Dissertation/ Thesis

Building communities and sharing knowledge : a study into teachers working together across national boundaries

التفاصيل البيبلوغرافية
العنوان: Building communities and sharing knowledge : a study into teachers working together across national boundaries
المؤلفون: Underwood, Matthew James
المساهمون: Frost, David
بيانات النشر: University of Cambridge, 2017.
سنة النشر: 2017
المجموعة: University of Cambridge
مصطلحات موضوعية: 370.116, professional communities, teacher leadership, knowledge, Macedonia, education, teaching, teachers, comparative education research, qualitative research, interview, communities of practice, networking, networking theories, international teacher leadership, professional development, non-positional leadership, education development, document analysis, knowledge communities, affirmation, qualitative, Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia, Balkans, Former Yugoslavia
الوصف: This dissertation explores the types of professional communities that are built when teachers work in initiatives that, in various forms, link them to teachers from other countries. In doing so it explores the types of knowledge that may be exchanged by the building of these communities and the value that teachers put upon these different forms of knowledge. Therefore, this study is situated in the broad theoretical context of discussions related to the building of professional communities but explores this within a specifically international context. The most significant findings that this dissertation identifies are: that the teachers involved built the professional communities that are most important to them in more exploratory ways and with more agency than is suggested by other related research, and in connection to this that those professional communities that the participants attached most significance to were consistently alternative to the immediate workplace. It was also found that whilst the teachers involved in this study problematised the possibility of directly transferring specific classroom strategies, stories about teaching were seen by all to be useful vehicles for exchanging other forms of knowledge, for enabling affirmation and for co-constructing moral purpose. These findings have potential implications for policy and practice as they indicate that structures that focus exclusively on developing communities within schools may need to be enriched by those that provide teachers with the flexibility to discover and build communities in alternative ways too. The primary data collection method used when conducting this research was interview. The participants who were interviewed came from two countries, namely England and Macedonia. This entirely qualitative approach is positioned within an interpretivist paradigm. However, it is argued that contributions to theoretical debates regarding the nature of professional communities can still be made.
نوع الوثيقة: Electronic Thesis or Dissertation
اللغة: English
DOI: 10.17863/CAM.15624
URL الوصول: https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.744305
رقم الانضمام: edsble.744305
قاعدة البيانات: British Library EThOS