Agenda Overview
• Problems of Practice – (same triads)
– Break
• School Visits
– Personal reflection
– Partner share
• Research overview On PLCs and the
connection to professional learning
• Homework
• Critical reflections
Powerful Professional Learning
Professional Learning Community
Teachers Improve Their Practice in the Company of Their Peers
• A PLC is a particular design for collaborative professional
learning.
• There is no universal definition of a professional learning
community (Stoll, 2008).
• Key features of PLC’s date back to Dewey.
• A key purpose of PLCs is to enhance teacher effectiveness as
professionals, for students’ ultimate benefit (Stoll, 2008). This is
why our project’s definition suggests that the ultimate
outcome of PLCs has to be experienced by students.
• An effective professional learning community has the capacity
to promote and sustain the learning of all professionals in the
school community with the collective purpose of enhancing
pupil learning (Bolam et al., 2005, p. 145)
PLC’s: A Review of the Literature
Stoll, L.; Bolam, R.; McMahon, A; Wallace, M.; Thomas, S. (2006)
http://schoolcontributions.cmswiki.wikispaces.net/file/view/PROFESSIONAL+LEARNING+COMMUNITIES+A+REVIEW+OF.pdf
• Characteristics:
– Shared values and vision
– Collective responsibility
– Reflective professional inquiry
– Collaboration
– Group, as well as individual, learning is promoted
– Mutual trust and respect
– Inclusive membership
Impact of PLCs
• Impact cannot be separated from purpose.
• Purpose is not to be a PLC, key purpose is to
enhance teaching effectiveness as professionals,
for students’ benefit.
– Greater confidence
– Enhanced efficacy towards improving student learning
– Enthusiasm for collaborative work with colleagues and
peers
• Students achieved at higher levels in schools with
positive professional communities.
Timperley (2007)
•
Teacher Professional Learning and Development: Best Evidence Synthesis
•
http://www.oecd.org/edu/school/48727127.pdf
• 97 individual research studies or groups of studies
Timperley (Findings)
•
Opportunities for teachers to engage in professional learning and development
can have a substantial impact on student learning.
1. The context of professional learning and development that impacted student
outcomes:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
g.
Extended time for opportunities to learn was necessary but not sufficient. How time was used was
important.
External expertise was typically necessary but not sufficient.
Teachers’ engagement in learning at some point was more important than initial volunteering.
Prevailing discourses challenged. The challenge to discourses typically involved iterative cycles of
thinking about alternatives and becoming aware of learning gains made as a result of changed
teaching approaches.
Opportunities to participate in a professional community of practices were more important than
place. Effective communities provided teachers with opportunities to process new understandings
and challenge problematic beliefs, with a focus on analyzing the impact of teaching on student
learning.
Consistency with wider trends in policy and research.
Active school leadership. Focused on developing a learning culture within the school and were
learners along with the teachers and created the conditions for distributing leadership by
developing the leadership of others.
Timperley (Findings)
2. The Content of Professional Learning and Development:
a.
b.
c.
d.
Different aspects integrated. Integration of theory and practice was a key feature. Theory
provided the basis for making curricular and pedagogical decisions. Teachers were assisted
to translate theory into classroom practice. Integration of pedagogical content knowledge,
of assessment information, and of how students learn particular curricula was a feature of
most curriculum-based interventions documented in the core studies but was given
different emphasis in different curricula.
Clear links between teaching and learning and/or student–teacher relationships established.
Assessment used to focus teaching and enhance self-regulation.
Sustainability. Sustainability was dependent on teachers acquiring both of the following: Indepth understanding of theory, which served as a tool to assist instructional decision
making; The skills of inquiry to judge the impact of teaching on learning and to identify next
teaching steps.
Timperley (Findings)
3. Activities Constructed To Promote Professional Learning
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
4.
Content and activities aligned.
A variety of activities needed.
Content conveyed through the activity was more important than any particular activity.
Professional instruction sequenced.
Understandings discussed and negotiated. Initial activities sometimes showed that there
were problems with teachers’ existing theories of practice.
Student perspective maintained.
Learning Processes and Teachers’ Responses
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Substantive change is difficult
Necessary to develop new understandings. Cueing existing knowledge was necessary for
theory engagement but insufficient to change practice.
Some new understandings were consistent with current positioning.
Some new understandings created dissonance with current positioning.
In a few interventions, teachers learned to regulate their own and others’ learning.
Timperley, 2007
Discuss
• What might you, as the primary school leader,
do to make the PLC in your school a more
effective professional learning environment?