Enabling teachers’ community of practice at scale – Purpose, role and impact of teachers’ communities of practice in enabling meaningful CPD

Dr Bindu Thirumalai is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Excellence in Teacher Education at TISS Mumbai. She aims to increase teacher capacity through action research and collaboration between academia and governments. She has participated in research efforts aimed at driving large-scale improvements in teacher education, teaching-learning, and curriculum and pedagogy inside government education systems. She has competence in course design and development, including the creation of MOOCs for practicing instructors, and in the delivery of blended certificate programs.

Continuous development of teachers who are currently in-service is a challenging pursuit. Teachers have little time that is available for their upskilling. Moreover, the everyday challenges of their role makes it harder for teachers to implement newer learnings into their practice. Over the years, spaces that enable teachers to collaborate with each other, and share their learning and challenges, have emerged to contribute meaningfully to their learning and development. This conversation with Dr. Bindu Thirumalai brings out key ideas on how communities of practice (CoP) can be set-up, sustained and used as a platform to strengthen teachers’ practice.

Kanavu: How and when did your work with teachers’ communities of practice begin?

Dr Bindu Thirumalai: I began working with teachers’ COP in 2010 through an NGO called IT for Change, based in Bengaluru. Our objective was to enable the integration of technology in math pedagogy in secondary learning. Over 2 to 3 years, we conducted several workshops for the teachers selected from across Karnataka, toward effectively using ICT for math in the classrooms. After the workshops, we continued engaging with the teachers through Google Groups.

In 2015, I began working at TISS. During that time, I was part of a large team that was working on the flagship program of Center of Excellence in Teacher Education – CLIx. This was a large-scale program implemented across four states – Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Mizoram. It was a hybrid one. Here teachers came together for workshops.

During these, they were introduced to online communities of practice on Telegram, a mobile app. They received continued support through this. These courses were designed to be practice-based courses. Here teachers were expected to implement their learnings in the classrooms. They also had to engage with each other through an online platform.

My PhD work particularly focused on online CoP for secondary school mathematics teachers in government schools in Telangana. We introduced teachers to ed-tech modules toward making mathematics learning conceptual. They were taught how to use various online tools and games to teach each of the concepts. They also engaged in integrating these with everyday teaching and learning processes in schools.

The communities of practice acted like teacher support. Here teachers could reflect and share their experiences in implementing these modules. I managed this online community for the mathematics course for two years. This also enabled teachers to connect to teacher educators, subject experts, and other teachers.

Kanavu: How did you craft the online community of practice at scale? How was the experience of managing it?

Dr Bindu Thirumalai: The purpose of the online community was to create a space for teachers’ sharing and reflections. However, it is not likely that these communities will organically develop by themselves. It had to be intensely managed toward achieving specific goals. I managed the COP by providing teachers with weekly prompts on specific topics every Friday. The goal was to build pedagogical content knowledge in mathematics with teachers.

We called it – “Friday Math Education Time.” Here I would share a variety of prompts with the group. These prompts ranged from “How do you teach this particular topic in fractions?” and “Which is the correct method?” to sharing tricky problems that teachers could work out and share the solutions of. Some of the prompts created scope for interesting dialogues. Different teachers shared their reasoning. And this led to learning for all the teachers in the group.

Over two years, I created over 80 to 100 prompts. Teachers engaged with these prompts by responding with pictures of their solutions, pictures of children working in the computer labs, pictures of computer screens, and so on. This gave us real-time feedback on how the courses were being used by the teachers. These prompts motivated teachers to try and implement their learnings from the course.

Just conducting workshops isn’t effective. This is because there are so many operational barriers to implementing a program. It is especially so when it involves ICT. Workshops are conducted in well-resourced and set-up environments. Therefore, everything works very well in these. However, teachers face a lot of barriers in their own schools and contexts.

Therefore, this form of continuous engagement through which teachers could see pictures of what is happening in some schools acted as a motivation for other teachers to try. This became a model for teachers when they saw that in a very similar context, some teachers were making it work. It made them believe that ed-tech can work in their schools. This was the purpose of such a space.

Kanavu: What role do teachers’ communities of practice play in the continuous professional development of teachers? How does it align with the larger structures of CPD?

Dr Bindu Thirumalai: Firstly, it acted as a space where teachers motivated each other to try integrating ed-tech in their mathematics teaching and learning. Secondly, it enabled exposure to teachers outside their school, block and district. These teachers were from across different districts in the state. They felt like they were part of a larger ecosystem outside their schools.

We also encouraged some of the active teachers from these communities to participate in national and international teacher conferences. These teachers shared their experiences with the group. This led to others in the community feeling pride in belonging to such a group. This built a professional identity for the teachers. It did not happen in the initial few days or weeks. It was a long process and a result of efforts over nearly two years.

More importantly, the COP enabled deeper engagement of teachers with pedagogical design and ideas. The learnings from the program were not limited to using it through the ed tech modules. We observed teachers taking the design principles from the ed-tech modules and integrating them with the chalkand-talk method.

When computers did not work, ideas from the course were used in the classroom and were shared with the community. This inspired more teachers to build deep engagement with the content in their classrooms. We recognized that ed tech is just a hook, anything can replace it. However, the conversations that created engagement in the online community were about pedagogical content knowledge. The COP enabled peer learning and collaboration, which is an underlying need for teachers’ development and growth.

Kanavu: Did something emerge from these COPs that is of relevance at the larger systemic level? How did it contribute to teachers’ personal and professional journeys?

Dr Bindu Thirumalai: While there were four hundred teachers enrolled in the course, only fifty teachers were active. The other teachers merely observed the interactions in the group and did not react or respond to the prompts. However, the teachers who engaged actively were recognized by the government and were given an opportunity to become resource persons for the district and block-level training. After the workshops, they shared their learnings and experiences with the community and brought in more teachers to the COP.

The interesting fact is that most resource persons in government trainings are typically from the capital city. However, this COP enabled us to identify teachers from remote parts of the state, who were able to get the deserving recognition. Moreover, teachers took their learnings from the COP into their school complex meetings. Some of the prompts and ideas were discussed in the cluster-level meetings. Some reflections were also shared after such discussions.

These are some of the ways in which the learnings from the COP have percolated into the system. We have not yet studied to what extent this has impacted other teachers. These COPs have created a safe space for teachers to try new methods and fail as well. It has been a space of no judgment. Therefore, it fosters more honest sharing of both successes and failures.

It has given teachers a feeling of belongingness and purpose. They have articulated that usually no one follows up on any of the workshops that are conducted. Hence, there is no motivation to make efforts, when the daily circumstances are so challenging. However, this COP provided support, recognition and motivation for the teachers.

Most continuous professional development processes of teachers are designed from a deficit perspective, where the system recognizes that teachers are not fulfilling the current needs of students and their development. However, our course is designed acknowledging teachers’ practice, and that teachers understand the most about children and the context.

We promoted collaborations between teachers, teacher educators, and university researchers. We could thereby enable an ecosystem where ideas and strategies were shared across all these stakeholders. Researchers had a window into schools without having to go there. And teachers had regular interactions with research-based strategies, and got support to implement newer methods. This led to strong connections both ways.

Kanavu: What are some principles that organizations and teams working with teacher communities should keep in mind?

Dr Bindu Thirumalai: First, learning does not happen organically in CoPs. It needs to be managed and facilitated with a lot of focus. We have tried to develop this among other active teachers. However, it has been tough. While someone needs to facilitate the space, they should not take away from teachers’ voices being heard. Facilitation is a serious task. It needs enabling equal spaces for all the participants and ensuring that there are no hierarchies that are getting formed.

Online continuous professional development strategies have the potential to easily scale the support for teachers. In this course, we were able to enable 400 teachers across 13 districts with very few of us managing the COP. However, the scalable design includes engaging research-based courses, in-person workshops and effectively run communities of practice. All these pieces must interact with one another and come together through the COP.