Teacher Learning in a Community of Practice: A Case Study of ...

what he's saying. And in that lesson like there's no ...he just cares two hoots.
He will just get up and hit another child because that child showed him a
face and something like that. Now how do you work in a class, you know what
I'm trying to say. You got children of all different calibres. How do you sort
it out or how do you let your lesson progress? Imagine if I had an EMS
lesson planned according to how I wanted it to go, but in the classroom
situation it won't. It definitely won't. It won't go according to how you
planned it.
Debbie's inability to communicate in the mother tongue ofsome ofher pupils proved to
be a major stumbling block to building relations between her and the non-English mother
tongue pupils. Debbie raised this issue at the TEMS group and received much support
and advice from other teachers. She went on to explain how she struggled with group
tasks:
Extract from initial interview:
Debbie: If you put them in groups and I don't go and start that discussion or lead
them or even if you lead them on, after that it falls flat. They're sitting and
looking. It's just one in that few that will do what you want them to do. And
one good example is I told you I'm doing that Market Day. That research
thing, such a simple thing. I gave them everything to do. Now if get 50%
that don't do it, how is your activity gonna be a success? ..... I'm being very
honest and as much as I try, you know, you can break your head. Just the
50% or so, 40% will work. The rest are not interested.
. Debbie expressed several difficulties that she experienced in getting pupils to sustain
group discussions. She felt that she had provided what was required ofthe research task,
but still did not achieve complete success with her pupils. In the initial interview Debbie
described her knowledge ofEMS as follows:
Debbie: Well, I'll say good but I'm still trying to get, you know, I'm still learning
because it's a fairly new learning area. So I won't say that it's excellent and
I'm still reading, trying to get familiar with the subject matter... r have to
do a lot of my own reading and learning before r plan the lesson and actually
teach.
She acknowledged that she was still learning the subject matter in the EMS learning area
and noted that she had to read and study the material before she could teach it to her
pupils. Debbie did not express any doubts that she could learn the 'subject matter' in the
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