Effective collaboration
Session 2 –
Professional learning
communities
Developing collaborative
learning
• Welcome to Session 2, where we are going to use the
work you did in Session 1 to build skills to use in
collaborative teaching.
• The previous session explored teachers working
collaboratively, and some of the ways in which both
teachers and students benefited from this approach.
• In this session we are going to look at teachers working
together within school. In particular we are going to
consider professional learning communities (PLCs) and
how they operate.
• The theme for this session is ‘Shared focus on student
learning’.
An introduction to PLCs
• In exploring PLCs, we are going to be referring to the
Welsh Government’s guidance on PLCs.
• We will also be referencing the Practising Teacher
Standards (PTS). In addition to those standards
mentioned in Session 1, you will also be addressing:
17. Understand their role in improving literacy and
numeracy skills across the curriculum.
What are PLCs?
Although we can all identify ‘natural’ groups we work with
(colleagues in subjects, phases, pastoral responsibilities)
PLCs are different.
What are PLCs? (continued)
Activity 1
Using your learning journal, please note down what you understand by
a PLC. When you’ve done that check below to see whether your
definition matches that given by scholars in the field.
[Please press the space bar to reveal the text.]
• PLCs constitute a group of people especially brought together to
address a specific issue, using an enquiry based approach.
• The group will have a shared aim, will develop some enquiry
strategies and evaluate the results for dissemination with peers.
• The group may all come from one school, or from across schools,
or may involve agencies and institutions outside of school.
• PLCs are a highly structured approach to a form of professional
development that has as its focus improved learner outcomes.
What are PLCs? (continued)
Activity 1 (continued)
• Did you find areas in common with your definition and those
of researchers in the field? What was the same? What was
different?
PLCs: the stages
The Welsh Government have identified seven stages of a
PLC.
1. Identification of group participants.
2. Identification of the focus.
3. Action enquiry.
4. Innovation and change.
5. Trialling and feedback.
6. Refining.
7. Sharing outcomes.
In this session, we are going to use an in-school PLC to
explore and demonstrate how a PLC can work in a
particular context. We are going to use and develop the
areas using a school-based example.
PLCs: the stages (continued)
Activity 2
• To help with your own planning, you should use the
issue analysis grid (please refer to the ‘Facilitators’
handbook’).
• The grid will guide you through each stage of the
planning.
• It might be helpful to share this via Hwb or similar so
that everyone can access and amend the document as
you work together on developing this enquiry.
PLCs: Stages 1 and 2
• During this session we are going to illustrate the decisionmaking processes through our own project. For this example,
we are going to use an in-school PLC group who are working
on one of the Welsh Government’s priorities: literacy.
• The first two stages of a PLC are clearly linked: in order to
know who should be in the group, you have to know the issue
to be addressed.
• Our example focus is going to be raising standards of literacy
in Year 7 students. Who should be involved? This will vary
from school to school, but in this example we are going to
have a PLC group with the school literacy coordinator, Year 7
coordinator, the head of English, two Year 7 English teachers,
and two learning support assistants (LSAs) who work with
Year 7.
• LSAs are an extremely valuable resource in any classroom so
their involvement in PLCs are important. The following sixminute video is an example of a teacher and LSA working
together.
Our example: Literacy
• Before we go further, we have to define the questions
(rather than just the area) we want to understand and be
able to develop strategies to support.
• What does ‘raising standards of literacy in Year 7
students’ mean for our school? Is it about reading?
Writing? Speaking and listening? Spelling? All of those?
(That’s a big task!) So you might get the group to begin
by defining the question. That means spending some
time as a group reading and discussing the area so you
come to a shared understanding of the issue.
• For our example of literacy, we could begin by all looking
at the National Literacy Trust website.
Exploring the question
• The first stage is to make the area of enquiry
manageable and measureable. You cannot find out
everything at once and you would only find superficial
and temporary approaches if you tried to address too
many areas at once.
• So your task is to segment the issue. Select one or two
areas to focus on and break these down into small,
measureable steps. Using school and national data to
inform your choices is a helpful starting point.
• Once you have selected the area and accessed
available data, you will begin to have a sense of the
boundaries of your enquiry.
Exploring the question
(continued)
Activity 3
• For your own school, begin by considering the ‘focus’
and ‘staffing’ sections of the issue analysis grid
(please refer to the ‘Facilitators’ handbook’).
• For our project, we are going to focus on reading for
pleasure.
Defining the question
• You have already identified the area you have chosen to
address. You now need to list 3–5 component parts of
the issue that you will be looking at. The expertise of the
PLC will be crucial in identifying these component parts.
The key to success is to be specific and precise in your
selection of areas.
• For our project, we want to look at promoting enjoyment
of reading in Year 7. In developing our understanding of
the area, we are going to look at the following video and,
from that, identify some key areas within promoting
reading.
Defining the question
(continued)
Activity 4
Now go to the issue analysis grid (please refer to the
‘Facilitators’ handbook’) and describe the component parts
you have chosen to address.
Finding out about the area
• The next stage is to find out more about the component
parts you have identified. Share this task out between the
PLC members – everyone should have an area to find out
about and report back to the group on.
• You can use a wide variety of resources to help understand
the issues. You might, for example, call on existing expertise
in the group for advice. The internet will have a range of sites
to evaluate. You might even all watch a shared resource as a
starting point for discussion.
• For our focus, there is a helpful resource from DfE on
research evidence on reading for pleasure.
• The issue analysis grid asks you briefly to summarise your
findings. This way the whole PLC will have an overview of the
area. Share the issue analysis grid via an online resource
such as Hwb so everyone has access.
Finding out about the area
(continued)
Activity 5
Use the learning journal (please refer to the ‘Facilitators’
handbook’) to summarise the findings you have about the
area you are going to use for your action enquiry.
How will we know what works?
• Segmenting the area and identifying key components
makes the next activity – collecting information (data) on
success criteria – much easier, as you have already
clearly defined what it is you want to explore.
• Again, this stage is linked with Stages 4 (innovation and
change – deciding on the strategies) and 5 (trialling and
feedback – evaluated impact). Linking choices of
strategy and success criteria is an iterative process. As
a PLC, when you consider one area you will naturally
consider and refine your approaches elsewhere.
Thinking about strategies leads to impact; thinking about
measuring impact helps focus approaches to strategies.
Strategies and impact
• The next stage then is for the PLC to develop strategies
to support your action enquiry project, and to devise the
success criteria you are going to use to measure impact.
You might do this by sharing existing good practice in
school; by finding out about ideas in other schools in
your area; or by exploring resources online.
• Our example shows our strategies selected to promote
reading for pleasure and our success criteria. For
example, in our project, pleasure in reading is the key
issue. We will be investigating whether girls and boys
choose different reading materials, whether they read at
home, whether they use the library at school or locally,
and what books they have read for pleasure recently.
Strategies and impact
(continued)
Activity 6
Complete your own issue analysis grid (please refer to
the ‘Facilitators’ handbook’) with a summary of the
strategies you are proposing to use and the success
criteria you will use.
Stage 5: trialling and
feedback
• Your PLC will now have areas to explore as well as
information about those areas, and you will have had the
opportunity to talk about these areas in some depth. You
have identified how you will know ‘what works’ and your
approaches to collecting information. So the next stage
is to try out the strategies in the classroom.
• Again, this is something to plan for – who will be using
which strategies, with which classes/students, when and
where. This might sound obvious, but planning will
reveal that certain logistics need to be factored in.
Stage 5: trialling and
feedback (continued)
Activity 7
Please use the issue analysis grid (please refer to the
‘Facilitators’ handbook’) to plan the teaching sequences.
Accessing impact
• When your PLC is thinking about evidence for impact,
you will want to consider various ways of collecting that
information. Measureable does not have to mean
quantifiable, though this can be a useful type of data. It
can also mean qualitative data such as individual student
interviews or focus groups used to collect information.
• In the reflective practice PowerPoint presentation,
Session 3 suggests a number of ways of collecting data
in the classroom, including use of video and audio;
interviews and questionnaires; observation; graphic
representation and peer research assistants. All the
members of the PLC should be involved in decisions
about what data to collect, how to collect it, when and
with which class or student(s) and who will do that.
Accessing impact
(continued)
Activity 8
Now using the issue analysis grid (please refer to the
‘Facilitators’ handbook’), plan the data collection,
considering the who, what, where, when and how
questions you will find there.
Accessing impact: a PLC learning
journal and critical incidents
• As the teaching or intervention is underway, you might
also think about keeping a learning journal, also
introduced in the reflective practice PowerPoint
introduction resource. However, as this is a professional
community, we would suggest a slightly different
approach.
• A PLC learning journal should be a shared document,
either online using Hwb or similar, or a shared hard copy
document.
• Selecting what should be recorded as significant might
be left to the individual, or might be directed by the PLC,
so that, for example, all incidences of students talking
positively about reading (in our project) would be
recorded there.
Accessing impact: a PLC learning
journal and critical incidents
(continued)
• Creating such a record means you are, as a community,
identifying critical incidents which you know to be
significant in understanding the impact of your action
enquiry.
• Critical incidents can be defined as follows:
‘A critical incident need not be a dramatic event: usually it is
an incident which has significance for you. It is often an
event which made you stop and think, or one that raised
questions for you. It may have made you question an aspect
of your beliefs, values, attitudes or behaviour. It is an
incident which in some way has had a significant impact on
your personal and professional learning.’
Monash University
Accessing impact: a PLC learning
journal and critical incidents
(continued)
• In your PLC, discuss what might be the type of critical
incident you would want to see captured in the PLC
learning journal. This is valuable data that you can use in
Stages 6 and 7, refining and sharing the outcomes. Your
evidence does not have to be written.
• The PLC can be creative in allowing video, audio,
student drawing, staff drawing – so long as it is authentic
evidence for the PLC learning journal.
Stage 6: Refining the outcomes
• This is the stage where all your evidence will come
together to tell the ‘story’ of your strategies or
interventions, the successes, and the areas which need
developing or even excising. What worked and what did
not will be based on evidence.
• It is also the point where as a PLC you can reflect on
your own professional learning.
• What do you now know that you did not before you
began your action enquiry? How did working as part of a
PLC support that? How has your teaching been
developed as a result?
Stage 7: Sharing outcomes
• Szulanski (1996; 2003) has described the knowledge
that resides in institutions – in our case schools and staff
rooms – as ‘sticky knowledge’. It is knowledge that does
not get shared or transferred into the wider world. So
sharing outcomes is an important part of any knowledge
generation.
• Your audience will be colleagues, but may also include
governors, parents and carers, and other schools.
• There are a variety of ways of presenting and sharing
knowledge as a PLC. Poster presentations over a lunch
hour, with evidence and example, are both ‘light touch’
and informative. Inclusion of video clips, extracts from
the PLC learning journal, discussion on critical incidents,
all serve to enhance and enrich the evidence.
Stage 7: Sharing outcomes
(continued)
• It’s also a valuable resource to create a website which
might record the stages of your own research, the
outcomes and extracts of your own developing
professional knowledge as a PLC. Free sites such as
WordPress are straightforward and accessible ways of
recording your action enquiry journey. Designing it is a
good PLC activity – consider what each of you would like
to know about your own action enquiry and what
information you need to include.
• And do not forget the critical incidents approach you
have used for the PLC learning journal. This is valuable
data to draw on to demonstrate impact.
Summary
In this session you have:
• explored taking part in an in-school PLC which has
developed professional knowledge through an in-school
action enquiry
• considered the seven stages of a PLC and learned about
selection and representation of evidence, including a
PLC learning journal and the idea of critical incidents.
In the next session we will be exploring opportunity for
collaborative teaching using resources between schools
and other institutions.