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

Beth: I enjoyed coming there and meeting other people, oh the food was so nice
(laughs). And also you learn about other people and their cultures because
when we mix there you will find there is someone who will speak about
something, then you realise that other people do things in this way. It's not
like my culture. In my culture we do it like this. It helps because you begin to
respect other people's cultures.
There was the guy who said that his mother washes her hair with sunlight
(soap), and her hair was so nice. Well with us today, we like new things that
count, but sometimes they are expensive, but these old things they are more
cheap, and we just begin to say oh no this thing is too old for me.
Extract from final interview with Mary
Mary:
Mary:
MM:
Mary:
MM:
Shirley:
Yes definitely, I've enjoyed it and like I said, I'm a person always looking for
new experiences, things like that and I felt like I love to move out of my own
school environment and I thought associating with this programme here for
EMS, its actually, I met you, I've got to know more about the programme
itself and also all the other teachers that were there.
I think it was very very beneficial to me. You know for a teacher who is just
starting to teach EMS, like I've gained knowledge eh, skills as well, different
ideas that we shared while we were there, the little projects, you know the
presentations that we did. We could see that how one aspect could be
interpreted by different groups differently and how new ideas came out and
how you would look at it from different perspectives. And I would say I got
a lot of direction in my teaching of EMS.
Were there any particular aspects of the workshops that you found useful?
I think the sharing of ideas, you know, being a new subject, and the little,
eh, the activities, that we engaged in. No it wasn't just a talk type of thing.
We did things. And I think when you do things with others you see like the
perspective of others, other people, maybe you didn't see it that way before,
so like that was a good thing. And the other way of eh like, different
approaches in the classroom. I may have approached that topic in a certain
way, but being at the workshops I think I learnt a lot from the others. Ja.
How do you see the role of other teachers in the group in your own learning?
Like what I would say for the future as well, is that this thing could catch
on, because we had teachers outside our own circuit that also came to the
workshops and I'm sure they have approached you now to come to their
cluster of schools. You will find that this thing can actually become quite a
big undertaking.
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