The Politics of Professional Learning Communities

• In Event: The Culture and Politics of Professional Learning Communities

Abstract

Professional Learning Communities comprise three integral components their name directly suggests. They are communities of educators and others working collaboratively to achieve common goals and purposes. They focus on the learning and on the improvement of learning of the students and adults in those communities, and on the process of learning as a central way to achieve the goals of their community. And they are professional in the sense that they combine evidence and judgment in challenging and courageous conversations about how to improve practice.

Professional learning communities are often discussed and developed in relation to two of the three perspectives on educational change raised by House and McQuillan (1998). Normatively oriented writers on PLCs draw attention to the technical issues of how to set goals, find a clear focus and establish teams to analyze achievement data together. They also highlight, but not quite so much, cultural issues of building trust, and developing relationships (e.g. Dufour and Eaker 1998). Less often discussed are the political dynamics of professional learning communities – the ways they are suffused by principles and practices of power and control.

This paper analyzes research data collected from 10 of 72 school districts in Ontario and their development of a special education strategy that varied from district to district and that was meant to benefit all students, not just those who were formally identified. Teams of three researchers undertook three-day site visits to self-selected but representative Boards, to interview system and project leaders, visit project schools, meet with Board research staff, and collect existing quantitative data on student achievement.

Professional learning communities were a key part of this bottom-up strategy of variable development and differing design across districts, and also of a more top-down strategy to raise achievement levels system-wide in literacy and numeracy across the province. Professional Learning Communities, in other words, served as both tools of bottom-up professional development and also of top-down implementation and delivery. The politics of professional learning communities in these Boards embedded and expressed these tensions.

As communities, PLCs could be positioned as exercising collective responsibility for all students’ learning, or as operating constrained accountability for increased test results.

As learning communities, PLCs could use data in ways that supported improvement for all students, or as tools to prompt intervention primarily for those just below the test score cut for proficiency.

As professional learning communities, PLCs could prompt conversations that were vertically challenging when administrators provoked their teachers into action, or as laterally energizing when teachers raised questions with each other about how to improve practice and help individual students.

Authors

• Andrew Hargreaves, Boston College

• Kathryn Ann Sallis, Council of Chief State School Officers