Influence of Professional Learning Community (PLC) on secondary science teachers’ culture of professional practice: The case of Bangladesh

This section discusses the participants’ professional practice during the intervention. Teachers’ practices will then be used as a way of identifying the changes in the culture of professional practice for the participating science teachers. This section mainly draws on notes from discussion and my participant observer’s views both from post teaching discussions and professional workshops.

Results from Post Teaching Discussion

The participant science teachers found scope for discussion after completing their reflection on the observation schedule. During the discussion time, teachers found themselves both in agreement and disagreement with their colleagues, challenging each other’s reflections or observations and sometimes feeling confused while engaged in debates about some aspects of their peers’ teaching issues. The results reflect that in different situations these teachers felt nervous, confident or hesitant in discussing their teaching with their colleagues during the first teaching session. In most cases, teachers initially felt shy and hesitant and took longer in reflecting as they started the discussion with their colleagues at this point. According to Teacher 6, “I do not know how I can go; I am not used to discussing anything face to face with my colleagues before.” In the same way, before starting the discussion during the first teaching cycle, Teacher 12 stated, “I am hesitating because I am not sure whether I did right or wrong in reflecting from my observation for his (colleague) presentation.” These are their worries as they were not used to discussing issues with each other in a prescribed way. However, the results indicate that teachers began to change even from the second teaching cycle. According to Teacher 5, “Today I feel more relaxed as I know what we have to do.” Teacher 9, during the third teaching cycle said, “I feel more comfortable than the first day; I understood that the discussion helps us a lot to clarify our ideas about teaching, so I like to share my mistakes and failures with my colleagues openly.” These quotations reflect that as time goes on the teachers became more comfortable and relaxed in sharing and discussing successes or failures of their teaching with their colleagues. These results reflect how teachers can begin to change their culture of professional practice through discussion with their colleagues.

During the post teaching discussion time, teachers found that they agreed with some of the claims of their colleagues. Points of agreement between teachers varied in content, pedagogy, resources and learning environment across different discussion sessions. For example, during the second teaching session, Teacher 14 agreed with Teacher 13 that his emphasis was more on recall, or the recognition of the facts, rather than understanding of the concept of solution. His claim also included that students might understand how they can make saturated solutions from an unsaturated solution, but they still were not clear about how different variables (for example, solvent, solute, temperature) worked to make a saturated from unsaturated solution and vice versa. Teacher 14 then agreed that he needed to focus more on these issues. In the same discussion session, Teacher 13 was also convinced by the claim by Teacher 14 that his way of taking account of students’ prior knowledge was not effective for the lesson.

Not all discussions were in agreement. Participants disagreed with certain claims or observations of their colleagues during the discussion. Disagreement between teachers also varied in relation to content, pedagogy, resources and learning environment. For example, Teacher 2 claimed that Teacher 1 fully followed the student textbook sequence during his session in the first teaching cycle. However, Teacher 1 did not agree with the observation. He said that as he tried to use the POE, the sequence of the student’s textbook was automatically broken. As he felt he taught using the POE well, he did not think that he only followed the textbook sequence. These types of agreement or disagreement guided these teachers to clarify more about their practice through changing their culture of professional practice.

Sometimes, post class discussions offered teachers opportunities to challenge their colleague’s practice. For example, during the first teaching cycle, Teacher 2 claimed that he did not observe whether Teacher 1 asked students to find any real life examples regarding the variation of pressure with depth. Teacher 1 then said that he did use examples. Teacher 2 then challenged him to repeat the examples. Teacher 1 was unable to recall any examples that he used in the class.

Teachers also discussed the confusion they experienced while teaching the topic, “the human brain” during the fourth teaching session. This was basically due to a mismatch between the diagram and the explanation in the text book. According to teacher 3, “I was struggling in grouping different parts of the human brain into cerebrum, cerebellum and medulla oblongata, the information in the book confused me.” In some cases, the Bangla name of different parts of the human brain increased the level of confusion for teachers. The above examples illustrate that as these teachers challenged one another’s practice, it also helped them to clarify more about their own practice.

Results from Professional workshop

The four professional workshops mostly maintained a structure based around discussion forums after each teaching cycle and engaged participant science teachers in activities in which they found scope to reconsider their thinking both about their teaching and the culture of their teaching practice. At the same time, they found opportunity to discuss their own problems regarding their practice with teacher pairs from the other schools which is not common practice in Bangladeshi schools.

The participating teachers discussed the inadequacy, quality and importance of teaching aids in almost all of the workshops. During the first professional workshop, teachers discussed whether or not they needed any sophisticated teaching aids to make the concepts clearer during their post-teaching discussion in the first teaching cycle. For instance, teacher 6 said, “We need the sophisticated instrument; otherwise students will not learn properly or develop different conceptions.” Teacher 4 disagreed with him and stated, “Our schools do not have enough funds to buy all the teaching aids. We need to find resources from our neighboring local school environments to use in our classes. For example, I think students will able to understand the basic concept of a ‘simple pendulum’ if we hang a ‘stone’ or a ‘piece of brick’ that works as a bob with a thread rather buying sophisticated steel or metal instruments from the scientific shop.” Most of the teachers agreed with his statement. Teacher 9 stated, “I also believe that this is not a problem, we just need a proper plan. If we collect anything from our local environment and take care to preserve it properly, then we can use it in the following years.” The above example reflects how a professional workshop offers teachers possibilities to share their experience about their practice and support their learning about new ideas in using teaching resources.

Teachers in different peer pairs experienced difficulty in reaching conclusions regarding content knowledge during their post-teaching discussion. Participating teachers discussed their concerns regarding content knowledge and its organization during all four workshops with their science colleagues. These concerns included concept clarification, confusion arising about observed teaching, alternative conceptions, use of real life examples, and current ideas in relation to the respective concepts. It is notable that different peer pairs experienced different issues from the same teaching cycle, while in other cases, many of the peer pairs were confronted by the same problems. For example, all of the teachers found difficulty in matching the information and labeling the diagram in the text book in the fourth teaching cycle. At the beginning of the fourth professional workshop they discussed with their colleagues what they considered to be the proper grouping of different parts of the ‘human brain’ into three main parts, e.g., cerebrum, cerebellum and medulla oblongata. They also discussed the confusion arising from the Bangla names of these parts of the human brain. After a long discussion on this topic, Teacher 5 stated, “I feel more comfortable now. The discussion with my colleagues from other schools has helped me to minimize my confusion about this topic. I am sure next time I will be able to teach this topic more comfortably.” All teachers appeared equally satisfied about this type of outcome from their discussions. It appears from the above examples that teachers attending the professional workshops found scope to clarify their science concepts.

Teachers liked to discuss different aspects of pedagogical understanding during the professional workshops. These discussions included clarification of the nature of a POE, teaching sequences, the use of multiple teaching strategies, strategies for teaching large class sizes, efficacy in teaching and opportunity for students’ participation. Teachers also discussed effective teaching sequences. For example, during the second professional workshop most of the participant teachers emphasized the importance of progression in a logical sequence. For example, when teacher 8 was asked to explain how he designed his teaching sequence, he responded:

I tried to find all the variables that are related to change an unsaturated into a saturated solution and vice versa - these are solute, solvent, temperature. I then tried to explain with the help of students how these individual variables control the preparation of saturated and unsaturated solutions. That sequence made my teaching easier; I think students also felt easy to understand all of these changes.

After his explanation, teacher 7 (his peer pair partner) expressed, “It seemed to be logical in presenting the topics. I also found the teaching very interesting as an observer of that teaching where he did not follow the textbook sequence.” All other teachers were also impressed with his logical sequence. These results indicates that the workshops gave this teacher a chance to explain their pedagogical decision making, and this was helpful in stimulating discussion amongst the other teachers to help them know how they took into account text book sequence in his teaching.