User notes

1. User notes This is a discrete PowerPoint presentation – you do not needany resources to accompany it. The PowerPoint includes a YouTube video. You will need to be connected to the Internet and have YouTube unblocked to watch it.There are no prerequisites for your school to have pre-established professional learning communities.When you have completed this PowerPoint, download and print out theGetting started with PLC support pack in this section of the DVD.You can use this support pack as a discrete professional development session with your staff.

2. What is a Professional Learning Community?

3. TfEL Domain 1: Learning for effective Teaching 1.3 Participate in professional learning communities and networks Essence > Leaders and teachers participate in critically reflective inquiry to develop teaching and learning across the school.

5. Why learn? In a fast changing world, if you can’t learn, unlearn and relearn, you’re lost. Sustainable and continuous learning is a given of the twenty-first century. Stoll, Fink and Earl (2003) How fast is this change?

6. Today, for tomorrow. How do we connect our learning to our students’?

7. Reflection These students are from Alberta, Canada. What is the key message that these students are giving us? Are these our students too?

8. Professional Learning Communities: are an ongoing process have a collective purpose are strongest when they are long term have members who are committed toactions that enhance student learning can also be known as teacher learningcommunities, communities of practice,collaborative planning processes orlearning teams.

9.  Professional Learning Communities will: use action research use student data have a collective enquiry to achieve high learning outcomes for students be a safe learning environment, where power is shared have members who inspire and encourage each other’s learning have high expectations and support to achieve desired outcomes respond to changing needs and involve everyone in deciding the direction and focus of the PLC in relation to the curriculum.

10. ‘... the most promising approach we have found for focusing on teacher actions is teacher learning communities. In these small, building-based groups, each participating teacher developsa specific plan for what he orshe wants to change in his or her classroom practice. The groups meet regularly to support team members in carrying out and refining their plans’. – Dylan Wiliam Why learn in a professionallearning community?

11. be avid, ongoing learners about their professional work and actively participate in collegiate learning learn together by sharing their thinking, practice, programs and responses to students’ work reflect, through the learner’s lens, on the impact of what they do, say and imply seek to clarify their own assumptions and work towards congruence between beliefs and practice understand the role of intellectual conflict in learning, and will not confuse this with personal conflict develop their professional language to describe their work explicitly and accurately. If teachers and leaders engage in professional learning communities and networks, they will:

12. An effective professional learningcommunity has an impact on: • students’ learning process and progress, attitudes, attendance • individual teachers’ and other staffs’ practice, morale, recruitment and retention • leadership capacity for learning across the whole school • a school’s capacity to engage successfully in networks and partnerships beyond the school.

13. To support professional learningcommunities, leaders will: • ensure learners have time to meetand talk • provide appropriate learning spaces • support learners with relevant resources • ensure communication mechanismsare sound • align learning with improvement plans • provide professional development coordination and planning • model learning by being a learner themselves.

14. Getting started How will we make time and space for colleagues to reflect, engage in dialogue, observe other colleagues, network with other staff and generally deepen our practice in our school context? A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. (Chinese proverb)

15. Food for thought A professional learning communityis a community where we can learnthe ‘artistry’ of teaching. A community where teachers and leaders provide support and challenge for each other to learn new practices and to unlearn old assumptions, beliefs and practices.MilbreyMcLaughlin McLaughlin M (1997) 'Rebuilding teacher professionalism in the United States' in Hargreaves A & Evans R (eds) Beyond educational reform: Bringing teacher back in. Open University Press, Buckingham