Professional Learning Communities: Practices for Successful Implementation
Abstract
"Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) involve teachers in site-based, ongoing, collaborative professional development. Three education department faculty members, interested in developing university-school partnerships, undertook this study in order to identify the factors that led to the successful establishment of PLCs with community schools, to determine how university faculty can facilitate the formation of the PLCs, and to understand how PLCs can help develop positive relationships between university and school personnel. Three PLCs were formed around the topics of formative assessment, developing math sense, and the effects of poverty on teaching and learning. The participants provided feedback related to the elements of the PLCs that they valued most highly, and the researchers identified factors that supported and challenged the implementation of PLCs, as well as the ways positive relationships could be developed."This online discussion may also interest you:
PLCs that bridge research and practice