This study aims at examining the cases of two elementary schools where Professional
Learning community(PLC) half-voluntarily began according to a new policy to suggest
accreditation of professional learning community(PLC) by the C provincial office of
education.
Then, the PLCs in these schools were adopted and managed in advance to participation
of a university by facilitating and supporting PLC at each school. Investigation, video
recording, and primarily interviews were conducted as main sources of data. Those were
repeatedly reviewed and discussed in order for responding to the research questions.
Following the analysis, ‘wondering,’ ‘curiosity,’ ‘sailing boat’ are the key words to teacher
motivation to be involved in PLC. While teachers have experienced positively, there are
some teachers to consider it in vain. Being asked about difficulties in PLC, teachers provide
lack of understanding, positional differences, little room of time and presence of mind for
answers. As for benefits, they earn solidarity, being together, and courage with their
colleagues. Easy communication among school teachers is mentioned as for a change of
school culture through PLC activities even though some feel reluctant to agree with it.
It is interesting that teachers expect PLC to be widely disseminated and at the same time
feel uncomfortable at their burden of responsibility.
Lastly, researchers from the C university of education are considered to play a role like ‘a
mother who holds hands of kids standing by a shore,’ ‘a mentor,’ or ‘a facilitator.’
Conclusively, the cases show that teachers in each school have had positive experience
and expected it to be sustainable in spite of a short length of the program, TLC. For this,
we believe that such results come from the design of TLC as a semi-structured program, in
which teachers initially were half-voluntarily.