Professional Development Through Teacher Collaboration: A Narrative Inquiry

Abstract

This research was an attempt to find out the benefits of teacher collaboration in teacher professional development and to explore the currentinstructionalpracticesof teachers obtained through the teacher collaboration forprofessionaldevelopment. Forthis research study, I have adopted the narrative inquiry asthe research design. The study was entirely based on primary sources of data.Italso included secondary sources of data.Theprimary sources were the fiveparticipants, secondary level Englishteachers teaching at five different schoolsinKirtipur.I prepared interview guideline questions using thatI collected datathroughrepetitive narrative study with five different participants.Thus,thecollected data were analyzed thematically. The research data collected byindividual teacher interview andmyreflectionon the dataindicated thatteaching is very challengingjob. Teachers should be updatedwith newinformation. They must be active agentsand dedicated towards their ownprofession.Teacherfacedmany problems like native language of the students,poor study backgroundof the students, cultural background, and context hinderwhile teaching in the classroom.Further, the findings also showed that therearemanybenefits of teachercollaborationin theteacherprofessionaldevelopment like teacher learning, personal independence,and students'learning enhancement,triangulation relationship between the teachers,guardians, head teacher, students and school management committee,personallearning network, teachers' teaching performanceenhancement,andemotionaland psychological supportfrom the colleagues during collaboration.Fromtheobtained data it wasalsofound that all the participants agreed thatencouragement, support and collaborativeinstitution, colleagues and societalenvironmentpositively enhancedtheirpersonalandprofessional identity in thesociety. Similarly, from the analysis of their lived stories, it was foundthatteachers usually discussedabout thelocal curriculum, primary teachingmaterials, secondary teaching materials like picture, chart paper, flash cards,pamphlet, booklets, and technical material like overhead projector to viii implement in the classroom for effective teaching practices. They alsodiscussed aboutteaching methodslike student centered method, lessonplanning,proper studentssitting arrangementlike u-shape and orderly rows,reviewing the students' formative assessment.The research datashowedthatteachercollaboration hadalsosignificant effect in the teachers'personal andprofessional growth,and students' learning enhancement. The present study consists of five chapters. Chapter one is an introductorychapter. It includes background of thestudy, statement of the problem,objectives of the study, research questions, Significance of the study,delimitations of the study and operational definitions of the key terms. Chaptertwo deals with reviews of the related theoretical literature, review of the relatedempirical literature, implications of the review and conceptual framework inrelation to benefits of teacher collaboration in the teacher professionaldevelopments and current instructional practices of the teachers forprofessional development. chapter three includes design of the study,population, sample and sampling strategy, research tools, sources of data, datacollection procedures, ethical consideration. Chapter four presents the analysisof the data and interpretation of the result. Finally,chapter fiveincludes thefindings, conclusion and recommendation of the study.Thestudy endedwithmy reflection whichwasincludedmy experiences regarding writing this thesis.