Collaborate to Teach: How Foreign Language Teachers Learn by Building a Teacher Learning Community

• In Event: The Power of Teacher Learning Community in Foreign Language Teaching: Collaboration, Reflection, and Teacher Identity

Abstract

Objects: This study investigates the experience of foreign language teachers’ collaboration to teach through building a teacher learning community in a higher education setting, focusing on teachers’ collaborative learning and instruction change. Research questions are the following: How do foreign language teachers learn collaboratively through a teacher community? How do their instructions change as they learn in the community? What are the advantages and constraints?

Perspectives: The Teacher Learning Community (TLC) is a form of teachers’ collaborative inquiry where teachers make collective efforts to learn, work on specific agenda for teaching, and experiment with instructional practice (McLaughlin & Talbert, 2006). Literatures prove that the TLC has a positive influence on teachers’ motivation in learning and cognition, as well as social cohesion (Bray et al., 2000; Erkens et al., 2008).

Method: This paper applied participatory action research, focusing on teachers’ collaborative interactions related to the learning, through various communication methods. Research participants were three Korean language teachers in a public university in the Midwest. Data included teachers’ daily journals, interactions in a social media, discussions in weekly meetings, teaching material repository, and semi-structured interviews. The data are analyzed using three-level coding: initial codes are re-organized and re-coded by triangulations by a researchers and research participants.

Results: 1. Collaborative Learning (a) Learning by sharing: By sharing their know-how and instruction, teachers gained practice-based and contextualized knowledge. The reflections and ideas are elaborated as they share, and it resulted in constructive feedback for teaching. (b) Learning by questioning: By asking questions arising from each classes, individual doubts become elaborated, and lead toward collaborative learning experience. (c) Learning changes as the community grows: The level of emotional openness increased as they participated more in the TLC.

2. Instruction Change Teachers in the TLC went through actual instruction changes as they participated, as they experienced (a) shifts from “having passing thoughts and feelings” to “taking action,” (b) changing meaning of good teaching by gaining various perspectives on their teaching, (c) strong pedagogical learning from other teachers’ instruction and their know-how sharing, which could be termed “Pedagogical teaching,” meaning teaching which could be pedagogical for other teachers.

3. Advantages and Constraints (a) Sense of Belonging: the community as a safe place to be vulnerable and to be encouraged, free of evaluation, and to share common vision & enthusiasm about foreign language teaching. It prevented teacher burn-out and mannerisms. (b) Teacher as Researcher: As teachers participated, they developed their own research interests. (c) Constraints: The voluntary participation added pressure for spending extra time and energy. By developing alternative collaboration tools online, they tried to overcome the constraints.

Significance: This study shed light on the professional growth of foreign language teachers by showing advantages of building a learning community which not only stimulates teachers’ collaborative learning but also draws their instruction change, possible ways to enhance teacher interactions in highly individualized and professionalized higher education institutions, a possible model which promotes program-wise developing points for sequential foreign language teaching by encouraging collaboration of teachers teaching different levels.

Author

• Ji-Hye Kim, University of Wisconsin - Madison