[MUSIC] Welcome to week six, optimizing curriculum outcomes. Lecture number two focuses on communities of learning. Professional learning communities at the school level is becoming a very popular concept around the world, for it provides a lot of opportunities for teachers to get together and learn from each other, so that they could improve their teaching practice. What are the benefits of the professional learning community? It takes initiative to implement change and improvement. It institutionalizes professional norms. It reflects and critiques pedagogical practice across the school. It shares and disseminates professional knowledge and experience. It engages teachers in rich professional conversations. So, these are some of the benefits of being part of a professional learning community. Professional learning communities are an emerging trend in teacher professional development. It is based on principles of collaborative learning among communities of interest. It constitutes a small group committed to improving professional and pedagogical practices. And these come in different forms, in different contexts. Sometimes it is called a teacher inquiry community, teacher learning circle or lesson study. Okay, there are two examples which have recorded success stories, based on teacher professional communities. In Hong Kong, teachers engaged in a sustained effort to improve their classroom practice through small class teaching, followed by peer observation, and discussion, and analysis and they recorded on-going progress with regard to the teacher-learning community in Hong Kong. Likewise, we also have recorded success stories in the Malaysian context. In Malaysia, ten schools from one particular district participated in this professional learning community project. And teachers teaching the English language subject were selected and over the period of one year, they have attended a number of workshops on best practices, on the best way of implementing curriculum and they seem to have progressed quite a lot. They are very happy with their community because now for the first time ever they have this wonderful opportunity of sharing with their colleagues about their classroom practice and understanding better ways of doing the same thing in the class and also giving ideas to friends as how they could improve their lessons. So, it is actually very engaging and also enlightening for the teachers about their own practice. There are three stages in the professional learning community, as what happened in Hong Kong and also in Malaysia. First is the joint planning. Teachers work together and think about the lesson they are going to teach, and how well to teach the components that should be included. And during the teaching, while one teacher is teaching the rest observe the teacher's teaching. And after the teaching has been done they sit together and evaluate the teaching that has happened, analysis takes place and, during that part, they give a lot of feedback - positive, constructive feedback on how the lesson could be improved further. So, in this way, teachers in a group have plenty of opportunity of sharing and also thinking through the process and becoming better teachers. So, what are some of the observed changes that are taking place? From my observation, as one of the facilitators of the teacher learning community in Malaysia, I saw the teachers tended to view teaching, learning, critically now than before. They began to reflect on their own practice and they introduced small changes to improve the daily lesson and they helped one another with ideas of better teaching and they provided more feedback for pupils during the classroom teaching. And also, they catered for diversity more effectively than before, and they improved the quality of class discussion. So, a lot of changes have taken place, just within a year, when teachers started to participate in the professional learning community. From the Hong Kong and the Malaysian case, a number of key success factors have been recorded. Look at this slide, and you can see a number of factors that has caused the success in those two countries. Now is the time for think, pair and share. After looking at the slide, you would have got more ideas about the success factors. Now, let's see, what for you is the learning community at your workplace? And how would you create and sustain such a learning community? What are some of the challenges that you may have to deal with in developing such a community at your school? Think about these three questions, with a peer or in a group, and see to what extent you can develop a new professional learning community at your workplace. [MUSIC]
