The effect of the professional learning community developed in faculty- school cooperation on the professional skills of teachers

Alternative ways should be discovered in order to increase the development of teachers' professional skills and improve their teaching practices. New methods for the professional development of teachers are discussed. One of these methods is professional learning communities. Vocational learning communities provide a context to bridge the gap between the ideal characteristics of professional learning (theoretical knowledge) and the limitations of traditional professional development initiatives (practical knowledge). Professional learning community; is a community that shares, criticizes and questions the practices of a group of people in a continuous, reflective, collaborative, inclusive, learning-oriented, growth-promoting way. This research focuses on the problems that teachers experience regarding their professional skills. As a result of the interviews and analyzes in the group meetings; It was found that teachers had difficulties in teaching subjects that are difficult to learn, they are unaware of new approaches and theories, they continue to traditional forms of education, they are not supported in school environment, they are isolated from their colleagues and they struggle with the complexity of curriculum rather than developing themselves professionally. This work; It aims to increase the skills of the mathematics teachers of the vocational learning community, which has been developed in cooperation with the Faculty-School, to plan the training-learning, create learning environments, teach and manage the learning process. The study was designed with the action research method, also known as teacher research. The participants of the study consist of three mathematics teachers working at the high school level of a private education institution affiliated to the Ministry of National Education (MoNE). In the research, meeting sound recordings, video recordings and observation forms were used as data collection tools. Descriptive analysis method used in cases where sufficient theoretical framework is known in the analysis of data is preferred. Long-term interaction, data diversification, participant confirmation and peer evaluation were used to ensure validity. Various solutions have been produced against the problems detected during the action research process. The effects of the solutions produced on the professional skills and practices of teachers; It was gathered in eight different themes such as speechless teachers, carrier questions, entertaining mathematics, passive teachers, active teachers, dialogue teaching, moderator teacher and folding questions and given in the findings section. Findings of the study It was observed that teachers increased from Suskun Teachers to Active teachers in the light of the criteria defined by Joyce and Calhoun (2010). In the conclusion and discussion section, the results of the study are compared with similar studies carried out at home and abroad. It was understood that the professional skills of the teacher developed in parallel with the literature, but in our study, the support of external experts was immediately accepted by the teachers. The reason for this is that participating teachers; in the process, in collaboration with external experts, to accept new approaches such as Dialogical Teaching, Carrier Questions and Paper Folding Activities, to redesign the lesson plans in line with the new approaches and to apply these approaches in their classrooms. At the end of the study, various suggestions were presented to the researchers for the establishment of a professional learning community in mathematics.