Cultivating communities of practice via learning study for enhancing teacher learning

This paper aims to explore the mechanism of Learning Study in enhancing teacher learning by adopting communities of practice as the analytical framework. Learning Study is a school improvement project which aims to improve the quality of student learning via enhancing teacher professional development by creating communities of practice among teachers, researchers and educators involved in the design, implementation, evaluation and dissemination of a research lesson, with the ultimate goal of developing Learning Community in the school. Wenger’s theory of Communities of Practice (1998), which postulate that participants have a mutual engagement for a negotiated joint enterprise and they develop a shared repertoire, is adopted as the theoretical framework for exploring teacher learning and professional growth. This study adopts an ethnographic approach to investigate a Learning Study case. Results show that Learning Study create CoP that provides opportunities for teachers to create shared knowledge, values and beliefs.