Professional Learning Communities

What is a PLC?

• "PLCs are defined as “educators committed to working collaboratively in ongoing processes of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve” (Ning, 2015).
• PLC's are unique in that they serve two purposes; colleague collaboration and student achievement.

Benefits

• Teacher isolation and loneliness decrease.
• Ensures high-quality teaching.
• Commitment to school goals strengthen.
• Bond between administrators and faculty grows.
• "Positively affect student achievement, teacher morale, teacher effectiveness and job satisfaction, school culture and climate" (Kalkan, 2016).
• Trust is established and maintained.

Benefits (Cont.)

• First-year teachers gain mentors.
• Various activities are explored that may benefit students of multiple learning styles.
• Struggling students are focused on and programs are organized to get these learners back on track (ex: ELT).
• Student success will show immediate proof of PLC efficiency.
• Students will be able to hear same instruction by multiple educators, prompting background knowledge and recognition.

Drawbacks

• PLC's take immense time and effort, and if goals are not clearly stated, confusion occurs.

Learning from Experience

• An urban school district wanted to implement PLC's at their campus, but "many teachers throughout the district sat together in PLC teams with little knowledge of what they should be doing and no clear goals for their work" (Thesis, 2015).

Response

• "The district’s PLC Steering Committee drafted a Year II PLC Plan that included two specific elements to provide guidance in the implementation of effective PLCs: use of an improvement process to facilitate teachers’ work in teams and the identification of an instructional goal to guide the teams’ work" (Thessin, 2015).
• A mission minded statement is the key to effectively facilitating PLC groups.

How Can we Begin?

• It is important to discuss and decide on a PLC mission together as a grade-level team and/or administrative body.
• For quick feedback on the effectiveness of your PLC, use your planning time to assign struggling learners into small groups for a 45 minute period during the day. The goal of these small groups is to target a specific concept the students need reteaching on.

What next?

• Teacher teams will meet back up the next week to discuss improvements or lack thereof during PLC time and decide if they would like to continue. For the fifth and final outcome, if the team wishes to continue, they can propose to school administrators that other teams should be created in their grade levels due to the success or potential they have seen thus far.
• For the final outcome, if the team wishes to continue, they can propose to school administrators that other teams should be created in their grade levels due to the success or potential they have seen thus far.

References

• Kalkan, F. (2016). Relationship between Professional Learning Community, Bureaucratic Structure and Organisational Trust in Primary Education Schools. Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice, 16(5), 1619-1637. doi:10.12738/estp.2016.5.0022
• Ning, H., Lee, D., & Lee, W. (2015). Relationships between teacher value orientations, collegiality, and collaboration in school professional learning communities. Social Psychology Of Education, 18(2), 337-354. doi:10.1007/s11218-015-9294-x
• Thessin, R. A. (2015). LEARNING FROM ONE URBAN SCHOOL DISTRICT: PLANNING TO PROVIDE ESSENTIAL SUPPORTS FOR TEACHERS' WORK IN PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES. Educational Planning, 22(1), 15 27.