초록/요약

This study aimed to explore the process of managing a teacher learning community and meaning it has in a kindergarten. Five teachers in a teacher learning community composed of the Haneul elementary school kindergarten class located in P Metropolitan City participated in the study, which was conducted as a single case study. The study was conducted over the time period of March 2019 to March 2020, and data from participation observation, interviews, and teachers’ journals was collected. This collected data was then analyzed through a spiral procedure as proposed by Creswell (2010). The results of this study were as follows. First, the teacher learning community of the kindergarten went through four operative stages of formation, stagnation and reorganization, activation, and maintenance and development. Each of the stages was characterized as the combination of passionate teachers and democratic school culture, redefining of the community’s visions and goals, teachers’ cooperative learning and practice, and the preparation for goal achievement respectively. Second, the teachers recognized that the teacher learning community gave them both burdens and expectations, but also allowed them to collaborate more to face shared problems and communicate more effectively with each other as to improve emotional stability based on trust and communication among them.. The results of the study showed the importance of managing various teacher learning communities in that they are extremely beneficial for kindergarten teachers as they allow the teachers to better collaborate with colleagues, solve important educational issues, and increase teachers’ professionalism.