Developing our professional learning culture
How do you develop your learning community?
IB learning communities evolve over time. Implementation of IB programmes is often described as an on-going journey.
“Changing the culture means changing these small habits one by one.” (Guy Claxton, Making Mayonnaise)
The following activities provide an opportunity to reflect on the role of the leader in growing and developing the school as a professional learning community.
- What does my learning community need from me and how do I empower them?
- How do I expose them to resources that are physically and virtually available every day of the week? and
- How do I proactively seek out professional development?"
(Joe Mazza , The Principal as Lead Learner by Sarah McKibben, ASCD, 1 July 2015)
Negotiating an Essential Agreement helps you answer the question: 'How are we going to work as a group of professionals?'
Here is an example of an essential agreement written by a group of IB school leaders at the beginning of their workshop of leading professional leaning communities (Riga, June 2019).
We will:
Engage: actively participate
Listen: attend to each other
Reflect: to understand
Collaborate: to be a team | 'team learning'
Inquire: be passionately curious
Be purposeful: keep on task
In her article 10 strategies for improving staff meetings, Katie Martin provies the following ways of making staff meetings all about professional learning:
- Talk about learning
- Go on a scavenger hunt
- Engage in a book study
- Work together to solve problems
- Look at student work
- Share something that worked and talk about how more people can do it
- Share something that failed and get feedback on how to improve
- Learn something new
- Conduct empathy interviews - interview kids, families, community members, colleagues, school staff
- Teach each other
In his post 10 simple steps to a positive professional learning culture, Christophe Mullings (June 2019) provides the following advice:
- Think about classroom culture
- Create a common, learner-focused vision
- Build, gain and sustain momentum through a systematic approach
- Create small, collaborative learning projects
- Establish norms for positive professional dialogue
- Focus on real practice rather than best
- Reduce risk and anxiety
- Underpin CPD and dialogue with evidence and expertise
- Practice what you preach
- Share challenges and celebrate success
Activity 1: Growing a professional learning organisation
In this video presenter and author Rick DuFour talks about the importance of professional learning communities and the biggest obstacles a school faces when developing a PLC.
Professional learning communities evolve over time. Bollam et al refer to four stages:
- Starting out
- Developing
- Deepening
- Sustaining
- Read Bollam’s research and use the following tool to audit where your school is on this journey. Especially reflect on where you think your school is on the journey to being an IB learning community.
- Alternatively, use the shortened version that follows the document.
Reflect:
" PLC's can work if given the freedom to be true learning communities - but if they are micromanaged by asking for agendas, minutes, and addressing nothing but assessments - then they fail. Professionals need to be willing to work together, and to see the vision that is an IB education - otherwise it will doom those efforts of truly learning and changing how we educate. "
The international context
Learning therefore, has to be at the heart of school improvement – for everyone. To this end, many countries are looking at the potential of professional learning communities (PLCs) to help focus this agenda. For example, in Hong Kong’s Towards a Learning Profession, it is stated that; “schools should be developed as professional learning communities, teachers’ professional development should be regarded as an important force in school development,” and “teachers as professionals also have a responsibility to facilitate the professional growth and development of their colleagues”, while the Professional Standards for Teachers in South Australia are infused with notions of collaborative professional learning.
Activity 2:
In this think piece we explore what is known internationally about professional learning communities and how they develop. As you read this thought piece consider the following questions:
- How inclusive is your professional learning community? Who counts as a professional? Who’s ‘in’ and who’s ‘out’?
- Should pupils or students, parents and governors or school council members be active members of the professional learning community? Why or why not?
- What impact does your professional learning community have? On whom? How do you know?
- How has your professional learning community evolved and developed over time? How did it start out? How are you trying to sustain it?
- If you are a member of more than one professional learning community, how do they differ? Do they interconnect?
The international context of professional learning communities
Dig Deeper
Richard DuFour, What is a professional learning community, Educational Leadership, May 2004, Vol. 61| 8. This is a good introduction to the subject. It starts by drawing attention to how the concept of 'PLCs' has in some schools become a term merely to describe a grouping of teachers. DuFour urges schools to focus on the 'big ideas' | the core principles of PLCs. They are: (a) a focus on ensuring that all students learn; (b) development of promotion of a collaborative culture; (c) focusing on results as a measure of success.
The Essential Guide to Professional Learning: Leading Culture, Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership’s Essential guide to professional learning series. This issue of the Essential Guide series expands on the critical role of school leaders in supporting adult learning and effective professional learning cultures. It opens with a quotation from a paper by Auckland University’s Professor Helen Timperley: When there is a learning-oriented culture with effective conditions, support and structures to enable adult professional learning, teachers and school leaders can learn and thrive together. The leadership activity found to have the greatest influence on student outcomes is leaders’ promotion of and participation in teachers’ professional learning and development. The guide encourages school leaders to consider their roles as professionals leading culture and change. See also The Essential Guide to Professional Learning: Evaluation
Guy Claxton, Making Mayonnaise - a clear thought piece that argues that you develop culture by changing small habits, one at a time. A good read for leadership teams.
A succinct and helpful summary of research into professional learning communities is Ruebel, K.K., Professional Learning Communities: Research Summary which can be accessed by clicking here.
Broadening the learning community - key messages provides four readings about the importance of a school developing a network. The fourth reading by Lorna Earl & Steven Katz, 2005, What makes a network a learning network? provides some helpful key messages.
Reflecting on the progress of your PLC provides a useful tool to use in either your annual review of your school improvement / development plan or in the five year IB self-study to assess how you are nurturing a collaborative culture (IB Standard C1) within your school.
Tags: PLC