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

From John's final interview, it could be seen that he had significantly changed his
perception ofhimself. He spoke with more enthusiasm about his work as a teacher and
suggested insightful ideas on how the TEMS project should proceed in the future. He
referred to EMS as a 'dynamic subject'. While he suggested the need to develop a
learning programme for a year, he also emphasised the need for flexibility to include the
effect ofcurrent economic phenomena as and when there were significant changes. He
spoke with a passion about keeping track ofthe exchange rate and interest rates and the
need to address such issues when they become topical. This was evident in the following
extract from the final interview:
MM: Do you have any suggestions about the future of the programme?
John: I think one of the things we can do is, eh, you see we've gone past the first
stage where we've learnt about the subject, and we've come up with some
content, subject matter. The next stage is to work on work programmes for
the year, for all grades, you know, for - groups working out a year plan, to
groups working out study routes, groups working on worksheets. So you know
a three-tier system where we have three different groups and you ... eh,
we'll have the complete lessons done so for the next three years we know we
have enough subject matter and of course it has to be reviewed on a regular
basis, because this is a dynamic SUbject. It changes from time to time and so
even though you plan, there must be a scope for review every month or two
months and then we meet once a year to find out how successful it is. So I
feel we need to concentrate on building lesson plans, you know, specific
lesson plans. And then of course you cannot work for the year. You have to
leave aside some time for events that happen where you must just take off
the news and even if you've planned you must just use the information from
the news for example, the rand has crashed. So that's a lesson now. Even
though you have planned, that's news. It has to be done in class. So in fact
that's what I've been doing quite often. With the rand-dollar exchange rate
dropping, I mean that's part of my lesson every other day. We make a note
of how far it has dropped. We've talked of the repo rate, we've talked of the
. bond rate.
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