Learning communities enhance teachers' knowledge

• PLCs encourage professional development that supports more comprehensive approaches to teaching and learning.
• Learning the experiences of others is invaluable for gaining a better understanding of the learning process.
• Students reap benefits from PLCs, including better performance scores on tests of achievement.

Professional learning communities (PLCs) provide a promising model for improving schools by enhancing the knowledge and skills of teachers. PLCs were developed largely in response to the recognition that teaching and learning are complex concepts that require more than simple knowledge about education on the part of the teachers. PLCs build on modes from the business world that assume that organizations have the capacity to learn. They encourage professional development that supports more comprehensive approaches to teaching and learning.

PLCs involve the collaborative sharing of teachers’ experiences, with the assumption that this sharing will enhance the knowledge of teachers and thereby improve student learning. A key characteristic of PLCs is that they shift the focus of education from teaching to learning.

They concentrate on what techniques optimize the students’ knowledge and performance rather than those that may, for example, allow for the communication of the most or best information by the teacher.

The focus on enhancing student learning has required teachers to identify with more precision what they actually want students to learn, how to assess whether students are learning those skills and how to deal with challenges in instilling information or capacities in students. The collaborative aspect of PLCs is also critical to their success.

Though many teachers like to employ strategies that they believe work because of their own experiences, expanding one’s knowledge of anecdotal information by learning the experiences of others is invaluable for teachers who want to gain a better understanding of the learning process and promote higher levels of learning in their students.

The increased collaboration fostered by PLCs has improved the teaching culture and led to the perception by teachers that PLCs will provide advantages to students and teachers. Accordingly, there is evidence that students reap benefits from PLCs, including better performance scores on tests of achievement.

For PLCS to grow in their utility, they will need to continue their focus on student learning and continue to evolve in terms of their goals and norms. Collecting, analyzing, interpreting and communicating data related to PLCs will be essential for the success of these communities. In addition, it will be important that insights gained from PLCs are strategically incorporated into the classroom so that students truly benefit from them. By focusing on the results of new techniques, teachers can avoid wasting time and resources on strategies that may seem promising but do not actually achieve results for students.

Finally, for PLCs to reach their full potential, administrators will likely need to get involved to both provide and encourage teachers to engage in professional development and participate in the conversations about how to improve learning.

They will need to equip teachers, directly or indirectly, with the tools necessary to shift the classroom focus away from the teacher and onto the student. As this shift represents an enormous change in education, it will take hard work and commitment on the part of all education stakeholders to make a smooth transition to what should ultimately be a more effective educational system within the United States.

David Lockett is a sixth-grade teacher at Mitchell Neilson Elementary.