Professional Learning Communities: Practices for Successful Implementation

Abstract

Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) involve teachers in site-based, ongoing, collaborative professional development. Three education department faculty members, interested in developing university-school partnerships, undertook this study in order to identify the factors that led to the successful establishment of PLCs with community schools, to determine how university faculty can facilitate the formation of the PLCs, and to understand how PLCs can help develop positive relationships between university and school personnel. Three PLCs were formed around the topics of formative assessment, developing math sense, and the effects of poverty on teaching and learning. The participants provided feedback related to the elements of the PLCs that they valued most highly, and the researchers identified factors that supported and challenged the implementation of PLCs, as well as the ways positive relationships could be developed. The Professional Learning Community (PLC) is gaining recognition as an effective strategy for promoting long-term professional development for educators (Dallas, 2006; Schmoker, 2005; Stoll, Bolam, McMahon, Wallace, & Thomas, 2006). In contrast to the traditional paradigm of professional development in which teachers attend off-site workshops and conferences that may or may not inspire them to change their thinking or instruction, the PLC involves teachers in site -based, ongoing, collaborative professional development. According to DuFour (2005), PLCs are groups of educators working together with a shared vision, beliefs, or values. Little (2003) suggested that PLCs are groups in which new knowledge about instruction and content is constructed, but also places where existing beliefs and assumptions about education, community, teaching, and learning are challenged and critiqued. According to Hargreaves (1994), collaborative cultures are spontaneous, voluntary, and task- or development-oriented, whereas contrived collegiality is often regulated, compulsory, and used to implement system initiatives. PLCs should embody the characteristics of collaborative cultures. During the 2010-2011 school year, as three members of the Education Department of a small, liberal arts college in the Midwest, we utilized funds from a Congressional Appropriations grant in order to initiate and guide the development of PLCs in three community schools. The goals for the establishment of the PLCs included (a) to develop relationships with local schools as learning communities, (b) to enhance collaboration within individual schools and between schools and the university, (c) to engage in reciprocal investigation and learning that lead to collective inquiry and reflection, (d) to provide for site-based application of new learning, (e) to conduct research with teachers that would enable us to learn about the sustainability and growth of professional learning communities, and (f ) to provide field placements for preservice teachers in which best practices are modeled. In order to secure administrative support and attract interested teachers, we first invited area superintendents or representatives to a presentation about the PLCs. Those who attended the presentation received a packet of information including the form on which they could submit a proposal to Gina, the second author. Several groups of educators from area schools submitted proposals, and three were selected by members of the Education Department. The money from the grant was used to provide graduate course credits for the teachers, stipends for the teachers and the faculty members, and other materials and resources. In this article, we present literature that identifies theory and practice related to PLCs, describe the study as we investigated the formation of the PLCs, and identify the conclusions and future directions. Related Research The concept of PLCs is similar to the idea of team-based learning communities popularized in the book, In Search of Excellence (Peters & Waterman, 1982). …