Professional development of teachers in learning communities:: Teachers' experiences and beliefs concerning collaboration

Our study compares teachers who participated in two different forms of professional development: (1) Teachers who have participated in a learning community as part of the project "Chemistry in context" (Chemie im Kontext) for at least two years. This approach to professional development is based on theories of situated learning. The learning communities can be characterized by a long-term and intense collaboration between teachers, who share their experiences in order to advance their teaching. (2) Teachers who participated in a traditional in-service-training consisting of two workshops. Our study asks whether the experiences of school-based collaboration and teachers' beliefs concerning professional collaboration differ between the two groups. 69 semi-structured interviews were analysed by means of content analysis techniques. Results show that teachers who participate in learning communities are more likely to be involved in multifaceted collaborative relationships in their own schools. They have more discriminate beliefs about collaboration and express more clearly a wish to intensify collaboration within their schools. In general, the findings indicate that cross-institutional learning communities could help to establish closer collaboration between teachers in schools.