Professional learning communities: Research and practices across six educational systems in the Asia-Pacific region

The world is changing at seemingly breakneck speed. Many nations around the world are undertaking wide-ranging reforms of curriculum, instruction, and assessment to prepare students for increasingly complex demands of life and work and develop the ability to compete effectively in a knowledge-based economy. Teachers are the single biggest in-school influence on student achievement and teacher quality is therefore central to improving education systems around the world. This challenge grows ever more acute as the demands on education systems become more ambitious – to prepare all students with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions for success in an increasingly globalized and digital world (Asia Society, 2012 Asia Society. (2012). Teaching and leadership for the twenty-first century