How to ... be a reflective practitioner.

International evidence suggests that educational reform’s progress
depends on teachers’ individual and collective capacity and its link with schoolwide
capacity for promoting pupils’ learning. Building capacity is therefore
critical. Capacity is a complex blend of motivation, skill, positive learning,
organisational conditions and culture, and infrastructure of support. Put together,
it gives individuals, groups, whole school communities and school systems the
power to get involved in and sustain learning over time. Developing professional
learning communities appears to hold considerable promise for capacity building
for sustainable improvement. As such, it has become a ‘hot topic’ in many
countries.

Professional Learning Communities: A Review of the Literature

Continuing to learn is universally accepted and expected by professionals and other stakeholders across all professions. However, despite changes in response to research findings about how professionals learn, many professional development practices still focus on delivering content rather than enhancing learning. In exploring reasons for the continuation of didactic practices in professional development, this article critiques the usual conceptualization of professional development through a review of recent literature across professions. An alternative conceptualization is proposed, based on philosophical assumptions congruent with evidence about professional learning from seminal educational research of the past two decades. An argument is presented for a shift in discourse and focus from delivering and evaluating professional development programs to understanding and supporting authentic professional learning.

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Reframing Professional Development Through Understanding Authentic Professional Learning

There is increasing consensus that the term professional learning community broadly refers to an inclusive and mutually supportive group of people with a collaborative, reflective, and growth-oriented approach toward investigating and learning more about their practice in order to improve students’ learning. In many countries, policymakers view its potential for the capacity building needed to implement educational reform, while researchers are trying to gain greater nuanced and contextualized understanding of professional learning community. This article probes the meaning and purpose of professional learning community, membership, identified characteristics, levels of impact, and process and processes of development.

Professional Learning Community

This study guide is a companion to the classic book by Richard DuFour and Robert Eaker: Professional Learning Communities at Work: Best Practices for Enhancing Student Achievement. It can be used by individuals, small groups, or an entire faculty to identify key points, raise questions for consideration, and suggest steps that might be taken to promote the Professional Learning Community (PLC) concept in a school or district. This guide is arranged by chapter, enabling readers to either work their way through the entire book or to focus on the specific topics addressed in a particular chapter.

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Professional Learning Communities at Work: Best Practices for Enhancing Student Achievement

This report summarises the main finding from the Creating and Sustaining Effective 
Professional Learning Communities (EPLC) project, funded by the Department for Education 
and Skills (DfES), the General Teaching Council for England (GTCe) and the National 
College for School Leadership (NCSL) from January 2002 to October 2004.

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Creating and Sustaining Effective Professional Learning Communities

Mentoring for new head teachers: recent British experience

Reports selected findings from a national evaluation of a British pilot scheme for mentoring new primary and secondary headteachers. Information was collected by questionnaire from 238 new headteachers, from 303 experienced headteachers who acted as mentors and via 16 detailed case studies of reportedly successful pairs. Deals with the nature and impact of the mentoring process and the characterisitics of successful mentoring. Mentoring was judged to be a success by the overwhelming majority of participants because it offered considerable practical help with pressing problems and brought benefits which were distinct from other forms of headteacher training and support. Discusses major implications for practice, research and policy and concludes that mentoring should be offered as an integral part of national strategy for the management development of headteachers.

Agnes McMahon

Papers

Professional Learning Communities: A Review of the Literature

Creating and Sustaining Effective Professional Learning Communities

Mentoring for new head teachers: recent British experience

Mentoring for new headteachers: recent British experience

Professional Learning Communities: source materials for school leaders and other leaders of professional learning