PLCs: Why They Break Down

We all know what PLCs are.

In1993 people started using the label the professional community of learners, in which the teachers in a school and its administrators continuously seek and share learning and then act on what they learn. The goal of their actions is to enhance their effectiveness as professionals so that students benefit. This arrangement has also been termed communities of continuous inquiry and improvement.

 

More commonly referred to as Professional Learning Communities.

As an organizational arrangement, the professional learning community is seen as a powerful staff development approach and a potent strategy for school change and improvement.

However, even the leading guru on PLCs in the United States, Richard Dufour has said:

The idea of improving schools by developing professional learning communities is currently in vogue. People use this term to describe every imaginable combination of individuals with an interest in education—a grade-level teaching team, a school committee, a high school department, an entire school district, a state department of education, a national professional organization, and so on. In fact, the term has been used so ubiquitously that it is in danger of losing all meaning.

But duFour has always described the purpose of PLCs as to answer three key questions:

• What do we want each student to learn?

• How will we know when each student has learned it?

• How will we respond when a student experiences difficulty in learning?

We love them because...

Teachers get time to collaborate and discuss.

They are the “in vogue” way of doing onsite professional development (don’t have to pay for subs).

They make our school improvement plans look better.

In general, and theoretically…..they provide us opportunities to

a.       look at data

b.       to learn new ideas or strategies

c.       have shared planning time

d.       learn together

Here is where it breaks down...

The biggest problems are that the Purpose of the PLC is not clearly understood and the staff are not on board.

·         The PLCs did not emerge from a collective understanding of why we need to have a PLC.

·         PLCs are a top down “catch all” phrase for school improvement efforts and all kinds of activities are thrown under this name.

Sometimes the staff aren’t on board because:

·         The rationale for the PLCs has not been explained well and/or is not understood

·         A focus on student achievement sometimes gets framed as  a “teach to the test” mentality that is hard to overcome

Or there are school culture reasons:

·         They see a PLC as something extra or “on top of” what they already do

·         Teachers are tied to a certain style of teaching or grading that works for them

·         Many meetings designed to look at student data fall victim to the "culture of nice" -- teachers chat amiably and don't confront ineffective practices or push one another to higher levels of performance.