STEM Teacher Learning Communities: International Examples and Issues
Learning communities can trigger a beginning teacher to consider the benefit and constraints of a greater range of instructional possibilities than can a lone mentor, even one that is very well trained.
There is an opportunity for administrators and faculty to stop viewing mathematics and science departments merely as an administrative unit, and that anyone can be a department head. Administrators could take advantage of this inherent organizational unit of the school for the benefit of all faculty.
The dynamics and possibilities of having effective learning communities are affected when a school is coping with a flood of beginning teachers, or especially when districts make beginning teachers the majority of the faculty in challenging schools.
What level of effort would be required including facilitation, to implement PLCs that can focus productively on substantive aspects of STEM teaching?
