Teacher Professional Learning
Communities: Congenial Workgroup or
Opportunity for Challenging
Professional Discussions and Building
New Pedagogical Approaches?
Presentation to ACE Education on the Square, November 13, 2013
Introductory discussion
• Who belongs to PLC of any kind?
• What makes it a PLC?
• Who has PLC operating in their
schools/other educational contexts
and how are these organised?
Professional Learning Community (PLC)
PLCs within education used for teacher learning & skill building, with ongoing
contacts, coaching, mentoring being effective
‘…small groups of teachers who come together as a team to
help one another improve student learning. The team members
share and reflect on their practice and personal experiences,
observe each other's practices, and study and apply research
and best practices together’
(Education Northwest 2012, 3, citing Sather & Barton, 2006).
Researcher agreement re PLC features:
• working collaboratively & regularly over extended timeline
• shared values and vision
• practical activities focused on student learning
• using inquiry stance.
• Also leadership support & distributed leadership
(Bolam, McMahon, Stoll, Thomas, Wallace & Greenwood; 2005; Johnson, 2009; Darling-Hammond & Richardson, 2009; Coburg
& Russell, 2008; Dumont, Istance & Benavides, 2010; Scott, Clarkson & McDonough, 2011; Owen, 2012; Head, 2003).
PLC characteristics
Teacher inquiry
Collaborative
learning
Joint enterprise
& shared beliefs
School-based PLCs
Supportive &
shared leadership
Ongoing
collaboration
Practical activities
& student data
Background to innovation
•
Creation and implementation of ‘new processes, products, services and methods of delivery which result in
significant improvements in the efficiency, effectiveness or quality of outcomes…(and) the application of new
ideas to produce better outcomes’ (Australian National Audit Office ANAO, 2009).
OECD research (2011)
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Traditional education not working (OECD/CERI, 2008; Bentley et al., 2006)
Innovative approaches needed for 21st century skill-building (Dumont et al., 2010)
Teacher role needing change (Dumont et al., 2010)
OECD Innovative Learning Environments project (ILE) involving 26 countries in 3 phases. 2011: 7 DECD
sites
Key innovation principles arising from Phase 1 research (OECD, 2011)
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Make learning central, encourages engagement, and in which learners come to understand themselves
as learners.
Is where learning is social and often collaborative.
Is highly attuned to learners’ motivations and emotions.
Is acutely sensitive to individual differences including in prior knowledge.
Is demanding for each learner but without excessive overload.
Uses assessment consistent with its aims, with strong emphasis on formative .
Promotes horizontal connectedness across activities and subjects, in- and out-of-school.
Key areas for innovation : Learners, Content, Organisation of Learning, Resources and Teachers
Educational innovation models and characteristics
LEARNERS
New groupings, targeted
for specific groups,
learners define goals
RADICAL INNOVATION
• Significant shift in design
• Swims against the tide
• Starts with the future & works
backwards
Transformation?
TEACHERS
Teams & multidisciplinary teachers,
coach/facilitator role,
other adults/peers
CONTENT
New foci for content,
21C competencies,
values, co-constructed
curricula
ORGANISATION
Innovative
approaches to
scheduling,
groupings,
pedagogies,
assessment &
guidance
RESOURCES
Innovative uses of
infrastructure, space,
community and
technology
Overall research question/methods
Insufficient research about how PLCs operate to support teachers to
build new skills in changed role required of them in significantly
innovative contexts including impacts on student learning
Mixed methods: 3 SA case studies
OVERALL
PROJECT
Literature &
school
document
3 schools
Whole
staff PLC
survey
Principal
interviews
Teacher
interviews
focus groups
&
observations
Student
work
products
discussion
& analysis
Joint enterprise
& shared beliefs
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Overall Findings
Practical activities
& student data
New skills needed for teacher role: co-learner, facilitator, deep questioning, insightful feedback
Teacher learning in PLCs: ongoing day-to-day, practical activities in teams/shared research
inquiry team/peer observation
Some PLC teams were focused on co-teaching/co-planning with a particular group of students or
conducting joint action research re interest topics, school plan directions
PLCs consistent with other research: shared values, collaboration, practical activities,
collaborative inquiry focus, supportive & distributed leadership
Leadership role important to provide time, funding & support for groups but also build culture of
shared leadership in teams
PLC practical activities eg co-plan, co-teach, co-assess, co-reflect focused on students (&
data/evidence) brings new skills
Student learning, also responsibility for team learning: eg conference/other ideas shared
PLC not just about congeniality/conviviality/contrived collegiality, but challenge/respecting
diverse views, and this leads to learning
Ongoing
collaboration
Supportive &
shared leadership
Teacher inquiry
& collaborative
learning
Joint enterprise
& shared beliefs
PLC & learning
Teacher inquiry
& collaborative
learning
...a
really rich environment of discussion with ideas coming from all sorts of discipline perspectives
because we’ve all got different backgrounds, different training and bringing that together…People are
talking about their research or might be just talking about their own philosophy of education or just
their own experiences in the classroom, things that worked and didn’t work or things they’d like to try
out…a genuine interaction, cross –fertilisation and a genuine professional respect…..Discussions we
have here are much deeper. They’re ongoing because time is provided for that (Teacher interview 7).
I wanted to be a teacher. It all comes together (in the PLC). You get so many ah hah, so many
more ah hah moments than you would in a classroom (working alone). You get them daily
rather than maybe once a month, and that’s just fantastic (Teacher interview 10).
‘there’s professional learning right through the day on a daily basis because of our team
teaching scenario, where teachers can bounce ideas off each other and reflect at the end of
the day and for following days. So there is that learning from and with one another on that
basis’ (Leader interview 2).
…a group of people that are deliberately acting to improve the quality of their skills in
their profession…People working together or using each other as sounding boards
for sharing data …taking deliberate steps to do that …A team of teachers working
together with, aiming to, improve student outcomes and by default, some of that
professional learning stuff comes through (Teacher interview 5).
: ‘we tackle big-picture issues and problems and smaller issues…share joys and concerns
Teacher learning through co-planning, co-teaching, coassessment, co-reflection
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Co-planning within the professional learning communities with a
focus on a particular group of students:
‘People will come up with an idea for a theme and that can
come from anywhere. Anyone in the group can suggest an
idea for a theme…. you know, raw idea, right through to
something that they’ve actually thought quite a bit about.
And people are accepting of that. And then we can go
through basically a brainstorming session…. And you end
up then with about 2000 ideas, not all of which you can do.
And so then we have a smaller team of volunteers to go and
massage that stuff……They meet back as a whole team’
(Leader interview 3).
Practical activities
& student data
Interdisciplinary teams and building skills across disciplines or sharing ideas in
planning and being highly creative
•
‘..it started with someone, one of us, saying Oh, we could do this, and
then it just went from there. And there were just all these incredible
creative ideas that flowed…. I think it was almost that we just allowed
ourselves to accept each other as professional learners and teachers,
and we honoured the work of each other. We all felt like we were
contributors at a high level, and that our ideas were fantastic. And
there was a confidence in the group ……….it was just a magic, magic
couple of days of creativity ‘(Teacher interview 11).
Creative approaches to teach complex concepts
•
Practical activities
& student data
‘….we sat down and we had a lesson plan. Both of us went Oh, that’s
just boring, like it’s easy and it’s boring. But let’s try and do something
new, let’s try and make it interesting, and stuff. So I guess what we …
There was much more hands-on… we printed stuff out and cut them
out and stuff. They had to make puzzles and join things together,
instead of just telling them This is how it works. Like there was a role
play where each of the students had to be an amino acid, and we
formed a protein, and the different types of bonds were formed’
(Teacher interview 5) .
Informal observation of other teachers as they question and facilitate
with individuals and students
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‘….a traditional classroom teacher I’m out the front, I’m the teacher
and you’re the learner, sort of structure, it’s blown out of the water
…You’re a co-learner and you may have some answers but you don’t
have all of them. So you’re assisting students with their learning as an
advisor, an advisory teacher, rather than standing in some sort of high
echelon and speaking down or across. You’re alongside, and I think
that I learnt a lot from watching (…) and (…) in the space, working with
students, and their deep inquiry questioning’ (Teacher interview 11).
Practical activities
& student data
Observing instructional session & interdisciplinary & new knowledge
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‘ (…) did …explicit teaching .. I was on crowd control. I was like Wow,
this is guy, his stuff is amazing. And the guy, the way it’s presented,
but the personality, it was so exciting. And then watching (…) in action
with their map. And I thought Wow, I’ve never learnt so much Maths
…We’ve been exposed to different curriculum areas. I think that’s
been good’ (Teacher interview 12).
Ongoing
collaboration
Collaboration & collegiality
Deprivatisation, mutual support, responsibility to the team, reinvigorating the
passion for teaching and developing deep understandings through shared
work
‘…the stuff around
passion, to me that’s what professional learning communities reinvigorate.
Putting people back in contact with why they want to be teachers. Because
you’re talking about learning, talking about teaching. You’re not talking
about behavior management’ (Leader interview 1).
‘If you’ve got someone in the PLC (professional learning community)
who’s a really deep thinker and is going for some really rich stuff and
[for] somebody [else it] might be…more of a surface-based thing,
they’re going to be exposed to this deeper thinker and have that kind of
level of thinking modeled to them’ (Leader interview 2).
‘..when you get a group of people that are interested in one thing you can,
it’s almost like a wildfire, you can spread your enthusiasm with others. And
when you’ve got three or four like-minded people, it’s amazing how much
further you push those boundaries’ (Teacher interview 8).
Inquiry & challenge
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Teacher inquiry
& collaborative
learning
Hargreaves, 1992; Head, 2003; Grossman, Wineburg and Woolworth, 2000, 2001;
Jarzabkowski, 2001) emphasise supporting professional learning through collaboration
Survey: highly positive responses (to large/great extent) for
o
o
reflective dialogue (83%, 88%, 75%): including talking about situations/specific challenges
Inquiry (97%, 94%, 75%): openness to improvement, teachers taking risks to try new
techniques/ideas & making efforts to learn more about their profession
‘Teacher inquiry is supported through structured action research groups for all staff: ‘to engage in
reflection on their practice…gathering some data and doing something with this, observe and then
report back…true inquiry’ (Leader interview 1).
Teachers identified on rubrics a collaborative culture and action research & operating at
sustaining stage to ‘work collaboratively to identify collective goals, develop strategies to
achieve those goals, gather relevant data and learn from each other [using] …interdependent
efforts’ and also in regard to ‘action research as an important component of their professional
responsibilities…frequent discussion regarding the implication of findings as teachers attempt
to learn from the research of their colleagues’.
Not contrived collegiality, conviviality, congeniality: PLC deprivatises teaching with common goals,
building interdependence, also building culture beyond the work group & open to new ideas/ guarding
against insularity, with continuous PL & debate (Stoll et al, 2006; Fullan, 1993).
I feel responsible that if I’ve got a good idea or a quality way of doing something I’ve got a duty to share
that….I’ve got a responsibility to her and to the students to do the best possible job I can and if that means
suggesting something different ….pointing out there’s a better way to do it (Teacher interview 5).
Ongoing
collaboration
Frank collegial discussions :
I said to her I actually found your approach to the kids quite
confronting at the beginning. And because we’d developed mutual
respect through the ongoing discussions, she didn’t feel threatened by
that…. I’m a bit uncomfortable with particular kinds of kids. And I
learned from her, if you like, a way of dealing with that. And I wasn’t
quite sure I could implement, but it was a little ah hah moment. And
more than that there was the opportunity to discuss things with
another teacher, uncomfortable things if you like, in a really respectful,
open way. And we surveyed the kids about how they find working with
the two of us, because we did have such different styles and they did a
little video feedback for us
(Teacher interview 7)
Another teacher in a different context similarly discussed the importance of
challenge and diverse views being an important part of the professional
learning community: ‘It’s very important to know what you’re talking about.
And having a challenge you don’t want to get up there and make a fool of
yourself …So you go back and start doing the research and making sure
that what you’re doing is actually what you should be doing’ (Teacher
interview 8).
PLC developmental stages
Mulford (1998): ‘forming’ (polite), ‘storming’ (conflict over power), ‘norming’ (social cohesion and willingness to
share), ‘performing’ (increase in task orientation and feedback), ‘transforming’ (group learns from feedback and
may change tasks or ways of doing them), ‘dorming’ (resting to prevent burnout) and ‘mourning’ (group
dissolution).
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Mulford (1998): role of the school leader to ensure that PLCs go beyond the ‘forming’ ‘etc ’ phases to
‘performing/ ‘transforming’
Du Four (2004): ‘pre initiation’, ‘initiation’, ‘developing’ and ‘sustaining’ & significant leadership role &
‘action research’ from pre initiation stage involving ndividual teacher classroom experimentation
without support to ‘sustaining’ level with ‘action research’ is characterized as involving ‘topics…from
the shared vision and goals of the school. Staff members regard action research as an important
component of their professional responsibilities. There are frequent discussions regarding the
implications of findings as teachers attempt to learn from the research of their colleagues’
Grossman et al.’s (2001) PLC ‘beginning’, ‘evolving’ and ‘mature’ stages.
• ‘Communal responsibility for individual growth’ initially focused on student learning but at
mature level there is commitment to the growth of colleagues about the obligations of
community membership.
• ‘‘Negotiating the essential tension’ at the mature level involves recognition that teacher
and student learning are intertwined
Beginning
Evolving
Mature
Formation of group identity & understanding difference
Sense of individualism
Recognition of individual
contribution
Individuals are interchangeable Pseudocommunity: conflict?
Denial of difference/conflict
Divergent views/Conflict feared
Identification with group
Multiple perspectives
Communal responsibility for
group
Understanding conflict &
productive use of difference
Negotiating the essential tension
Lack of agreement over PLC
purposes
Begrudging willingness to let different Recognition of teacher and student
people pursue different activities
learning being intertwined
Taking communal responsibility for individual growth
Belief of teacher responsibility to
students not colleagues
Recognising colleagues are sources
for learning
Commitment to colleagues’ growth
Recognition that participation is
expected for all
Accepting obligation of community
membership
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Dr Susanne Owen
Principal Officer, Research & Innovation
Leader: ILE project & DECD innovation
E: susanne.owen@sa.gov.au
Ph 8226 3677
Academic Developer, University of South Australia
E: susanne.owen@unisa.edu.au
Ph: 8302992