Teacher Learning Circles

A collaborative and participatory curriculum designed for teacher training in emergency contexts, the Teacher Learning Circle (TLC) Curriculum aims to properly and efficiently train teachers with varying levels of experience in 7 critical areas: student needs, classroom management, conflict resolution, peace education, psychosocial needs, and sustainability. Drawing on the Minimum Standards for Education (MS) developed by the Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE), the foundation for the TLC Curriculum seeks to follow the INEE’s model of “meeting the educational rights and needs of people affected by disaster”, viewing the role of education in emergency contexts as not only life-sustaining, but also life-saving (INEE, 2010). Purposefully vague, the INEE’s MS feature a number of broad standards that education planners can implement in a variety of contexts. In order to create a versatile curriculum, the TLC Curriculum follows a similar model, enabling instructors to adapt its core domains to a number of relevant contexts and issues.

 

A teacher- and peer-led approach to education, learning circles allow for collaboration and discussion, centering on collective participation among students. While TLC predetermined a set of 7 specific domains, the broad nature of these domains allow for students to decide which particular components of each domain most immediately pertain to their context. The ability for students to choose how they specifically approach and understand these critical domains mirrors a fundamental component of effective professional development: considering the teachers’ interests and needs, ensuring that their voices are heard and valued (Stover, Kissel, Haag, & Shoniker, 2011).

 

TLC aims to foster learning from experience, learning from reflective action and learning through contexts – key features of professional learning that lead to a true learning culture (Smith, 2010). With the focal point on a group of teachers coexisting in the same refugee context, TLC’s curriculum will help sustain changes in practice over time, as these teachers will continue to contribute to a shared professional development culture in which their particular contexts, needs, and values find voice among the learning modules (Garet, Porter, Desimone, Birman, & Kwang, 2001).

 

TLC’s final unit of study involves establishing the foundations and skills needed to sustain the TLC learning model over a prolonged period of time. TLC instructors will train students in areas of facilitation and management, providing them with the skills needed to manage, run, and implement their own teacher learning circles as the years – and therefore the current refugee contexts – progress. The closing curricular component acts as a transition phase in which the students become the teachers, and the role of the TLC instructors begins to dissipate as students gain further ownership over the TLC model. Aligning with current research on teacher learning and development, TLC’s unique approach allows for a professional development model with potential to be sustained over a prolonged period of time (Garet et al., 2001).