Creating a Professional Learning Community Through Appreciative Inquiry in an Early Childhood Context

Master's Thesis from the year 2015 in the subject Pedagogy - The Teacher, Educational Leadership, grade: 3.5, Aga Khan University, language: English, abstract: This study explored the factors that were required for creating an environment based on a professional learning community (PLC) that not only provides support to teachers on a regular basis for their development, but also builds a collaborative learning environment for the teachers in the school particularly in the early childhood development (ECD) context. Further, this study also identified the processes that helped to build PLC using the appreciative inquiry approach. In addition, the support of appreciative inquiry as an approach for building PLC was also measured. Eight research participants were selected who were involved in four stages of appreciative inquiry, namely discovery, dream, design and destiny. The data revealed that trust, collaborative learning and reflective dialogue were some of the factors that are required for creating a PLC environment. However, three processes for initiating PLC culture were included which are classroom teaching and observation, constructive feedbacks and reflective dialogue sessions. At the end, this research found that the appreciative inquiry approach was significant as a value-added tool that helped to build the collaborative environment in the school and provided participants an opportunity to share their skills and expertise as well as their dreams and imaginations with each other.