Professional Learning: Enhancement & Transformation

As a school leader, I very much identify with being a learner and someone who wants to continue to improve. In this light, I believe that most all educators want to continue to improve and find ways to make their practice better. As we redefine and prioritize professional learning over professional development, in that improving practice becomes focused on impacting students, school leaders have a large responsibility in shaping how this will happen. I believe it is essential that the fostering of such professional learning communities and opportunities, where educators can share, refine and implement teaching strategies to be essential.

Starting as a new teacher and licensed K-12 intervention specialist, my first real experience with professional learning communities (PLC) was very much informal. The No Child Left Behind legislation had been newly passed and many schools were not equipped to handle the pending implications. Most all of our staff were forced to seminars, lectures and presentations, but no real interactive strategies were practiced or introduced. Many student support teachers and classroom teachers got together on their own, in order to best prepare themselves and adjust their practices to adapt to new responsibilities and classroom environments. This meant impromptu meetings, classroom observations, informal feedback and the sharing of resources. These “pop-up” PLCs were quite useful, but as Jill Harrison Berg discusses, these groups lacked clear vision and alignment from school leadership to be most effective.

My current school has begun a process in changing how it used to define professional learning, so as to put the emphasis back onto smaller communities of learning and development. This has included a peer-coaching initiative, aligning appraisals to clearly track staff/school development priorities and implementing weekly staff seminars where staff can share best practice. This has all been positive and is moving our school in the right direction. In many ways, our current shift in professional learning aligns with most of Tomlinon’s (2018) principles for meaningful teacher learning.  However, we still do not formally oversee and organize specific PLCs. Recently, through backward design, we did have a unique situation where a effective PLC emerged. I think it could act as an example that school leadership can use, as a model, going forward.

Our school leadership had highlighted a need for further development of summative assessment in the subject area of Writing. New ideas and technology have emerged, which challenged the traditional paper moderation and subjective rubric-style judgments of past times. We were interested in Comparative Judgment  as a possible tool to fill our need. From this highlighted need, we opened discussions with the Assessment Coordinator, Literacy Team and new staff about this particular assessment technology. Through this backward design, beginning with a need for our students, emerged a small group who effectively and efficiently shared current practices, questioned current assessment tools and modeled different ways this technology could work within our school. The PLC’s task was clear, there was passion and talent within the group to further our own practice, and in turn, better our school’s writing assessment procedures.

As we continue to imbed our aforementioned professional learning initiatives, I would like our school to more discreetly develop PLC opportunities outside of our traditional curriculum-based groupings. I feel this will go alongside our peer-coaching culture and become a further way in which the school can align its development plan priorities with staff needs and/or interests. I also feel this opportunity would be the appropriate place to introduce the SAMR model to staff. Focusing on our use of technology integration, to not only enhance practice, but to transform it, will require a school-wide recognition of the SAMR model, as well as the opportunity to share practice and actively engage in using it. As David Andrade outlined points of priority in his recent article about leveraging technology, the SAMR model will be useful in overcoming his first two: (1) Setting clear and consistent goals and (2) Ensuring that technology enhances learning. These goals can and should also be a focus of potential PLCs we create. I believe that the professional learning within my school can continue to be fine-tuned and used in a meaningful way.

How do your schools go about creating and organizing professional learning environments?

What limitations do you run into?

How much of a role has technology played in current PLC frameworks?

References

Tomlinson, C.A. (2018). One to grow on / Help teachers become master learners. Educational Leadership, 76(3), 88-89.