examine the influence of these forms of capital on student achievement using social network analysis and hierarchical linear modeling.FindingsThe results indicate that teacher human and social capital each have a significant and positive relationship with student achievement. Moreover, both teacher human and social capital together have an even stronger effect on student achievement than either human or social capital alone.Originality/valueAs more schools across the globe adopt structures for teacher collaboration and the development of learning communities, there is a need to better understand how schools may capitalize on these opportunities in ways that yield improved student learning. Our work sheds new light on these critical foundational elements of human and social capital that are individually and collectively associated with student achievement.

Development of professional learning communities through action research: understanding professional learning in practice

ABSTRACT This paper explores professional learning as teachers engage in action research to improve their practices. Despite many contributions on professional learning communities and their effects on school improvement, there is less research on how they are developed and how teachers learn collectively. Using a social theory of learning, three dimensions of communities of practice are used to analyse and describe the qualities of learning groups, where teachers participate by conducting action research. Findings suggest that when teachers engage in action research, they develop a shared repertoire related to the local needs, as well as to the field and traditions of action research. In turn, the repertoire facilitates collaboration among teachers. However, different understandings of the project affect mutual engagement in the learning groups. This indicates that deficiencies in alignment between the local practice and the practice of action research, affect the group qualities and may hinder the development of a PLC. Hence, this paper argues for the importance of making explicit the learning goals for both the local schools’ improvement work and the new way of working, which is the refinement of the practice. The implications for practice in schools entail making practice visible, including each school’s learning history.

Inspirational Chemists: A Student Conference Activity to Raise Awareness of Diversity and Inclusion in the Chemical Sciences

A team-based poster conference activity was developed in order to provide a structure for first year chemistry students at a university in the United Kingdom to discuss inclusion and diversity in chemistry and to support the development of inclusive learning communities. Student teams designed and developed posters based on the work of chemists who had inspired them with a particular emphasis on work conducted by underrepresented chemists. Teams presented their posters to peers at an end of semester poster conference which allowed students to discuss the work of these individuals and the importance of diversity and inclusion in chemistry. The majority of participants reported that the activity was an effective way to raise their awareness of diversity and inclusion in the subject by initiating discussions of these themes with their peers.

Teacher Continuing Professional Development and Team-Working Competences: A Case Study From Italy

Context: European policies describe the key role of teachers’ Vocational Education and Training (VET) in improving students’ learning outcomes. In order to improve teacher education, Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) policies identify competency models as the main framework for understanding teacher professionalism and designing VET policies. By reinterpreting these models through the capability approach, this article aims to identify more relevant competences of preschool teachers in the public and private services of northern and central Italy.Methods: The research began with a comparative analysis of VET policies for preschool teachers to outline more common competences used to define their professional profile. This led to the creation of a new, re-thought competency model used to design a quantitative survey to describe teachers’ competences in preschool settings. The self-assessment questionnaire was built on the following competence areas: Management of educational and relational processes, teamwork and large-scale teamwork, networking and governance. The self-assessment questionnaire evaluated 65 preschool teachers’ pre-acquired competences and development levels and those more desirable for the future (called “ideal” co.). The comparison of areas and their values reveals critical results, particularly related to teamwork competences at different levels.Results: The study outlines the structure of preschool teacher professionalism based on “traditional” competences (e.g., educational relationships with children) and some “innovative” competences (e.g., networking and governance), which appeared to be more desirable in teachers’ evaluations. However, the comparison of the data reveals that governance competences are better evaluated then teamwork co., introducing some hypotheses about the quality of relationships in the community of practice.Conclusions: The research outlines how the competences emerging as relevant for teachers need to be better activated in professional settings to become strategically important. The results related to teamwork and governance competences focus on the importance of informal and extended learning contexts to teachers’ socio-relational competence development. The organization of the school system needs to be re-thought and extracurricular competences need to increase to foster the generative development of informal learning communities at intra- and extra-school levels. According to the capability approach, the research reveals the extreme complexity of preschool teacher professionalism. For vocational education and training, its underlines the re-thinking of the preschool teacher profile as a co-designer of learning environments, which includes building formal and informal competences to foster communities of practice as a learning and generative process.

Teaching Civic Engagement Through Student Philanthropy: Theories and Best Practices for Transformative Learning

Student philanthropy courses are designed to teach students to ethically contribute financially to their communities. Students explore the role of values in philanthropy while actively allocating, distributing, and evaluating financial giving. Although studies have indicated positive outcomes from such courses, little is known about the processes and best practices that inform these outcomes. This mixed-methods case study reconfirms positive civic engagement outcomes while using qualitative data to inform classroom practices. Results show positive increases in civic engagement attitudes (+9%) and civic behaviors (+6%) with the greatest changes in measures related to the importance of philanthropic giving (+26%) and feeling responsible for the community (+27%). Qualitative results show the significant impacts of inclusive teaching, developing learning communities, and connecting with nonprofits on student growth and civic engagement. Students also developed transferable skills, learning to communicate, make decisions, and compromise in a dynamic group setting. Recommendations for best practices in designing student philanthropy courses are provided. Subscribe to JNEL

Problem-oriented and communication learning communities of teachers (based on materials from Russian and foreign research)

The article presents an analysis of the concept and characteristics of learning communities of teachers, as well as the experience of organizing the activities of various associations of teachers, described in Russian and foreign literature. As a result of theoretical research, the authors identified three models for the creation and development of learning communities of teachers: problem-oriented, communication and mixed. This is the scientific novelty of the work carried out. The practical significance of the study is due to the potential to use models in the design, creation and development of learning communities at the level of a separate school, city, region, etc. It is noted that problem-oriented communities appear when there is a problem, the importance of solving which is recognized by all its participants. The main activities of such communities are Lesson Study and pedagogical supervision. Teachers meet to find a solution to a problem together, jointly develop a plan for the upcoming lesson and reflect on what has taken place. For the emergence of communication communities, the need for teachers to exchange experiences is necessary. Such associations are based on mutual learning and are organized as platforms for communication, offsite events, team competitions, mutual visits to classes, etc. Mixed communities have characteristics of both a problem-oriented and communication model. The article provides examples of Russian and foreign learning communities of teachers, which can be attributed to one of the models. In Russian practice, considerable experience has been accumulated in organizing communication learning communities at the level of cities, regions, and the whole country: all kinds of projects, festivals, competitions in which both beginners and experienced teachers can freely participate. According to the authors, in Russia they are more common than problem-oriented learning communities. Nevertheless, the latter may be of great practical interest for the teaching staff of separate schools.

Un approccio PCP alla risoluzione dei conflitti nelle comunità di apprendimento

Over the past three years, we have been developing learning communities (LCs) with teachers and other school personnel. The objective of these LCs is to improve school success and student perseverance. We took a grassroots perspective to develop a pedagogical leaders LC with the purpose of generating specific LCs between schools. This involved determining priorities, identifying strengths, interests and ambitions collectively. The process generated a significant amount of tensions, especially when participants had opposite visions and perspectives. This paper describes the emergence of conflict and discusses how we used Personal Construct Psychology (PCP) to allow the constructs that underlie these tensions to emerge and turn them into engines of development for LCs.

Bamboo architecture as a learning project for community development of rural area in Indonesia

Concrete and steel have become common building materials in Indonesia and used as main building materials by both local people as well as architects in their design project. In Indonesia, common people in urban and rural areas, engineers and architects are also more familiar with the utilization of industrial building materials rather than local materials. However, industrial building materials area often questionable as sustainable materials. While bamboo, as local material, has been known as a sustainable material. Therefore, the usage of bamboo in nowadays architecture need to be elaborated and taught to the young generation and the society for the community development project. This paper aims to discuss the method of using bamboo as local material for community development in Indonesia while involving students from architectural education for the design process. The case study was taken during the community service project for Jarak Village’s residents which was done by students and lecturer from Petra Christian University. By discussing the issue and methods, in the future bamboo architecture will present not only as a building that provides space for activities but also as an instrument of the learning process and community development.

Keeping track of the development of professional learning communities in schools: the construction of two qualitative classification instruments

ABSTRACT For investigating a comprehensive PLC framework, instruments are needed that capture the multi-layered PLC characteristics and that take into account the complex influencing educational context. Such instruments are currently lacking. This study aims at describing the development and validation of two qualitative classification instruments usable for systematically identifying changes in PLCs. The 11 characteristics and accompanying behavioural and attitudinal indicators of a recently designed PLC framework were converted into codes and measuring values. For this conversion the ‘directed content analysis approach’ was used. The result is two classification instruments that can be used to collect and classify behavioural and attitudinal data from interviews and observations. The instruments cover all the characteristics, respectively indicators of the PLC framework and are suitable for validation by triangulation. This study contributes to the methodology for investigating PLCs by presenting two theoretically grounded and validated sets of codes, and two sets of measuring values. The latter is important for systematically developing knowledge on PLCs in educational practice. In everyday educational practice the instruments can be used to determine the state of the PLC and steps can be taken to stimulate its development.

Development of virtual learning community through my buddy school system

As a country with high biodiversity and social community, Indonesian students face differences in learning quality. Students’ competencies in rural and urban areas also become a separate problem. With the nature and social conditions of each, students in rural and urban areas have different abilities, hence need peer learning to share knowledge between rural and urban school. Indonesia needs various innovations to solve learning and education problems. One of the solutions to bridge this problem is by developing information systems that can be used by students in villages and cities. Through peer learning, it is expected to improve students’ knowledge and skills because the learning design is more natural. In this paper, My Buddy School system is designed and developed to support self-regulated learning and peer learning course. The development method used the ADDIE model (Analyze, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation). We applied explicit evaluation using some questionnaires and interview to 22 junior high school students that have already used the developed system. The result shows that user experience score and student’s respond from the interview session indicate that the system is good; therefore, an improvement is needed. For the future works, we proposed a user-centered design method to gain a greater score of user experience.

Deciphering the Problem of Change: Socioeconomic Disparity in Marginalized Communities in the Wake of COVID-19

Aim/Purpose: The following manuscript presents a broad humanistic-existential framework in support of human-centered design strategy, as it explores the axiological assessment of how marginalized community leadership, post-COVID-19, can lead and integrate innovative Community-Based Learning (CBL) community development models. The manuscript commences with a synthesis of literature focused on understanding the problem of change concerning marginalized communities’ complex historical origins, which has now become further complicated due to the current COVID-19 pandemic. Background: The manuscript commences with a synthesis of literature focused on understanding the problem of change concerning marginalized communities’ complex historical origins, which has now become further complicated due to the current COVID-19 pandemic. Methodology: By developing an in-depth understanding of the foundational elements that challenge marginalized communities, this manuscript explores and identifies the confluence of non-linear methodological system models with blended applications to create human-centric development. Findings: Such creations driven by synergistic strategies can engage marginalized communities to develop empowered learning opportunities that place direct investment in its residents. Thereby, these efforts can holistically shift community landscapes by enabling residents’ socio-economic growth through the acquisition of high levels of knowledge and skill while achieving ongoing self-awareness. Impact on Society: Even in the face of a volatile future world, these attributes can strengthen and increase levels of independence and autonomy to create sustainable and equitable ecosystems; and ultimately work to ensure a shared vision of change now and into the future.

What matters in learning communities for inclusive education: a cross-case analysis

ABSTRACT Implementing inclusive education requires on-going commitment to teachers’ professional learning. One way of implementing professional learning is to develop learning communities based on Lave and Wenger’s ideas of situated learning and learning as social practice. Learning communities, drawing on models of Professional Learning Communities and communities of practice, were designed to build capacity for inclusive teaching in two rural schools in Australia and a peri-urban school in South Africa. This paper reports on a multi-case study that involves a cross-case analysis of these three learning communities. We demonstrate that across the three cases, responsiveness to contextual exigencies matters, expertise matters and supportive networks matter. These findings are further illuminated by complexity theory which draws attention to learning communities operating at the confluence of a number of interacting systems, as well as the possibility of change where teacher learning occurs through the recontextualisation of knowledge and learning across boundaries. Our findings support situated learning that values collaboration to develop social and inclusive cultures and practice in schools. The findings also have the potential to inform planning for professional learning for inclusive education.

Community-driven informal adult environmental learning: Using theory as a lens to identify steps toward concientización

This article examines community-driven adult environmental learning in a volunteer watershed stewards program. We look for evidence of elements that portray steps toward “concientización”—the process of individuals and communities directing their own learning in nonhierarchical ways. Leveraging two theories from the learning sciences and community development research, affinity spaces and the Asset-Based Community Development model, we trace participants’ development toward concientización. Data collected through interviews with watershed stewards speaks to parts of these theories that in turn signal elements of concientización. Our findings point to the importance of providing communities with support that is flexible and easy to use for identifying and leveraging the resources in their community. We call for a new framework to understand how to help learners access community-driven environmental learning experiences and supporting resources at opportune times.

How to enhance teachers’ professional learning by stimulating the development of professional learning communities: operationalising a comprehensive PLC concept for assessing its development in everyday educational practice

ABSTRACT Fostering the development of Professional Learning communities (PLCs) should be a priority for education because of their capacity to enhance teachers’ professional development. However, in everyday educational (school) contexts studying and supporting the growth of PLCs is a complex endeavour. As a consequence, there is a lack of instruments for extensively investigating PLCs on different levels of development as well as the factors that influence the development. This article describes the first steps of the construction of measuring instruments, suitable to investigate PLCs in the complex school context: a study of the operationalisation of PLC characteristics and influencing factors into attitudinal and behavioural indicators. The operationalisation is founded on relevant literature and on educational practice, the latter by focus groups consisting of educational practitioners. This study yielded indicators for the eleven characteristics of the PLC concept and two context factors, which were subsequently used for selecting and constructing instruments. This study contributes to the research methodology for investigating PLCs and to bridge the gap between educational research and educational practice. The latter by constructing instruments that are considered relevant, recognisable and practical by educational practitioners.

Building a conceptual model for pedagogy of partnership in the New Ukrainian School

The professionalism and competence of quality teaching practice in higher education institutions is becoming more significant since they try to respond to an increasingly diverse and perceptive student commu-nity’s issues concerning standards and quality in the global context. In the past several decades there are growing appeals for innovative re-search-based pedagogy that designs relationship-centred education as well as provides cutting edge professional development of the 21st cen-tury educators. The aim of our research is to further extend current knowledge of “student engagement” as a core aim of the NUS paradigm for the future of Ukraine’s higher education. The research has provided evidence for embedded sustainable partnership in the NUS that will sus-tain a strong sense of community among teachers and students. The key to achieving the development of such partnership learning communities are traced in NUS formula and its nine key elements are seen to encour-age their development. In order to identify and build a conceptual model for PoP in the NUS, the author of the given research attempted to map the territory of the primary school. The paper has led us to conclude the PoP, in our opinion, provides an opportunity to provide conditions for the development of the student’s creative personality, the implementa-tion of the tasks of the concept of the NUS, the creation of positive moti-vation of students for educational and cognitive activities, the need for self-knowledge, self-realization and self-improvement, the introduction of a modern approach to constructing a lesson, creating optimal condi-tions for developing the student’s creative abilities at lessons, developing social and civic competencies of the student.

교사학습공동체의 활성화를 위한 요인 탐색

The purpose of this study is to explore the activating factors of teacher learning community through analyzing previous studies. In order to complete the purpose, they were classified into factors of the section of individual, community, school, and the Ministry of Education, which were structured by internal/external, and human/material factors. To do the essential function of the school(roles as a community), and to ensure that the teacher learning community is at the center of educational reform where teachers and students grow together, it must be constructed, continuously operated, and developed in accordance with its characteristics. To do this, it is necessary to search for activation methods that can be shared and settled among teachers. It will be a toehold to establish a criteria of evaluation model that can help development and activation of the Korean teacher learning community in the future.

The complexity, tensions and struggles in developing learning communities throughout a Sport Education season

Several studies demonstrate that Sport Education (SE) supports the development of an authentic sport experience. However, the ‘messiness’ attached to the reality of effectively enacting SE is less prominent in the literature. The aim of this study is therefore to capture the complexity, tensions and struggles (for both lecturers and undergraduate students) of delivering and experiencing an authentic Artistic Gymnastics (AG) SE season within learning communities. Action research framed this 13-week study. Participants included 33 undergraduate students, four lecturers (one experienced in SE and three experienced in AG) at a university in Brazil and a professor with expertise in teaching and researching SE who was contacted regularly throughout the SE season. Data were collected weekly and included: (a) weekly collaborative lecture group meetings after each class; (b) student reflective diaries; (c) lead lecturer weekly observations collected as field notes; (d) Facebook posts; and (e) student focus groups. Data analysis involved inductive process and constant comparison. Results conveyed: (a) the relationship of trust and interdependence between the lecturers who implemented SE; (b) how students created a safe environment that allowed them to overcome fear; and (c) how lecturers and students negotiated the different levels of students’ engagement during the season and the associated feeling of frustration. Lecturers and students developed into two separate communities of learners. Future studies should continue to examine the effectiveness of a community of learners within the SE context and specifically encourage lecturers and students to work together as one learning community, learning from, and with, each other.