Abstract
Professional learning communities received a formal status in Singapore education in 2010 after the ministry of education piloted its model of professional learning community in a range of schools. Although it may seem that the ministry of education has adopted a school-based approach to professional learning community where school leaders provide the necessary structure and culture to support the practices of professional learning community, and teams of teachers called ‘professional learning teams’ provide the pedagogical development and innovations to impact classroom practices, the actual work of professional learning community lies in the latter. However, the implementation of professional learning community as a nationwide initiative and endeavour is not without challenges. In this chapter, a range of challenges are put forth for consideration—one of which is the importance of helping teachers to adopt a positive belief towards professional learning community, which would only come about when the wider range of challenges are addressed.
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This study was supported by the Educational Research Funding Programme, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University [OER 14/12 HS]
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Hairon, S., Chua, C.S.K., Abbas, D. (2019). Professional Learning Communities. In: Wong, B., Hairon, S., Ng, P. (eds) School Leadership and Educational Change in Singapore. Springer Texts in Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74746-0_7
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