What is a Professional Learning Community?

Let us start with the definition of a professional learning community. In education PLC is described as any combination of individuals with a common interest in education, consisting of a grade-level teachers, school administration, school departments, a state department of education, and so on (DuFour, 2004). However, it is not to say that every joint work of these stakeholders can be a professional learning community. To identify what makes up PLCs it is important to have a glance on the main components of PLC (DuFour, 2004).

1. Ensuring that students learn

One of the core ideas of PLC is ensuring that students are not only being taught but also learning (DuFour, 2004). Commitment to student learning must be at the center of professional learning. Educators who are part of PLC believe that “all children can succeed in school”. PLCs must ask themselves, “What happens in our school when, despite our best efforts, a student does not learn?” It becomes the responsibility of PLCs to ensure that students have opportunities for intervention and that systematic and timely supports are in place.

2. Focus on Results.  Determining whether the efforts of educators are resulting in improvements is important. In order to focus on learning rather than teaching, student knowledge and skills must be consistently considered and reviewed. Every teacher participates in an ongoing process of identifying the current level of student achievement, establishes a goal to improve the current level, work together to achieve that goal. Collect data and analyze.

3. Relationships. The members of a PLC are involved in sharing with others. The action can only occur successfully in a community that is based on strong relationships. One of the basic principles is deep respect. When we share our practices and understandings, we become vulnerable to the judgments of others. Sometimes this may involve conflict between differing viewpoints. With deep respect infused in a PLC, conflict can be dealt with professional, open, and non-judgmental dialogue. 

4. Collaborative Inquiry. PLC is based on collaboration. Collaboration is promoted through team teaching, teacher moderation and study groups, action research, case study discussions, mentoring, and peer coaching. PLCs in turn benefit from these learning strategies as teachers share new skills, experiences, and knowledge gained.

5. Leadership. In any effective school, leaders are required to promote supportive environments, encourage risk taking, and challenge the status quo when it comes to student learning. They need to build and maintain distributive leadership models to sustain the professional learning. Such models allow teachers to be leaders in the school, to be “transformational leaders” who transform students’ lives, motivate and inspire them.

First steps how to create PLC.

Establish common ground and clear priorities toward the school’s vision for reform.

If teachers do not feel a common need to change current practice, or do not fully understand the vision for change, encourage school leaders to meet with their teaching faculty. At this meeting, the school community should talk about and find common ground on the need and vision for change. The discussion should be open, involve the entire school community, and include constructive sharing of questions, doubts, concerns.

Allow Enough Time

It's important to carve out enough time for learning groups to meet and work through their issues regularly. For example these 2 structural conditions can be suggested:

Provide common preparation time—build the schedule to provide common preparation periods for teachers. Each group of teachers might designate 1 day per week to engage in collaborative rather than individual planning.

Adjusted start and end time—gain collaborative time by starting the workday early or extending the work day one day each week to gain collaborative group time.

Create an Atmosphere of Trust

To the educator accustomed to closing the door, sharing information can be discomforting. To overcome these barriers, it is necessary to encourage teachers to form a book club or a discussion group about a teaching topic. Once they share opinions in a trusting setting, they'll be open to discussing more. It can be suggested asking teachers to pair up and observe each other's classes. There should be no judgment in these visits. The goal is building comfort.

To build and sustain PLC takes a lot of efforts and hard work on the side of all stakeholders but PLC is completely new way of working together that profoundly affects the school improvement.

Reference:

DuFour, R. (2004). What is a professional learning community? Educational Leadership, 61(8), 6-11. Retrieved from: http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/may04/vol61/num08/What-Is-a-Professional-Learning-Community¢.aspx