Teacher Professional  Learning Communities:  Congenial

Workgroup or Opportunity for Challenging Professional

Discussions and Building New Pedagogical Approaches? 

Presentation to ACE Education on the Square, November 13, 2013

Introductory discussion

•Who belongs to PLC of any kind?

•What makes it a PLC?

•Who has PLC operating in their schools/other educational contexts and how are these organised?

Professional Learning Community (PLC)

Facilitator role requires ongoing professional learning with PLCs being especially effective

Professional Learning Community (PLC)

PLCs within education used for teacher learning & skill building, with ongoing contacts, coaching, mentoring being effective‘…small groups of teachers who come together as a team to

help one another improve student learning. The team members share and reflect on their practice and personal experiences, observe each other's practices, and study and apply research and best practices together’ (Education Northwest 2012, 3, citing Sather & Barton, 2006).

Researcher agreement re PLC features: •working collaboratively & regularly over extended timeline•shared values and vision •practical activities focused on student learning•using inquiry stance. •Also leadership support & distributed leadership

(Bolam, McMahon, Stoll, Thomas, Wallace & Greenwood; 2005; Johnson, 2009; Darling-Hammond & Richardson, 2009; Coburg & Russell, 2008; Dumont, Istance & Benavides, 2010; Scott, Clarkson & McDonough, 2011; Owen, 2012; Head, 2003).

PLC characteristics

Joint enterprise & shared beliefs

Ongoing collaboration

School-based PLCs

Practical activities & student data

Supportive & shared leadership

Teacher inquiry Collaborative learning

Background to innovation

• Creation and implementation of ‘new processes, products, services and methods of delivery which result in significant improvements in the efficiency, effectiveness or quality of outcomes…(and) the application of new ideas to produce better outcomes’ (Australian National Audit Office ANAO, 2009).

OECD research (2011)

• Traditional education not working (OECD/CERI, 2008; Bentley et al., 2006)

• Innovative approaches needed for 21st century skill-building (Dumont et al., 2010)

• Teacher role needing change (Dumont et al., 2010)

• OECD Innovative Learning Environments project (ILE) involving 26 countries in 3 phases. 2011: 7 DECD sites

Key innovation principles arising from Phase 1 research (OECD, 2011)

• Make learning central, encourages engagement, and in which learners come to understand themselves as learners.

• Is where learning is social and often collaborative.

• Is highly attuned to learners’ motivations and emotions.

• Is acutely sensitive to individual differences including in prior knowledge.

• Is demanding for each learner but without excessive overload.

• Uses assessment consistent with its aims, with strong emphasis on formative .

• Promotes horizontal connectedness across activities and subjects, in- and out-of-school .

Key areas for innovation : Learners, Content, Organisation of Learning, Resources and Teachers

Educational innovation models and Educational innovation models and characteristicscharacteristics

RADICAL INNOVATION•Significant shift in design

•Swims against the tide•Starts with the future & works

backwards

Transformation?

LEARNERSNew groupings,

targeted for specific groups, learners

define goals

TEACHERSTeams & multi-

disciplinary teachers, coach/facilitator role,

other adults/peers

CONTENTNew foci for content, 21C

competencies, values, co-

constructed curricula

RESOURCESInnovative uses of

infrastructure, space, community

and technology

ORGANISATIONInnovative

approaches to scheduling, groupings, pedagogies,

assessment & guidance

Insufficient research about how PLCs operate to support teachers to build new skills in changed role required of them in significantly

innovative contexts including impacts on student learning

Mixed methods: 3 SA case studies

Overall research question/methods

• New skills needed for teacher role: co-learner, facilitator, deep questioning, insightful feedback

• Teacher learning in PLCs: ongoing day-to-day, practical activities in teams/shared research inquiry team/peer observation

• Some PLC teams were focused on co-teaching/co-planning with a particular group of students or conducting joint action research re interest topics, school plan directions

• PLCs consistent with other research: shared values, collaboration, practical activities, collaborative inquiry focus, supportive & distributed leadership

• Leadership role important to provide time, funding & support for groups but also build culture of shared leadership in teams

• PLC practical activities eg co-plan, co-teach, co-assess, co-reflect focused on students (& data/evidence) brings new skills

• Student learning, also responsibility for team learning: eg conference/other ideas shared

• PLC not just about congeniality/conviviality/contrived collegiality, but challenge/respecting diverse views, and this leads to learning

Overall FindingsJoint enterprise & shared beliefs

Ongoing collaboration

Teacher inquiry & collaborative learning

Supportive & shared leadership

Practical activities & student data

PLC & learning

...a really rich environment of discussion with ideas coming from all sorts of discipline perspectives because we’ve all got different backgrounds, different training and bringing that together…People are talking about their research or might be just talking about their own philosophy of education or just their own experiences in the classroom, things that worked and didn’t work or things they’d like to try out…a genuine interaction, cross –fertilisation and a genuine professional respect…..Discussions we have here are much

deeper. They’re ongoing because time is provided for that (Teacher interview 7).

I wanted to be a teacher. It all comes together (in the PLC). You get so many ah hah, so many more ah hah moments than you would in a classroom (working alone). You get them daily rather than maybe once a month, and that’s just

fantastic (Teacher interview 10).

‘there’s professional learning right through the day on a daily basis because of our team teaching scenario, where teachers can bounce ideas off each other

and reflect at the end of the day and for following days. So there is that learning from and with one another on that basis’ (Leader interview 2).

…a group of people that are deliberately acting to improve the quality of their skills in their profession…People working together or using each other as sounding boards for sharing data …taking deliberate

steps to do that …A team of teachers working together with, aiming to, improve student outcomes and by default, some of that professional

learning stuff comes through (Teacher interview 5). 

: ‘we tackle big-picture issues and problems and smaller issues…share joys and concerns about particular students….A deep relationship…professional and

personal, it’s collegial 100%. We protect each other….it’s a supported network’ (Teacher interview 11).

Joint enterprise & shared beliefs Teacher inquiry

& collaborative learning

Teacher learning through co-planning, co-teaching, co-assessment, co-

reflection

• Co-planning within the professional learning communities with a focus on a particular group of students:

• ‘People will come up with an idea for a theme and that can come from anywhere. Anyone in the group can suggest an idea for a theme…. you know, raw idea, right through to something that they’ve actually thought quite a bit about. And people are accepting of that. And then we can go through basically a brainstorming session…. And you end up then with about 2000 ideas, not all of which you can do. And so then we have a smaller team of volunteers to go and massage that stuff……They meet back as a whole team’ (Leader interview 3). Practical activities

& student data

Interdisciplinary teams and building skills across disciplines or sharing ideas in planning and being highly creative

•‘..it started with someone, one of us, saying Oh, we could do this, and then it just went from there. And there were just all these incredible creative ideas that flowed…. I think it was almost that we just allowed ourselves to accept each other as professional learners and teachers, and we honoured the work of each other. We all felt like we were contributors at a high level, and that our ideas were fantastic. And there was a confidence in the group ……….it was just a magic, magic couple of days of creativity ‘(Teacher interview 11).

Creative approaches to teach complex concepts

•‘….we sat down and we had a lesson plan. Both of us went Oh, that’s just boring, like it’s easy and it’s boring. But let’s try and do something new, let’s try and make it interesting, and stuff. So I guess what we … There was much more hands-on… we printed stuff out and cut them out and stuff. They had to make puzzles and join things together, instead of just telling them This is how it works. Like there was a role play where each of the students had to be an amino acid, and we formed a protein, and the different types of bonds were formed’ (Teacher interview 5) .

Practical activities & student data

Informal observation of other teachers as they question and facilitate with individuals and students

•‘….a traditional classroom teacher I’m out the front, I’m the teacher and you’re the learner, sort of structure, it’s blown out of the water …You’re a co-learner and you may have some answers but you don’t have all of them. So you’re assisting students with their learning as an advisor, an advisory teacher, rather than standing in some sort of high echelon and speaking down or across. You’re alongside, and I think that I learnt a lot from watching (…) and (…) in the space, working with students, and their deep inquiry questioning’ (Teacher interview 11).

Observing instructional session & interdisciplinary & new knowledge

•‘ (…) did …explicit teaching .. I was on crowd control. I was like Wow, this is guy, his stuff is amazing. And the guy, the way it’s presented, but the personality, it was so exciting. And then watching (…) in action with their map. And I thought Wow, I’ve never learnt so much Maths …We’ve been exposed to different curriculum areas. I think that’s been good’ (Teacher interview 12).

Practical activities & student data

Collaboration & collegiality

Deprivatisation, mutual support, responsibility to the team, reinvigorating the passion for teaching and developing deep understandings through shared

work 

‘…the stuff around

passion, to me that’s what professional learning communities reinvigorate. Putting people back in contact with why they want

to be teachers. Because you’re talking about learning, talking about teaching. You’re not talking about behavior management’ (Leader interview

1). 

‘If you’ve got someone in the PLC (professional learning community) who’s a really deep thinker and is going for some really rich stuff and

[for] somebody [else it] might be…more of a surface-based thing, they’re going to be exposed to this deeper thinker and have that kind

of level of thinking modeled to them’ (Leader interview 2). 

‘..when you get a group of people that are interested in one thing you can, it’s almost like a wildfire, you can spread your enthusiasm with others. And when you’ve got three or four like-minded people, it’s amazing how much

further you push those boundaries’ (Teacher interview 8).

 

Ongoing collaboration

Inquiry & challenge

• Hargreaves, 1992; Head, 2003; Grossman, Wineburg and Woolworth, 2000, 2001; Jarzabkowski, 2001) emphasise supporting professional learning through collaboration

Survey: highly positive responses (to large/great extent) for o reflective dialogue (83%, 88%, 75%): including talking about situations/specific challengeso Inquiry (97%, 94%, 75%): openness to improvement, teachers taking risks to try new techniques/ideas &

making efforts to learn more about their profession

‘Teacher inquiry is supported through structured action research groups for all staff: ‘to engage in reflection on their practice…gathering some data and doing something with this, observe and then report back…true inquiry’ (Leader interview 1).

Teachers identified on rubrics a collaborative culture and action research & operating at sustaining stage to ‘work collaboratively to identify collective goals, develop strategies to achieve those goals, gather relevant data and learn from each other [using] …interdependent efforts’ and also in regard to ‘action research as an important component of their professional responsibilities…frequent discussion regarding the implication of findings as teachers attempt to learn from the research of their colleagues’.

Not contrived collegiality, conviviality, congeniality: PLC deprivatises teaching with common goals, building interdependence, also building culture beyond the work group & open to new ideas/ guarding against insularity, with continuous PL & debate (Stoll et al, 2006; Fullan, 1993).

I feel responsible that if I’ve got a good idea or a quality way of doing something I’ve got a duty to share that….I’ve got a responsibility to her and to the students to do the best possible job I can and if that means suggesting something different ….pointing out there’s a better way to do it (Teacher interview 5).

Teacher inquiry & collaborative learning

Frank collegial discussions : 

I said to her I actually found your approach to the kids quite confronting at the beginning. And because we’d

developed mutual respect through the ongoing discussions, she didn’t feel threatened by that…. I’m a bit

uncomfortable with particular kinds of kids. And I learned from her, if you like, a way of dealing with that. And I

wasn’t quite sure I could implement, but it was a little ah hah moment. And more than that there was the

opportunity to discuss things with another teacher, uncomfortable things if you like, in a really respectful,

open way. And we surveyed the kids about how they find working with the two of us, because we did have such

different styles and they did a little video feedback for us(Teacher interview 7)

 Another teacher in a different context similarly discussed the

importance of challenge and diverse views being an important part of the professional learning community: ‘It’s very important to

know what you’re talking about. And having a challenge you don’t want to get up there and make a fool of yourself …So you go back

and start doing the research and making sure that what you’re doing is actually what you should be doing’ (Teacher interview 8).

Ongoing collaboration

Mulford (1998): ‘forming’ (polite), ‘storming’ (conflict over power), ‘norming’ (social cohesion and willingness to share), ‘performing’ (increase in task orientation and feedback), ‘transforming’ (group learns from feedback and may change tasks or ways of doing them), ‘dorming’ (resting to prevent burnout) and ‘mourning’ (group dissolution).

• Mulford (1998): role of the school leader to ensure that PLCs go beyond the ‘forming’ ‘etc ’ phases to ‘performing/ ‘transforming’

Du Four (2004): ‘pre initiation’, ‘initiation’, ‘developing’ and ‘sustaining’ & significant leadership role & ‘action research’ from pre initiation stage involving ndividual teacher classroom experimentation without support to ‘sustaining’ level with ‘action research’ is characterized as involving ‘topics…from the shared vision and goals of the school. Staff members regard action research as an important component of their professional responsibilities. There are frequent discussions regarding the implications of findings as teachers attempt to learn from the research of their colleagues’

Grossman et al.’s (2001) PLC ‘beginning’, ‘evolving’ and ‘mature’ stages.

•‘Communal responsibility for individual growth’ initially focused on student learning but at mature level there is commitment to the growth of colleagues about the obligations of community membership.

•‘‘Negotiating the essential tension’ at the mature level involves recognition that teacher and student learning are intertwined

PLC developmental stages

Beginning Evolving Mature Formation of group identity & understanding difference

Sense of individualism Recognition of individual contribution

Identification with group

Individuals are interchangeable

Pseudocommunity: conflict? Multiple perspectives

    Communal responsibility for group

Denial of difference/conflict

Divergent views/Conflict feared

Understanding conflict & productive use of difference 

Negotiating the essential tension

Lack of agreement over PLC purposes

Begrudging willingness to let different people pursue different activities

Recognition of teacher and student learning being intertwined 

Taking communal responsibility for individual growth

Belief of teacher responsibility to students not colleagues

Recognising colleagues are sources for learning

Commitment to colleagues’ growth

  Recognition that participation is expected for all

Accepting obligation of community membership

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• .

Dr Susanne Owen

Principal Officer, Research & InnovationLeader: ILE project & DECD innovation

E: susanne.owen@sa.gov.auPh 8226 3677

Academic Developer, University of South AustraliaE: susanne.owen@unisa.edu.au

Ph: 8302992