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Makale Özeti:
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Professional development is essential in education organizations to equip the teacher with up-to-date knowledge and skills in facing education environment changes. Professional development must facilitate teacher learning, knowledge, and skills by resolving and supporting the problem faced in professional practice at the same time foster new ideas. Nonetheless, the current practice of professional development still faces change management failures or inefficiency. These research objectives are to identify the best practices in using social networking as a Community of Practice (CoP) platform for teachers and to analyze their perception in adopting social networking as part of their professional development platform. The earlier perception among 52 teachers at The Malay College Kuala Kangsar, Perak indicates that 67.3% of them are positive and the rest are unsure of using social networking as a professional development platform. After embarking with CoP, 91.3% of 23 participants agree that CoP could enhance their professionalism, and 65.2% have a positive perception of using the Facebook closed group as the platform. This research provides evidence on the possibility of leveraging social networking into CoP to provide alternative professional development. However, the implementation of CoP through social networking needs continuation and perfection so that the outcome of this professional development can be an effective platform for performance improvement and change management. With the strengths, weaknesses, and suggestions in three major aspects of CoP structural, individual management, and organization landscape discussed, it can provide the best practices and input for the next cycle of implementation in using social networking as a professional development platform.
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