If you are an educator seeking help improving teaching practices, joining a professional learning community can be the best choice. It will not only create an instructional and collaborative environment in the workplace but will also leverage the students’ learning experience.
Teachers work collaboratively in PLCs to make strategies for quality education and help students achieve their educational goals.
In this article, we will look at professional learning communities in education, their types, benefits, how they work, and how to join them.
What are Professional Learning Communities?
Professional learning communities are educator collaborations aimed at improving teaching practices and student achievement. Teachers meet regularly to solve problems and share new ideas.
Key Takeaways:
- It’s a goal-oriented effort for student achievement and continuous learning in the professional development of teachers.
- Created with the assumption that there is always scope for improvement.
- Independent of any other organizations and can function on their own.
- Teams can be formed at the grade level, vertically, or by experience level.
Do you know?
Grade-level, vertical, and experience-level teams are created in academic areas to communicate, support, and cooperate with students to improve their performance.
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Types of Professional Learning Communities
Professional development communities are classified into three types based on the way educators work.
- Work Team – Work team PLCs are formed by bringing together teachers with similar goals. It helps in facing similar challenges.
- Topics – Topic PLCs are created with teachers who specialize in specific topics like marketing, sales, trigonometry, and so on.
- Departments – Department PLCs are those that are based on similar departments, such as finance, machine learning, and so on.
Even though all these PLCs have different structures, their ultimate goal is students’ success.
Stages of Professional Learning Communities (DuFour)
As mentioned by Richard DuFour and Rebecca DuFour in their book “Building a Professional Learning Community at Work,” there are 7 stages of Professional Learning Communities.
Filling the Time
At this point, teams are aware of their objectives but are unable to carry them out. They simply try to get the most out of their days. This stage is characterized by bafflement, frustration, and a desire to return to the comfort zone.
Sharing Personal Practice
Teachers in this stage seek new ideas and are interested in what other teachers are doing. They generally talk about practices to adopt at this stage. However, they do not take any steps toward student learning at this stage.
Planning
In this stage, teachers collaborate to plan using a team approach. The different members take responsibility for planning lessons and sharing their work with others. Unfortunately, teachers fail to focus on learning and remain centered on teaching.
Developing Common Assessment
Sharing assessments helps teachers learn why navigating student success is necessary. This stage needs a clear and precise conversation, as newcomers may work together and avoid common assessments.
Analyzing Student Learning
In this stage, PLCs focus more on learning than teaching with a result-driven approach. They start analyzing the performance and areas of improvement of the students.
Adapting Instructions to Student Needs
Teachers and school leaders start taking responsibility at this stage. They collaboratively work together to help students learn and improve.
Reflecting on Instructions
In the last stage of PLC, the teams are engaged in deep reflection and innovative projects. Teachers observe classrooms, record videos, and reach out to people worldwide to help grow the PLC.
Look at this table to learn more about the issues and suggestions at each of the PLC stages.
| Stages | Questions that define stages | Things to do in this stage |
| 1. Filling the Time | What exactly is supposed to be done by teachers? | Teams at this stage need guidance on tasks and commitment.
Focus on creating a PLC structure for your team. |
| 2. Sharing Personal Practice | What is everyone doing in their classroom? | Work on projects that require collaboration.
Focus on harmony and appreciate collective efforts rather than individual ones. |
| 3. Planning | What should teachers teach, and how can they lighten their loads? | Are students learning what you want them to?
How do you know that students are learning? |
| 4. Developing Common Assessment | How can you be certain that the students learned?
What does mastery look like? | School leaders and teachers should focus on modeling strategies for joint decision-making.
Focus on time spent on assessment of learning and for learning.
Teachers should focus on skill development in assessment practices. |
| 5. Analyzing Student Learning | Are students learning what they are supposed to? | Teachers require tools and patience to analyze data. |
| 6. Adapting Instructions to Student Needs | How do the teachers adjust instructions to help students who are struggling and exceeding expectations? | Ask proactive and reflective questions to the team to see their approach.
Provide professional development to the team on leadership and decision-making processes. |
| 7. Reflecting on Instructions | Which are the most effective practices for student success? | Focus on observing each other and provide release time for special projects.
Facilitate more inter-team and cross-team conversations. |
Teachers need to make sure that they are following the above-mentioned suggestions at each stage for the success of their PLC.
Benefits of Professional Learning Communities
Creating PLCs benefits both student success and teacher professional development. Professional Learning Communities for teachers can be beneficial in the following ways.
- Opportunities to improve teaching and learning – PLCs help teachers grow their knowledge and teaching with the main motive of student achievement. Practice and assessment enable teachers to reflect more effectively on topics such as communication and collaboration.
- Harmony in Team Members – Being the most pivotal attribute, teamwork is essential to generate synergy for producing the maximum results from the given resources. It enhances the strength and relationship of members with each other.
- Helps Teachers to Stay Up-To-Date with Technology – Learning new tools and technology with PLCs becomes easy, as not everyone has to research the updates. Teachers can also increase the number of members through community platforms to enhance their experience, like Twitter and Facebook.
- Sharing and Reflecting Ideas – PLCs help educators learn from others and reflect on their teaching. They discuss and reflect on strategies to work in the classroom and take feedback from other teachers to improve their teaching.
The practices learned by teachers are universal and can be used for students of any nature.
How to Join Professional Learning Communities?
Joining professional learning communities in education can be difficult depending on the educational institution and the area you live in. To find and join a PLC, you can try the following options:
- Reach out to Colleagues – Most of the institutions and schools consist of PLCs in education. Try to ask your colleagues if you are new to the area. If your school does not have one, you can ask an educator from another school.
- Search Online – Online platforms are the best to join PLCs due to their easy accessibility. You can search on social media platforms like Facebook groups, Twitter, and Discord.
- Create One – If you still couldn’t find a PLC, you better create one yourself. Start by inviting your colleagues, then seek out interested people in your area and on the Internet to broaden the scope.
Taking these steps will not only benefit you but will also promote the learning of newcomers to the education sector.
How to Create Professional Learning Communities?
Creating professional learning communities for teachers is not that difficult. You just have to make sure that you possess the ability to work on the following areas.
- Finding Common Learning and Goals – All PLC stages move around finding what needs to be taught and how they will be learning that. Therefore, teachers need to make sure their efforts are in a uni-direction with common goals and learning.
- Welcoming New Ideas – In PLC, educators are free to apply new ideas and practices to teaching because they never know what works best for the success of students.
- Ensuring Effective Working – Sometimes teachers hesitate to engage and employ conflicting new ideas. PLCs need to take part in honest discussions about the practices and strategies of learning.
Working on these areas will help you create a better-performing professional learning community.
Conclusion
Professional learning communities are goal-oriented groups, aiming toward the students’ success. Teachers join these groups to improve their learning, collaboration, and teaching practices. The lack of involvement in such communities can lead to a fixed mindset among educators.
Therefore, make sure to join a PLC if you want to get better. If it doesn’t exist in your institution, reach out to your colleagues and create one. You can find the basics for creating or joining a community in this article.
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FAQs
Ans: The PLC meeting includes the following activities –
- Analyzing student data
- Setting learning goals
- Reflecting on practices
- Planning on implying new learning into teaching practices
- Exploring new learning practices
Ans: The most common disadvantages of professional learning communities are lack of time and implementation. Participating in such communities for teachers is a time-consuming process.
Ans: Dufour’s book on professional learning communities identifies three key components of successful professional learning communities:
- Focus on learning
- Collaborative culture
- Results-oriented thinking
Ans: The four pillars of successful professional learning communities are:
- Mission – Staff asks “Why do we exist?”. They try to explore the answer to that question.
- Vision – Staff questions “What needs to be changed?” through asking and reflecting on things that need to change.
- Values – Teachers start to feel their moral obligations and uphold the commitments that bind them together.
- Goals – This pillar involves developing the school, teams, and individual goals together.
Ans: Professional learning communities have the following character attributes:
- Collaborative
- Leadership
- Student success oriented
- Shared value and vision
- Result oriented
- Continuous process.
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