Establishing Inquiry-Based Professional Learning Communities In An International School

The concept of international schools is growing in popularity as science and industry bring professionals and their families to international contexts far from home. International schools are often designed to mirror curriculum and structures of schools from well-developed nations (such as the US UK and Canada) no matter what country they are located in. These international schools employ over 300000 educators who have cultural origins and training backgrounds from all over the world. Due to this a major challenge within international schools is establishing supported and sustainable teacher collaboration structures among their heterogeneous faculty. As a practitioner scholar in an international school Dr. Dumbuya Jr. sought to examine this teacher collaboration challenge by assuming the role of implementer of a teacher collaboration initiative. This study seeks to answer the research question of how an embedded researcher and novice teacher leader implemented inquiry-based professional learning communities (PLC) within an international school.