An analysis of the emergence and concurrent learning of a professional teaching community

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation was to document the development of a professional teaching community and the means of supporting its emergence and concurrent learning as situated in the institutional context of the school district. In this process, I related the realized learning trajectory of this professional teaching community and of the participating teachers to both the means by which it was supported and organized, and to the institutional setting in which the teachers worked. The results of this analysis will generalize to other cases in that it will enable researchers and teacher educators to adapt the means by which the learning of the professional teaching community was supported to the organizational characteristics of the school systems in which they are working in a conjecture-driven manner.