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While teachers’ professional learning communities (PLCs) have been extensively studied, discipline-specific PLCs (DPLCs) have received less attention, particularly regarding the subject matter’s role and its connection to other community dimensions. To explore this, we conducted two independent studies on DPLCs. Study 1 examined physics teacher DPLCs, using participant observations and literature-based analysis. Study 2 investigated science and technology teacher DPLCs through interviews and passive observation, which was analyzed through content analysis. Both studies yielded remarkably similar findings, leading to a synthesized model encompassing five dimensions: the structural dimension, reflecting the community’s tangible and logical organization; the content dimension, emphasizing the discipline-specific focus of the DPLC; the common production dimension, showcasing joint enterprise activities and products of the DPLC; the social-affective dimension, addressing social, emotional, and value-based aspects that establish a sense of community; and the meta-community dimension, exploring the DPLC’s relationships with its broader environment. These dimensions operate bidirectionally: inward—the effect of the community on the individual, and outward—the effect of the individual teacher on the community. We discuss how interactions between these dimensions shape DPLCs and influence teacher development. Additionally, we highlight the significance of this unified model for DPLC leaders, researchers, and policymakers in teacher development. Full article

The goal of teaching quantum physics (QP) in high school is a problematic and highly turbulent area of divergent views, curricula studies, and claims. The innovative curricular approach of discipline-culture (DC) suggests a way of overcoming its significant difficulties. It suggests presenting QP as a fundamental theory structured in terms of the nucleus, body, and periphery. Applying this perspective in our study, we interviewed nine experts with respect to their view of how the nucleus of QP should be presented to high-school students. With the different viewpoints of the core essentials in hand, we compiled the nucleus of the QP. We also examined this subject using nine introductory university textbooks that might suit high school students and considered their coherence and suitability with regard to the specified nucleus. We found some confusion regarding the status of theoretical items: some fundamental principles, as perceived in the eyes of the experts, are presented as phenomena. Not only does this mismatch represent a special barrier for both the teachers and students to understand QP, it promotes an inadequate image of QP as well as a distorted view of the nature of science. Finally, we offer a framework for a DC-based QP curriculum free of the noted deficiencies. Full article