A CASE STUDY OF AN ENGLISH TEACHER LEARNING COMMUNITY IN THAILAND

Abstract

In Teacher Learning Community (TLC), teachers collaborate and support each other’s development. In this study, the learning and instructional practices of five public school English teachers were examined over the period of three months using observations, journals, and lesson plans while they were collaborating in one self-established TLC. Coding was used to analyze the data from all sources. The benefits of TLC on teacher learning and instructional practices were found. The English teachers in this study seemed to benefit when learning from online resources, during lesson plan sharing, and from classroom implementation. The findings also indicated that TLC improved the teachers’ instructional practices. The findings suggest the promotion of establishing TLC based on the interests of the members, rather than as a requirement. Due to the time constraints for face to face meetings, future research may explore how online collaboration may help overcome this challenge in TLC.