In the "Integrated Strategic Planning Framework for Teacher Education and Development," a South African policy, the Department of Basic Education (DBE) and the Department of Higher Education (DHET) call for the formation of professional learning communities and envisage support for teachers and access to enhanced professional development…

In this article I discuss the potential of professional learning communities (PLCs) within the South African education context using a practice theory lens. PLCs are presented by the Department of Basic Education (DBE) as collaborative learning communities that are fundamentally social and should be established in all schools (DBE, Republic of…

Professional learning communities as a form of teacher development have been in existence internationally for some time now and more recently in South Africa. Although strong claims have been made for their influence on teacher practices, very few research studies have investigated these claims. This paper presents a case study that connects…

The growing perception of professional learning communities as an effective professional development approach needs to be supported with knowledge of how such communities create learning opportunities for teachers. Activities in professional learning communities are underpinned by collegial conversations that foster learning, and in this article…

In this article we argue that school leaders should ensure that teachers experience a supportive professional learning community committed to collaborative, thoughtful inquiry and be enabled to create similar communities in their classrooms. This study followed on one published in 2017 that explored school leaders' responses to an introduction to…

Learners come to class with a wealth of knowledge. Working with learner prior knowledge (LPK) is the foundation upon which new concepts get their meaning. Yet some teachers find interacting with LPK complex. Reflecting on practice, particularly within a professional learning community (PLC), has resulted in improvements in teaching. The focus of…

This paper investigated the strategic devices that can be used to enhance the accounting cash journals content knowledge (ACJCK) of Grade 9 economic and management sciences (EMS) teachers. The study was qualitative, with three participants selected from one rural school in the Thabo-Mofutsanyane education district. The interviews were used to…

Implementing inclusive education requires on-going commitment to teachers' professional learning. One way of implementing professional learning is to develop learning communities based on Lave and Wenger's ideas of situated learning and learning as social practice. Learning communities, drawing on models of Professional Learning Communities and…

The focus of this article is on the pedagogical learning of five teachers in a professional learning community (PLC). The PLC was conceptualised as a means of generating pedagogical learning and change among the participating teachers in consonance with a socially just educational orientation. The two authors of this article participated in the…

One feature of deprived communities is a lack of social capital. Yet, research reports that social capital contributes to poverty reduction and positively impacts schools and student educational outcomes. In South Africa, there is a deficit in social capital in under-resourced and underperforming schools that limits students' educational…

The dance world is dominated by instilling technique and discipline in the dance training. Technique and discipline have been inculcated through training regimes that are dogmatically transferred through the generations -- from teacher to dancer --and who in turn perpetuate technique and discipline in their teaching. Within a multicultural…

Poor learner performance in South African schools raises concerns related to lack of commitment and accountability from school leaders and teachers with no common vision to promote a culture of high learner performance. This paper provides a literature overview of research available on the impact of professional learning communities (PLC) on…

This study investigated a system-wide change strategy in a South African school district, which sought to build the leadership capacity of principals and district officials to improve instruction. The three-year venture was called the Leadership for Learning Programme (LLP). A distinctive feature of the LLP was that it was based on a partnership…

Certain tasks are more likely to be solved by groups than by individuals, even when the individuals are highly skilled at aspects of the task. These are tasks such as filling out income tax forms or performing surgical operations, for which inputs from several individuals who have complementary domains of knowledge and skill are needed. I refer to…

Much of the work on teacher knowledge suggests that content knowledge shapes pedagogical content knowledge, and in fact is primary in the relationship between the two forms of knowledge. In this paper we challenge this view, arguing from a situated perspective on knowledge and learning, that pedagogical content knowledge strongly shapes content…