Professional Learning Communities (PLCs)

Scrabble board with TEAMWORK spelled out

by Maria Lee

I am sure many educators have been involved in professional learning communities (PLCs) in  their school districts but the meaning of the professional learning community has been "vaguely understood or represent different things to people throughout the district" (2016 DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, Many, & Mattos) cited by Tom Many and Brian Butler, authors of the article "Moving Schools from PLC Lite to PLC Right".

To implement the professional learning community correctly, educators must understand, not just the meaning and language of PLC, but also the three principles or big ideas of the professional learning community discussed in the article, "What is "Professional Learning Community?", by Richard DuFour.

I will discuss examples from Many and Butler that illustrate the importance of practice and language of PLC, and the three big ideas of the professional learning community by DuFour.

Professional Learning Community: Its Meaning

Many and Butler emphasize the impact Professional Learning Communities can have when educators are engaged in continuous, comprehensive, and ongoing development of the PLC process, highlighted by Doug Reeves. Many and Butler call this "PLC Right" when it happens and take real commitment.

“PLC Lite” is when honest attempts to implement PLCs have little impact on teaching and learning. Many and Butler believe these well-intended efforts result in trivial and temporary changes.

What happens when the basic tenets and key terminology of the PLC process are mislabeled, misapplied or misaligned? Let's consider the two examples Many and Butler provide:

    "A district leader who insisted on six (instead of four) critical questions of learning. The rationale was that six critical questions “would more closely align PLCs to the district’s strategic plan.” For an entire year, principals had to field questions from teachers asking, “Which set of critical questions are we expected to use?” This confusion only served to divert and distract the school’s improvement efforts."

    "A colleague (Diane Kerr) asks teachers during her workshops, “What do you do during team meetings?” In one of her trainings, a group of teachers enthusiastically reported every week they talked about two things — which students needed extra help and what logistics would be necessary to provide it. Kerr follows her initial question by asking, “How do you know what they need?” The teachers explained how they used the district’s mandated assessments and classroom observations to group students by name and need."

    "After some additional training highlighting how the combination of essential standards, learning targets, and team-developed common assessments could result in more effective interventions, the team realized they had been operating as PLC Lite! They recognized their teaching wasn’t aligned, their assessments were not linked to specific learning targets, and their interventions were not as targeted as they could or should be!"

    "These teachers now use data from team-developed common formative assessments to identify 1) students who need more help and 2) the instructional practices that were most effective. Teachers have seen the “Lite” and are doing things “Right” by prioritizing standards, identifying targets, and creating assessments to target their interventions more effectively."

As you can see, when the basic tenets and key terminology of the PLC process are mislabeled, misapplied or misaligned, it causes confusion and contributes to PLC Lite, according to Many and Butler.

Butler asks teachers and principals with whom he works to write down the definition of a Professional Learning Community. Butler often sees definitions dramatically different, which indicates a need to clarify the underlying meaning of the PLC process.

Butler suggests educators consider the PLC a larger organization (the school), which comprises various teams (grade level, department, vertical, content, course specific and electronic, etc). Butler states, "While teams are the fundamental building blocks of a PLC, teams themselves are not PLCs."

Butler also clarifies the definition of a PLC, "an ongoing process in which educators work collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve."

Butler notes, "Teachers are often surprised by the notion the school is the Professional Learning Community; they thought their team was the PLC, and thus, they had no connection to, nor were they encouraged to collaborate with, anyone beyond their immediate team." The unintended consequence, Dufour explains, is not understanding the relationship between PLCs and teams, according to Butler. "When teams define themselves a PLC, they are prone to believe that they work as PLCs only during their weekly meeting."

Professional Learning Community: Big Ideas

Let's examine his three big ideas below:

Big Idea #1: Ensuring that Students Learn

DuFour believes the core mission of the professional learning community is a shift in focus from teaching to learning. This shift has profound implications for schools.

DuFour shares this implication; I believe it is important too. When school staff take the school mission statement "learning for all", literally, teachers will view it as a pledge to ensure the success of each student. This is where profound changes take place. DuFour believes teachers will ask questions:

•What school characteristics and practices have been most successful in helping all students achieve at high levels?

•How could we adopt those characteristics and practices in our own school?

•. What commitments would we have to make to one another to create such a school?

•What indicators could we monitor to assess our progress? 

DuFour writes, "When the staff has built shared knowledge and found common ground on these questions, the school has a solid foundation for moving forward with its improvement initiative." And they are:

•What do we want each student to learn?

•How will we know when each student has learned it?

•How will we respond when a student experiences difficulty in learning?

My connection: This is how student ownership of learning starts when teachers share knowledge and find common ground.

"The answer to the third question separates learning communities from traditional schools," according to DuFord.

DuFour gives the systematic, timely, and directive intervention program that includes:

•Timely. The school quickly identifies students who need additional time and support.

•Based on intervention rather than remediation. The plan provides students with help as soon as they experience difficulty, rather than relying on summer school, retention, and remedial courses.

•Directive. Instead of inviting students to seek additional help, the systematic plan requires students to devote extra time and receive additional assistance until they have mastered the necessary concepts.

DuFour illustrates an example when a school answers "How will we respond when a student experiences difficulty in learning?"

   “Adlai Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois, provides an excellent example. Every three weeks, every student receives a progress report. Within the first month of school, new students discover that if they are not doing well in a class, they will receive a wide array of immediate interventions. First, the teacher, counselor, and faculty advisor each talk with the student individually to help resolve the problem. The school also notifies the student's parents about the concern. In addition, the school offers the struggling student a pass from study hall to a school tutoring center to get additional help in the course. An older student mentor, in conjunction with the struggling student's advisor, helps the student with homework during the student's daily advisory period."

   "Any student who continues to fall short of expectations at the end of six weeks despite these interventions is required, rather than invited, to attend tutoring sessions during the study hall period. Counselors begin to make weekly checks on the struggling student's progress. If tutoring fails to bring about improvement within the next six weeks, the student is assigned to a daily guided study hall with 10 or fewer students. The guided study hall supervisor communicates with classroom teachers to learn exactly what homework each student needs to complete and monitors the completion of that homework. Parents attend a meeting at the school at which the student, parents, counselor, and classroom teacher must sign a contract clarifying what each party will do to help the student meet the standards for the course."

   "Stevenson High School serves more than 4,000 students. Yet this school has found a way to monitor each student's learning on a timely basis, and to ensure that every student who experiences academic difficulty will receive extra time and support for learning."

Can you imagine what would happen if your school had this program? How successful will each student be later?

So, what must educators do to make the improvement initiative successful? The answer is in DuFour's…

Big Idea #2: A Culture of Collaboration

   "The powerful collaboration that characterizes professional learning communities is a systematic process in which teachers work together to analyze and improve their classroom practice. Teachers work in teams, engaging in an ongoing cycle of questions that promote deep team learning. This process, in turn, leads to higher levels of student achievement."

   "At Boones Mill Elementary School, a K-5 school serving 400 students in rural Franklin County, Virginia, the powerful collaboration of grade-level teams drives the school improvement process."

   "The school's five 3rd grade teachers study state and national standards, the district curriculum guide, and student achievement data to identify the essential knowledge and skills that all students should learn in an upcoming language arts unit. They also ask the 4th grade teachers what they hope students will have mastered by the time they leave 3rd grade. On the basis of the shared knowledge generated by this joint study, the 3rd grade team agrees on the critical outcomes that they will make sure each student achieves during the unit."

   "Next, the team turns its attention to developing common formative assessments to monitor each student's mastery of the essential outcomes. Team members discuss the most authentic and valid ways to assess student mastery. They set the standard for each skill or concept that each student must achieve to be deemed proficient. They agree on the criteria by which they will judge the quality of student work, and they practice applying those criteria until they can do so consistently. Finally, they decide when they will administer the assessments."

   "After each teacher has examined the results of the common formative assessment for his or her students, the team analyzes how all 3rd graders performed. Team members identify strengths and weaknesses in student learning and begin to discuss how they can build on the strengths and address the weaknesses. The entire team gains new insights into what is working and what is not, and members discuss new strategies that they can implement in their classrooms to raise student achievement."

   "At Boones Mill, collaborative conversations happen routinely throughout the year. Teachers use frequent formative assessments to investigate the questions “Are students learning what they need to learn?” and “Who needs additional time and support to learn?”, rather than relying solely on summative assessments that ask “Which students learned what was intended and which students did not?”

DuFour emphasizes that "Collaborative conversations call on team members to make public what has traditionally been private—goals, strategies, materials, pacing, questions, concerns, and results. These discussions give every teacher someone to turn to and talk to, and they are explicitly structured to improve the classroom practice of teachers—individually and collectively."

Schools must ensure everyone belongs to a team that focuses on student learning, so teachers can participate in such a powerful process, according to DuFour. A few things must happen:

•Teams must have time to meet during the workday and throughout the school year.

•Teams must focus on crucial questions related to learning and generate products that reflect that focus, e.g., lists of essential outcomes, various types of assessment, and analyses of student achievement and strategies for improving results.

•Develop norms or protocols to clarify expectations regarding roles, responsibilities, and relationships among team members.

•Adopt student achievement goals linked with school and district goals.

When teachers are given the time to analyze and discuss state and district curriculum documents, schools must move teacher conversations beyond "What are we expected to teach?" to "How will we know when each student has learned?"

In addition, there will be no more excuses for failing to collaborate!!! "A group of staff members who are determined to work together will find a way."

Last:

Big Idea #3: A Focus on Results

Professional learning communities work together to improve student achievement. It is an ongoing process of identifying the current level of student achievement, establishing a goal to improve the current level, and working together to achieve that goal, and providing periodic evidence of progress. This process is important, because professional learning communities are judged based on their effectiveness based on results.

DuFour writes, "Results-oriented professional learning community not only welcomes data, but also turns data into useful and relevant information for staff."

DuFour uses common formative assessments developed by teacher teams throughout the school year as an example of collecting data. Each teacher can identify how his or her students performed on each skill compared with other students, DuFour writes in the article. Individual teachers can call on their team colleagues to help them reflect on areas of concern. Each teacher has access to the ideas, materials, strategies, and talents of the entire team.

Freeport Intermediate School in Houston, Texas is an example of a successful school that focuses on an unrelenting focus on results. DuFour describes the scenario at Freeport Intermediate School:

   "Teachers work in collaborative teams for 90 minutes daily to clarify the essential outcomes of their grade levels and courses, and to align those outcomes with state standards. They develop consistent instructional calendars and administer the same brief assessment to all students at the same grade level at the conclusion of each instructional unit, roughly once a week."

   "Each quarter, the teams administer a common cumulative exam. Each spring, the teams develop and administer practice tests for the state exam. Each year, the teams pore over the results of the state test, which are broken down to show every teacher how his or her students performed on every skill and on every test item. The teachers share their results from all of these assessments with their colleagues, and they quickly learn when a teammate has been particularly effective in teaching a certain skill. Team members consciously look for successful practice and attempt to replicate it in their own practice; they also identify areas of the curriculum that need more attention."

   "Freeport Intermediate has been transformed from one of the lowest-performing schools in the state to a national model for academic achievement. Principal Clara Sale-Davis believes that the crucial first step in that transformation came when the staff began to honestly confront data on student achievement and to work together to improve results, rather than make excuses for them."

Conclusion

These two articles "Moving Schools from PLC Lite to PLC Right" and "What is "Professional Learning Community?" clearly spell out what the professional learning community process means. It takes commitment to the process, and it requires school staff to focus on learning rather than teaching.

Tom Many and Brian Butler provide an activity to see whether your school is operating as PLC Lite or PLC Right with this simple activity. It will open your eyes to the discrepancies in the meaning of the professional learning community.

Reference

Professional Learning, Our CollaborationsSarah Ottow4b, 5b