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Welcome to AllThingsPLC, What’s a PLC?
January 9, 2007
We extend our sincere appreciation to Solution Tree for creating and maintaining allthingsplc. We believe the site offers a rich resource to those looking for ways to deepen their understanding of this model of school improvement. We also believe it is consistent with the collaborative and collective effort to acquire and share knowledge that is so much a part of the PLC process. We look forward to learning with and from you as we respond to your questions and comments, post entries to support your work, recognize your successes, and engage in on-going dialogue related to building and sustaining PLCs. Our hope is that educators at all levels will frequently visit this blog to get questions answered, give and receive support, network with colleagues from around the world, and celebrate PLC progress in their own settings. Thank you for being a part in this new venture!
Rick DuFour, Bob Eaker, & Becky DuFour
What’s a PLC?
It has been interesting to observe the growing popularity of the term professional learning community. In fact, the term has become so commonplace and has been used so ambiguously to describe virtually any loose coupling of individuals who share a common interest in education, it is in danger of losing all meaning. As our friend Michael Fullan concludes, “terms travel easily but the concepts underlying those terms often do not.” This lack of precision represents a very real obstacle to implementing PLC concepts. If you hope to become proficient in building PLCs, you must first develop clarity regarding what the term represents. Therefore, we have opted to devote this first entry to clarifying the term, “professional learning community (PLC).”
Professional Learning Communities are educators committed to working collaboratively in ongoing processes of collective inquiry and action research in order to achieve better results for the students they serve. PLC’s operate under the assumption that the key to improved learning for students is continuous, job-embedded learning for educators.
PLCs Maintain A Relentless Focus on Learning
The very essence of a learning community is a focus on and a commitment to the learning of each student. When a school or district functions as a PLC, educators within the organization embrace high levels of learning for all students as both the reason the organization exists and the fundamental responsibility of those who work within it. In order to achieve this purpose, the members of a PLC create and are guided by a clear and compelling vision of what the organization must become in order to help all students learn. They make collective commitments clarifying what each member will do to create such an organization, and they use results-oriented goals to mark their progress.
Members work together to clarify exactly what each student must learn, to monitor each student’s learning on a timely basis, to provide systematic interventions that ensure students receive additional time and support for learning when they struggle, and to extend and enrich learning when students have already mastered the intended outcomes.
A corollary assumption is that if the organization is to become more effective in helping all students learn, the adults in the organization must also be continually learning. Therefore, structures are created to ensure staff members engage in job-embedded learning as part of their routine work practices.
There is no ambiguity or hedging regarding this commitment to learning. Whereas many schools operate as if their primary purpose is to see to it that children are taught, Professional Learning Communities are dedicated to the idea that their organization exists to ensure that all students learn essential knowledge, skills, and dispositions. All the other characteristics of a PLC flow directly from this seismic shift in assumptions about the purpose of the school.
Andy Hargreaves once wrote: “A professional learning community is an ethos that infuses every single aspect of a school’s operation. When a school becomes a professional learning community, everything in the school looks different than it did before.” We concur, and we also contend that once a staff truly embraces the premise that the very reason the school exists is to ensure high levels of learning for all students, decisions about what must be done (and equally important, what must no longer be done) become more clear.
For more information on “What is a PLC,” go to Rick’s seminal article on the topic published by Educational Leadership at: “What is a PLC?”
21 Responses to “Welcome to AllThingsPLC, What’s a PLC?”
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At a recent conference Rick spoke about limiting district initiatives when starting a PLC. I think he recommended a three year window before any new initiatives are started. After the conference I was speaking to teachers in a district that I am working and they were excited about creating a PLC but said they thought we should wait because next year we will be rolling out a new language arts curriculum. My thoughts were that if things like creating new curriculum were considered an initiative that would put PLC on hold, we probably would never have a year where we were free from curriculum writing, new state mandates etc. So my question is , what is considered a “new” initiative?
Response to Anne & Lori March 23, 2007:
Congratulations on writing and implementing a curriculum specific to the population of students you serve – you’ve answered the first critical question of a PLC, “what do we want our students to learn.” Now, in order to frequently monitor and respond to each student’s learning needs, we recommend you have the teachers who teach your curriculum develop common ways of assessing whether or not the students are actually learned what they are being taught – that is, develop common, formative assessment tools and instruments that answer the second critical question of a PLC, “how will we know when each child has learned the skills, dispositions and concepts essential to their success.”
If two or more teachers in the same school or within your district teach your curriculum to similar kinds of students, they should work together to develop common formative assessments appropriate for the population of students they serve; their assessments should be directly aligned to your curriculum and any district or state assessments their students will ultimately be accountable for.
Many of the assessments your teachers develop will likely need to be performance-based, authentic assessments – not paper and pencil tests. That will require your teams of special educators to:
1. agree on the criteria by which they will judge/assess the quality of student learning
2. practice applying those criteria consistently until they establish inter-rater reliability.
As they identify the “learning” they want each student to demonstrate, (i.e. life skills, social skills, academic skills, etc.) they should develop rubrics, checklists, portfolios, etc. that articulate the different stages a student may go through as they progress toward proficiency & mastery of each essential learning outcome.
When two different teachers administer a common assessment to two different students who are expected to learn the same skill, then they are able to compare results, talk about what worked well & what didn’t; discuss how to respond to the students who did not learn (more time and more support using interventions, different instructional strategies, etc.) –they should identify the next steps for the students who did learn and simultaneously, make a plan for the students who did learn. The common assessment process will give your teachers a basis of comparison and a support system for sharing and learning best practices. Of course, given the very individualized goals for some of your students, several of your assessments may be individualized as well.
I’m looking forward to reading other responses to your question, also!
How has your school increased graduation rates? What have you successfully tried that keeps students in school until they graduate?
I am a recent college grad and in my first year as an elementary Art teacher. The staff in my building are trying to get together to form PLC’s on a number of different issues and topics and it is becoming more and more frustrating for me because I am unsure of how to integrate the PLC’s that people are working on into my classroom being the Art specialist.
If there is anyone out there who might be able to direct me to where I might find more information on PLC’s directed toward Specialists it would be greatly appreciated!
I am the principal of a Vermont public K-12 school of 350 students.
I am just finishing up a two day conference in Albany, NY and was looking for a school who is using PLCs that matches ours. However, I was unable to locate a school that is a K-12 school with 350 students and a 50% SES. Can you suggest a school that we can contact?
Thanks,
Joe Bowen
I am an elementary school principal and doctoral student at Indiana University of PA. I am interested in learning more about walkthrough observations and how they may be used as a tool to build professional learning communities. I would appreciate hearing from any author or school personnel who may be using walkthrough observations to build professional learning communities.
I also noted on the 2010 Professional Learning Communities at Work Events Registration Guide, there was mention of research available on the significance and impact of the PLCs. It stated that it is located in the Evaluating Professional Learning Communities: Final Report – An APQC Education Benchmarking Project. Would it be possible for me to be able to read this report and its findings?
Lastly, do you have access to a reliable and validated survey that may be used to determine the level that a school fits into the paramenters of a PLC community? I am aware of surveys from the the work of Hord, Huffman and Hipp.
Any help in these areas would be greatly appreciated!
Ron Yasher