Teacher Learning in a Community of Practice: A Case Study of ...

Ideally I would have wanted teachers to have time to watch one another teach and to have
conversations about their teaching. I expected that conversations among teachers would
provide opportunities to grapple with the meaning ofthe new curriculum (with regard to
EMS and EMS teaching) and to appreciate what the new EMS curriculum meant for
practice.
I envisioned that in the group processes, learning would focus not only on understanding
new EMS content ideas but also on translating these ideas into practice and figuring out
how to manage the practical challenges that may emerge in the process. In participating
in discussions about practice, teachers would be active in their own learning.
I saw the curriculum for teacher learning as involving an array of 'artefacts' that included
the new Revised National Curriculum Statement, materials that teachers used and
developed, teachers' practice, materials that I had developed and provided, as well as the
teacher development workshop sessions. The curriculum for teacher learning was
designed to support teachers' learning about Economic and Management Sciences and
their learning about how these ideas could be translated into practice.
Teachers' daily practice and their efforts to engage with teaching EMS was an important
component ofthe curriculum for teacher learning in the TEMS project. Learning would
involve teachers participating in inquiry and reflection about their practice and in solving
pedagogical problems that were meaningful to teachers as learners. Such conversations
would afford opportunities for teachers to work together to 'figure out' what practising
EMS teaching might involve. They would also be afforded opportunities to gain insights
from others on the practical problems ofputting EMS teaching ideas into practice and to
construct solutions to these problems together.
In adopting this perspective, I tried to ensure that knowledge was not a commodity,
which I as the university academic (EMS expert) brought to the project. Instead,
knowledge was in part constructed through the reflection and thinking enabled by the
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