A practice to examining the effect of the professional learning community on the professional development of primary school teachers and the success of students

The purpose of this research is to reveal that the Professional Learning Community can be developed and applied, and to determine whether this training makes a meaningful contribution to student success by examining the perceptions and experiences of teachers regarding this community. Mixed methods research design which comprises quantitative and qualitative research approaches was used in the study. The sample of the research consisted of classroom teachers working at Mehmet Çolakoğlu Primary School located in Şehitkâmil districts of Gaziantep province in the academic year of 2019-2020. A total of 12 teachers were assigned to the experimental (N=6) and control groups (N=6). Qualitative interviews were conducted with 6 teachers participating in the experimental group. The Achievement Test developed by the researcher was used in order to examine how PLC is perceived by teachers as well as its effect on student achievement. Furthermore, an evaluation form consisting of 20 items was used in order to evaluate the applied program according to the opinions of the participants. According to the findings of the study, the Professional Learning Community has made positive contributions to the teachers both professionally and individually, and it was stated by the teachers that this training was very useful. According to the results of the achievement test applied to the students of the teachers in the experimental and control groups, it was seen that the difference between pre-test and post-test scores were significant, and the difference in the experimental group was found to have a large effect size. No significant difference was found among pre-test achievement scores of the control and experimental groups but there is a significant difference among the post-test achievement scores of the groups and it was observed that the effect size is very high. It was concluded that the participants believed that similar training programs would have positive effects at schools.