The Importance of Sharing, Caring and Collaboration in Thai Teacher Competency Development through Online Professional Learning Communities

Abstract

Due to the global COVID 19 pandemic, education in Thailand is undergoing a radical transformation in which state funds are moving from traditional schools to information communication technology (ICT) based education systems that support the development and teaching of online courses. As such, stress and workloads have increased significantly, even leading to student protests over the required conditions for online learning. Therefore, a systematic literature review was conducted to establish which components were most effective in an online professional learning community (OPLC) that supports the development of teacher competencies under the conditions now referred to as the 'New Normal .'From the analysis, six common themes were identified. These included 1) shared values and vision, 2) collaborative teamwork, 3) practice and cooperative learning, 4) a caring community, 5) shared leadership, and 6) supportive technology. After that, from the input of 30 teacher volunteers in five groups, a plan-see-do (PSD) mechanism was outlined, as well as the importance of the role model/model teacher, buddy teacher, and mentors was also established. Finally, we suggest OPLC implementation for teacher competency development has four stages, including a preparatory stage, an analysis stage, an OPLC implementation stage, and an OPLC testing and evaluation stage.