Influence of professional learning community (PLC) on learning a constructivist teaching approach (POE): A case of secondary science teachers in Bangladesh

Strategy of Inquiry

This study followed a qualitative approach. The main purpose was to explore how secondary science teachers’ engagement in a learning community influences the ways in which participant teachers learn about a constructivist teaching approach (POE).

Research Design

To address research questions (RQ1 & RQ2) of the study, I used a series of interventions. However, introducing an intervention may be effective in resolving school changes or problems (Murphy & Duncan, 1997; 2007). As change is a process, not an event, effective change takes time (Fullan, 1982) and substantial value can be gleaned from the efforts associated with an intervention (Robson, 2002). In this study, the interventions combined the following items sequentially.

Using a new constructivist teaching approach Predict-Observe-Explain (POE)

Observing colleagues’ teaching practice

Reflecting on classroom observation schedule

Attending a post-teaching discussion

Attending a professional workshop

Firstly, participant teachers were introduced to a constructivist teaching approach Predict-Observe-Explain (POE) which they were expected to use as part of the intervention. This teaching approach was not familiar to them before my introduction. The purposes of this strategy was to help teachers to: change their perceptions about what might be useful in finding out students’ initial ideas; provide teachers with information about students’ thinking; generate discussion; motivate students to want to explore the concept; and, generate investigations (Palmer, 1995; White & Gunstone, 1992).

Secondly, the peer classroom observation process had as a fundamental purpose the gathering of meaningful information as it was essential that both the teachers and observer learnt from one another through this classroom observation process. Thirdly, the information they gathered from peer observation could then be used to learn about and, reflect on the classroom observation schedule, and improve their instructional behaviour (Sullivan & Glanz, 2000). This ultimately helped them to construct shared pedagogical understandings about a new constructivist teaching strategy (POE). Moreover, the reflection on the schedule served as a basis for the subsequent post-teaching discussion.

Fourthly, the purpose of arranging the subsequent post-teaching discussion was to reconstruct the meanings from the classroom observations about different pedagogical aspects. Finally, attending the professional workshop provided scope to refine understandings through interaction with a comparatively broader community. One of the purposes for arranging these workshops was to raise and discuss issues that were undecided or were notable from individual peer pairs. One of my expectations for the outcome of the professional workshops was that participant teachers might be able to resolve or explain any issues that were listed for discussion in the workshops that persisted in their minds as concerns or unresolved issues. From classroom teaching to attending professional workshop constituted a cycle. In this research, I conducted this cycle twice, in order to better understand the intervention and possible changes to teachers’ learning about a new constructivist teaching.

Selection of Science Topics for the Intervention

Participant teachers were asked to identify topics from their secondary science classes which could be suitable to teach using the POE approach as an intervention. From the many topics proposed, the final selection of topics was completed (as outlined in Table 1 below). All participant teachers agreed that the four selected teaching topics involved higher order thinking.

Table1. Final Topics for Teaching Using the Intervention

Teaching session	Teaching Topics	Content Area	Target Grade	Page on The NCTB text book
One	The pressure of a liquid	Physics	Grade Seven	22
Two	Saturated and unsaturated solutions	Chemistry	Grade Seven	94
Three	Refraction of light	Physics	Grade Eight	145
Four	Human Brain and its function	Biology	Grade Eight	263

Participants

I used ‘convenience’ sampling to select 14 secondary science teachers from seven nearby schools from those who volunteered to be further involved in the study. The consideration was based on availability, easy recruitment and willingness to participate in the study (Mertens, 2010; Robson, 2002). Moreover, the nature of the intervention demanded participants from nearby schools within a local area of Ashuganj UpaZilla of Brahmanbaria district of Bangladesh in order to make further involvement easy for participants and to attend the follow up professional workshop. Each individual peer pair then followed up through classroom observation, post-teaching discussion and professional workshops to see how ideas from different components of the intervention influenced their science teaching practice.

Research Instruments

This particular article use qualitative research tools, namely, a post-intervention open ended questionnaire, Focus Group Discussion (FGD) and notes from post teaching discussions and professional workshops. Basically, the questionnaire was used to ascertain participant teachers’ views regarding the intervention. The purpose of the FGD was to complement the post-intervention questionnaire and allowed participant teachers to reconsider their thinking about the outcome of the intervention.

Data Analysis

In analysing data, the post-intervention questionnaire, FGDs and filed notes were transcribed and analysed using NVivo 8. In this case, For analyzing qualitative data, I employed ''data transformation'' procedure, namely, quantifying qualitative data approaches under selected themes. (Creswell, 2009). For this qualitative data was coded into different themes that informed the research questions. These codes were then assigned numbers and the number of times codes arose were tabulated as numeric data (using NVivo 8). At first, responses from all 14 participants for individual questions were accumulated together and analysed accordingly under different themes to elicit quantitative values. Secondly, the quantitative values for each individual issue from the questionnaire was then crosschecked with the responses from both FGDs to confirm issues around which there was consensus or disagreement in terms of their understandings about any issues of the intervention process. In so doing, I first developed a general sense of the data through reading all the transcriptions. Then I selected text segments under different sub-themes using NVivo 8. Then I merged all the sub-themes into individual themes that captured the major categories of information. The results were then reported as descriptions on the basis of responses both from the post questionnaire and FGDs in response to the respective research questions. This analysis guided the determination of the key characteristics to identify how teachers learn to use a constructivist teaching approach collaboratively in their practice.