Full Description
This book draws together research on professional learning communities in schools and teacher education in diverse contexts in South Africa. Each chapter captures the rich and complex nature of professional learning communities, the challenges in developing and maintaining them, and the extent to which the promote successful learning for teachers and changes in teaching practices. The book shows that professional learning communities can promote continuous learning in response to local school and classroom realities and work against 'quick-fix', fragmented workshops for teachers, where learning tends to dissipate. This book should be of interest to teachers, school-leaders, teacher-educators, policy-makers and researchers. It represents the first set of research studies in what is a new and growing field in South Africa.
Contents
About the authors; Foreword; Introduction 1. Working through the 'hardness' of teachers' pedagogical habitus: Pedagogical learning among teachers in a professional learning community - Jennifer Feldman and Aslam Fataar; 2. Developing professional learning communities for inclusive education: A university community engagement opportunity - Elizabeth Walton; 3. Teachers' critical inquiry into cognitive and social dimensions of learners' mathematical errors in a professional learning community - Rolene Liebenberg; 4. Choosing a knowledge focus in a professional learning community - Anthea Cereseto; 5. Examining the joint enterprise of mathematics teaching and learning in two pre-service teacher education mathematics classrooms 101 - Anthony A Essien; 6. Using data to transform teaching practice through a professional learning community at a primary school - Mathakga Botha; 7. Building sustainable professional learning communities: Relational affordances - Raymond Smith; 8. Facilitating professional learning communities in mathematics - Karin Brodie; 9. Shifts in practice of mathematics teachers participating in a professional learning community - Nicholas Molefe; 10. The importance of identity in a teacher professional learning community Million Chauraya; Index.
