Teachers’ Learning Circle in Afghanistan : - A new experience of Professional Development of Male and Female School Teachers in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan.

Abstract: Professional development (PD) of teachers is very important and plays a significant role in teachers’ development both in terms of his/her knowledge, skills, and motivation in today’s emerging world. In Afghanistan, the term Teacher Learning Circle (TLC) is used to refer to PD of teachers. TLC focuses on improving teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and subject knowledge as well as creating a culture of sharing ideas, experiences and having collaboration among them. I present here the findings of my research in Mazar -e- Sharif City. The aim of this study was to find out if the TLCs function as they are proposed by the Ministry of Education in Afghanistan, how the teachers perceive it and which topics are discussed. Furthermore, are there any differences between views of male and female teachers regarding TLCs? Quantitative data for this study was collected with the help of questionnaire especially designed for this purpose. The research took place with 174 respondents (both male and female) out of 869 teachers in 15 schools (20 % of all schools in Mazar) with in Mazar-e-Sharif City and there were found some interesting differences between male and female respondents in their perception of TLC as well as discussion of topics and issues in the meetings. To name a few, male teachers perceived TLCs as the group working on a common problem while female teachers viewed TLCs as a group of teachers of the same subject, from the same school working on a common problem. Topics of discussion of teachers differed from subject matter related topics like math, language, physics and pedagogical content related topics like lesson planning, making questions, class room management and so on.