PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES

WHAT ARE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES?

What Are Professional Learning Communities?

In the mid eighties, Rosenholtz (1989) linked the notion of teachers' workplace factors with the discussion of teaching quality, maintaining that teachers who felt supported in their own ongoing learning and classroom practice were more committed and effective than those who did not receive such confirmation. Support by means of teacher networks, cooperation among colleagues, and expanded professional roles increased teacher efficacy in meeting students' needs. Further, Rosenholtz found that teachers with a high sense of their own efficacy were more likely to adopt new classroom behaviors and also more likely to stay in the profession.¹

McLaughlin and Talbert (1993) confirmed Rosenholtz's findings, suggesting that when teachers had opportunities for collaborative inquiry and the learning related to it, they were able to develop and share a body of wisdom gleaned from their experience.2 Adding to the discussion, Darling-Hammond (1996) cited shared decision making as a factor in curriculum reform and the transformation of teaching roles in some schools. In such schools, structured time was provided for teachers to work together in planning instruction, observing each other's classrooms, and sharing feedback.3 These are the very attributes that characterize professional learning communities – collaborative inquiry, shared decision making, and joint planning of instruction.

The literature on professional learning communities repeatedly gives attention to five attributes of such organizational arrangements: supportive and shared leadership, collective creativity, shared values and vision, supportive conditions, and shared personal practice.