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

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

This paper briefly describes two projects--one in the United States, one in England--that studied professional learning communities (PLCs). Part I of the paper describes the two projects. The American project is called the Creating Communities of Continuous Inquiry and Improvement project. The purpose of this study was to document and examine evidence of efforts taking place in American schools actively engaged in creating PLCs. The English project, Creating and Sustaining Effective Professional Learning Communities, set out to identify and provide practical examples of the following: characteristics of effective PLCs in different kinds of schools; key factors inside and outside schools that seem to help or hinder the development of PLCs; and innovative practices for ongoing professional learning and development. Part II of the paper discusses the commonalities of the two projects. Part III discusses emerging research issues stemming from the projects from the both the American and English perspectives. Appended are a heuristic model of a professional learning community, an assessment instrument, a description of research protocol, a matrix of a PLC organizer, and a list of PLC dimensions and critical attributes. (WFA) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. An International Perspective on the Development of Learning Communities. Kristine Kiefer Hipp Louise Stoll Ray Bo lam Mike Wallace Agnes McMahon Sally Thomas Jane Bumpers Huffman

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R Bolam

Papers

Professional Learning Communities: A Review of the Literature

Creating and Sustaining Effective Professional Learning Communities

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

An International Perspective on the Development of Learning Communities.

Creating and Sustaining Effective Learning Communities