Professional Learning Communities: Taking a Contemporary View

• In Event: 18.046 - Teachers Leading Education Reform: The Power and Potential of Professional Learning Communities

Abstract

Objectives or purposes
Professional learning communities have become a common approach to system and school improvement. There is now a significant international literature on this topic (e.g. Hord, 1997; Stoll et al., 2006; Harris and Jones, 2011) that mostly professes the benefits of teacher collaboration through being a professional community. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of the current literature and to take a contemporary view of the nature, impact and potential benefits professional learning communities.

Perspectives
A critical approach is adopted in the paper and the international literature is drawn upon to raise a number of ongoing issues about PLCs. While there is a strong normative literature on this topic, analytical and empirically based accounts are less forthcoming. This paper looks at four perspectives on professional learning communities: definition, impact, sustainability and scale up.

Methods and Data Sources
The literature about professional learning communities, from 2000 onwards, was critically evaluated and summarized. This literature included refereed journal articles, chapters and where relevant policy documents or papers. The aim of this overview was to shed light on the four perspectives and to assess how far the literature has adequately addressed issues of definition, impact, sustainability and scalability.

Findings
The overview highlights that issues of definition still remain despite quite a large body of work on professional learning communities. Definitions vary from whole school interpretations – where the school is the professional community in its entirety, to more team based definitions, where the professional learning community is a group of teachers with a mandate for change. Issues of definition then spill over into research design, particularly any attempt to measure impact. The overview found that a large proportion of studies aimed at capturing the impact of professional learning communities tend to rely on qualitative methods and self-report. While such studies are illuminating and insightful, the claims for impact are weakened by the nature of the data collected. In terms of sustainability, there are important accounts of professional collaboration and networking over the long term that demonstrate the power and potential of teacher agency and collective working. Such accounts show that, if sustained and supported, teacher collaboration can have major benefits of teacher self-efficacy, performance and practice. Finally, there are some interesting contemporary accounts of professional learning communities at scale, although there are more accounts at the district level than at the level of an entire education system.

Significance
This overview concludes that more analytical, theoretical and empirical work is now emerging that will strengthen the knowledge base on professional learning communities for policy makers, practitioners and researchers.

References

Harris, A and Jones, M. (2011) Professional Learning Communities in Action, Leannta Press
Hord, S.M. (1997). Professional learning communities: Communities of continuous inquiry and improvement. Austin, Texas: Southwest Educational Development Laboratory.
Stoll, L., Bolam, R., McMahon, A., Wallace, M. & Thomas, S. (2006). Professional learning communities: A review of the literature. Journal of Educational Change, 7:221–258.

Authors

• Michelle Suzette Jones, University of Bath

• Alma Harris, University of Bath