Building a teacher–student community through collaborative teaching and learning: engaging the most affected and least consulted

This paper reports on a longitudinal study of nine teachers and their principal in a new secondary school that met to select, read, discuss and determine the viability of the text for their growing English classes and the library. This research offered a unique opportunity to examine how practitioners create and develop a social context for sustained, professional learning. Current popular conceptions of professional learning communities in school are often ‘groups’ assigned to complete a task. This study highlights the need to move beyond the misreading of ‘group’ as ‘community’. Given the unique and new contextual and cultural location, the study contributes empirical evidence needed to support meaningful teacher learning. The study provides insights into actively and cumulatively engaging teachers in collective and professional decision-making that counters common perceptions of teachers as ‘most affected, least consulted’. Grounded theory was employed to explore a teacher learning community and create coding to identify the marks of transition from group to community. Findings from the study expressed through six ‘critical turns’ identify opportunity, time, distributed membership, active learning, relationship development, trust, and shared motivations and mutual decision-making as critical to cultivating a teacher learning community.