| Summary: | 碩士 === 南臺科技大學 === 教育領導與評鑑研究所 === 106 === The paper aimed to study the elementary school teacher culture in Taichung, and how the culture effects on professional learning communities (PLC.s). The data collected from 10 interviews were analyzed and examined. The conclusion was drawn as follows.
1. Teacher culture was formed from the interaction among internal and external factors of school organizations.
(1) The forming factors of teacher culture included the spirit of diversified development, the frequent exchange among young teachers and the expectation fulfillment in the community and the parents.
(2) Teacher culture covered open mind, profession focus, friendly working environments, collaboration and professional knowledge exchange, and emphasizes balanced development for students.
(3) Teachers' professional beliefs highlighted professional development, tendency of collaborative projects, conducted creative teaching and action-orientated plans, and developed specialized teaching individually.
2. The effects of teacher culture had brought to the operation of PLC.
(1) Inspired by positive teacher culture, teachers participated in PLC to enhance their specialized skills.
(2) Harmonious environment was one of the most important supported to PLC.
(3) The emphasis on teaching practice encouraged PLC members to be oriented by actions.
(4) The gap of professional abilities resulted in difficulties of sharing decision-making in PLC.
(5) Individualization might weaken PLC collaborative learning.
3. The effects of teacher culture had brought to the performance of PLC.
(1) Teachers, students' learning and schools' development could all benefit from professional practice, in which teachers fulfilled the learning purposes of PLC and enjoyed more freedom at carrying out school-featured PLC missions.
(2) Specialized PLC might not help promote teachers' professional skills as the goals of specialized PLC which was differed from general teaching.
4. The prospect and challenges lain ahead of PLC.
(1) While expecting PLC to sustain its development, share resources, offer collaborative opportunities and design practical lessons, teachers are facing funding shortages, a difficulty to find right partners and losing expertise teachers.
(2) When it comes to the development of school unique features, PLC has the ideal to design school-based curriculum, maintain school features and train teachers to obtain relevant expertise. However, a decreasing number of existing teachers, lacking of curriculum-design staffs and the disappearance of PLC are bringing negative impacts.
(3) PLC certainly helps teachers learn together. Yet, due to individualism and those not fully understanding policies, teachers may hesitate to open their classrooms for observation. This is expected that PLC activities can replace open classroom observation once the 12-Year Basic Education Curricula are put into practice.
In the final part, the study offers several suggestions.
Keywords: teacher culture, teachers' professional learning community, qualitative research
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