Teacher Learning Communities: Affordances and Constraints in the American Educational Context

• In Event: Sharing Knowledge in Local Settings: International Perspectives on Teacher Learning Communities

Abstract

U.S. teachers are frequently introduced to ‘best practices,’ approaches abstracted from theory that have been deemed to have the most effect on student learning. Such approaches seep into the education vernacular and preservice and in-service teachers are taught how to implement them in classroom settings. What is not paid attention is how these practices become a part of their stories of experience and their knowledge constructed/reconstructed over time as curriculum makers. Consequently, preservice and in-service teachers’ theoretical knowing of these practices is established before these approaches have practically proven themselves to be ‘best.’ Furthermore, the shortcomings of ‘best practices’ have not been considered.

In this narrative inquiry, focus is placed on a ‘best practice’ that one beginning teacher came to know in her teacher education program. ‘Professional learning communities’ (i.e., DuFour 2001) is an approach to teacher professional development championed in the change and leadership literatures, but also to a certain extent in the teaching/teacher education literatures. According to DuFour (2004), professional learning communities “focus on learning rather than teaching, work collaboratively, and [are] accountable for results” (p. 6).

When the beginning teacher in this research study began her employment in the fourth largest city in the U.S., she found herself embroiled in a clash between different versions of teacher community (_____, 2009), two of which were playing out on her campus (See figure). On the one hand, there were the knowledge communities (_____, 1995) that the veteran teachers on her faculty had found or made for themselves. On the other hand, there was the version of professional learning communities artificially introduced by administrators/consultants to her campus context. In contrast to the teachers’ informal communities, these formal learning communities that were imposed on teachers had a paradigmatic view of professional knowledge at their core. In a nutshell, the particular version of teachers’ professional communities of knowing did not approach teachers as knowers and doers. Instead, they were seen as needy of being told what they should know and do in their classroom situations.

Teacher Knowledge Communities Professional Learning Communities
Organically lived Administratively introduced
Can be found/made Expected to be present
Commonplaces of experience Focus on learning not teaching
Relational among individuals/across groups; collaborations emerge Collaboration anticipated at the outset
May exist within groups; also occur between teachers interacting for their own purposes Any visible group within a school/organization

Accounts of practice Accountable for results
Practical view of knowledge Formal view of knowledge

The fine-grained analysis of the teachers’ experience of professional learning communities provides entrée into a discussion of the affordances and constraints of teacher community. Ideally, such communities are key catalysts for change and the optimum way to connect theory-practice-policy. However, in practice, they can be poor facsimiles of the teacher knowledge communities they mimic and can disturb teachers’ self-made communities of knowing. The essentialist scripts they introduce to school contexts may “captivate, rather than liberate” (Schwab, 1954/1978) teachers as learners, making them subservient to policy makers’ whims rather than spurring their creativity in policy enactment in classroom settings.

Author

• Cheryl J. Craig, University of Houston