| Faculty professional development is a key factor in the reform and development of higher education today.Due to the increasing complexity of social issues and the development of interdisciplinary knowledge,the requirements for teachers’ teaching abilities are becoming higher and higher.The professional learning community emerged as the latest professional development form in this background.As an area where professional learning communities were widely established in universities,it is of great significance to study the profile of their teachers’ professional development in Taiwan.This research first uses literature research methods to sort out policies related to macro-level higher education policy development and teacher professional development in Taiwan,to understand the background of policy formulation,and lay the foundation for subsequent research.Then this research focus on the professional learning community within C University,and select conveners,participants,and community assistants of the professional communities of C University,to conduct indepth interviews to study the form of communities’ operation,process,results and contradictions.Based on the activity theory,this research analyzes the seven elements of the activity system and finds that the motives of community participations are diverse,the community goals are mostly about teaching and research,and the activity forms present two different forms.Rules in the community can be divided into formal and informal rules,and members within the community can equally exchange their ideas.Then this research analyzes its four subsystems of production,exchange,consumption,and dispersion,to understand the process of the professional learning community.In terms of the results,we find that participating teachers can exchange personal teaching experience,expand teaching expertise,effectively solve teaching problems,and jointly develop teaching materials,teaching aids and teaching methods.At the same time,it can break the embarrassment of the situation of teachers’ fighting alone,then teachers can encourage each other in the community to meet emotional needs and reduce the sense of isolation and burnout.Some teachers have obtained research-related gains in the process of participating in the community.For the entire school,through the operation of the professional learning community in the school,it can enhance the cooperation of the teacher group,enhance the teaching knowledge of the teacher group,and then approach the core purpose of improving the effectiveness of students’ learning.At the same time,high-quality school cooperation and innovation culture can be shaped in the school to stimulate the development vitality of the school.Among the many contradictions in community operation,this study believes that the crux lies in the "emphasis on research and less on teaching" orientation of the teacher evaluation system and the competitive funding approach.Only by fundamentally resolving the crux can contradictions of community operation be gradually lifted.So as to really improve the teaching ability of teachers,return to the essential purpose of improving students’ learning effectiveness. |
