The possibilities of sustaining Community of Practice (COP) in selected schools in Karachi
Date of Award
8-1-2003
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Master of Education (M. Ed.)
Department
Institute for Educational Development, Karachi
Abstract
The beginning of the twenty-first century brought a lot of changes in the educational world. Now learning is not considered as an individual activity as Lave and Wenger do not view learning as an individual cognitive processing, but as a process of participation in communities of practice. Now learning is considered not an individual activity but communal. It means everybody is the member of community. There are lots of professional development programmes conducted for schools improvement, but there are few outcomes due to several reasons. One reason could be that these programmes can not fulfill the requirements of contextual need. The second reason could be that teachers could not translate that learning into practice due to difference in context. Keeping these challenges in mind educationists introduced a school-based approach that is called Community of Practice (COP) being in which school teachers can share their concerns, successes, and challenges in their own context and learn from each other. The purpose of this research is to see if COP has been understood in Pakistani schools, what has been the process of COP and how it can be sustained as one of the approaches for school improvement. The study was undertaken in two schools, one is private and the other one is a government school. The concept of COP was introduced by AKU- IED for around 4 to 6 schools in Karachi. This study also explores how COP helped teachers (PDTs), head teachers and IED team members to enhance their understanding about this new concept as well as their own professional growth. It also highlights some of the factors, which help teachers to improve themselves and some factors, which hinder their work. This study also gives some recommendations and suggestions for creating COP in schools as well as sustaining it, as one of the best approaches to school improvement.
Recommended Citation
Kanwal, N. (2003). The possibilities of sustaining Community of Practice (COP) in selected schools in Karachi (Unpublished master's dissertation). Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan.