PLCs in the 21 st Century: Partnerships for Powerful Learning

1. PLCs in the 21st Century: Partnerships for Powerful Learning Sheryl Nussbaum-BeachDoctoral Candidate at William & MaryCEO, Powerful Learning Practice Dr. Sofia Pardo Lead Researcher, ideasLAB

2. Making the Case for Change • The world is changing. • Kids are using social technologies. • No one is teaching them. • Traditional professional development doesn't work. • Powerful Learning Practice takes a different, unique approach to professional learning. “The research tells us that teachers need to learn the way other professionals do—continually, collaboratively, and on the job. The good news is that we can learn from what some states and most high-performing nations are doing.” ~Linda Darling Hammond

3. PLP Professional Development Design… • Seek out 20 schools/districts willing to invest some time in exploring the challenge of 21st Century Learning. • Ask the schools to identify small teams of 5-6 educators who are ready for this exploration. • With the support of our PLP Community Managers, Cohort Community Leaders,PLP Fellows, ExperiencedVoices, and Team Leaders we begin that exploration together. • …With the eventual goal of "scaling up" the exploration in each participating school. • "I didn't realize how far along we'd come until the end. My whole life has changed and this whole new world has opened up to me." • Melanie Hutchinson,  • International Cohort http://

4. PLP Model Workshops Two all day workshops that build capacity, community and develop 21st Century skills. Webinars Live meetings where teams meet, listen and then reflect in small groups. Virtual Learning Community Where we deepen understanding, network, share resources and grow as a community of practice. Professional Learning Teams Job embedded teams who meet face-to-face and work towards scale and alignment of 21st Century skills with school improvement goals

5. We coined the phraseConnected Learning Communities to encompass the 3 pronged approach. • PLP takes a 3-pronged approach to PD • Professional Learning Communities (PLC) • Global Communities of Practice or Inquiry (CoP) • Personal Learning Networks (PLN)

6. Community is the New Professional Development Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1999a) describe three ways of knowing and constructing knowledge that align closely with PLP's philosophy and are worth mentioning here. Knowledge for Practice is often reflected in traditional PD efforts when a trainer shares with teachers information produced by educational researchers. This knowledge presumes a commonly accepted degree of correctness about what is being shared. The learner is typically passive in this kind of "sit and get" experience. This kind of knowledge is difficult for teachers to transfer to classrooms without support and follow through. After a workshop, much of what was useful gets lost in the daily grind, pressures and isolation of teaching. Knowledge in Practice recognizes the importance of teacher experience and practical knowledge in improving classroom practice. As a teacher tests out new strategies and assimilates them into teaching routines they construct knowledge in practice. They learn by doing. This knowledge is strengthened when teachers reflect and share with one another lessons learned during specific teaching sessions and describe the tacit knowledge embedded in their experiences. 

7. Community is the New Professional Development Knowledge of Practice believes that systematic inquiry where teachers create knowledge as they focus on raising questions about and systematically studying their own classroom teaching practices collaboratively, allows educators to construct knowledge of practice in ways that move beyond the basics of classroom practice to a more systemic view of learning. We believe that by attending to the development of knowledge for, in and of practice, we can enhance professional growth that leads to real change. Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S.L. (1999a). Relationships of knowledge and practice: Teaching learning in communities. Review of Research in Education, 24, 249-305. Passive, active, and reflective knowledge building in local (PLC), global (CoP) and contextual (PLN) learning spaces.

8. Research collaboration in 2009 between ideasLAB in Australia and Powerful Learning Practice in USA The Pilot June • Met virtually and planned • Created marketing materials • Recruited teams, fellows & community leaders • Trained Fellows & Team Leaders in Elluminate July • F2F training for Fellows, Community and Team Leaders • Kickoff August – September-October • Webinars • Online community involvement November • Culminating F2F • Survey December- April • Content Analysis • Concluded pilot work

9. NING and Pulse Pulse Burst Icon

10. Purpose of Study The purpose of our study is to identify the:  nature  evident outcomes of professional conversations among educators in an asynchronous, team-based, online community of practice. The conversations took place in a white list application for social network creation called NING

11. Research Questions Flow: What is the flow (i.e., direction) and frequency of the posts among differing roles within the learning community? Function: What is the function (i.e., purpose) and frequency of the posts among posts differing roles within the learning community? Content: What is the content (i.e., topics) and frequency of the posts among posts differing roles within the learning community?

12. Content Analysis Methodology Created function categories* Identified content categories** Developed codebook in Google Docs Created Analysis Tool- Pulse Piloted coding while training coders in Skype (we started with 5, then 4, then 3) Calculated inter-rater reliability(http://dfreelon.org/utils/recalfront/recal3/) * Adapted from Bonk & Kim's (2008) 12 forms of mentoring & Gunawardena, Lowe & Anderson (1997) online knowledge construction analysis model ** Adapted from Australian e-potentials survey (2008)

13. Content Analysis: Interrater Reliability Average Pairwise Percent Agreement Flow: file:///C:/Users/snbeach/Desktop/FLOW.php.htm Function: file:///C:/Users/snbeach/Desktop/FUNCTION.php.htm Content: file:///C:/Users/snbeach/Desktop/CONTENT.php.htm

14. Content Analysis Methodology Unit of Data Collection Discussion thread within an online connected learning community Unit of Data Analysis Individual posting to discussion thread within a forum, blog post, or group room in an online connected learning community. Flow was analyzed from context of thread Type of Evidence: Manifest vs. Latent Manifest or explicit meaning that can be objectively derived from the words used and the thoughts expressed in the postings.

15. Mean, Median, Mode, SD, Range

16. Frequency and Direction of Posts Community Leader Broadcast Team Leader Fellow Member Experienced Voice Flow Team Leader

17. FLOW Who is talking to whom? 1215 is 76% of entire posts (1636)

18. FLOW (cont.) Where are these conversations taking place?

19. Flow (Frequency and Directions of Posts

20. Flow (Frequency and Directions of Posts

21. Flow (Frequency and Directions of Posts

22. Flow (Frequency and Directions of Posts

23. Flow (Frequency and Directions of Posts

24. FLOW (cont.)

25. FLOW (findings) • Majority of comments were broadcasted with slightly higher numbers in public (384) than group spaces (358). • Members posted mostly in group spaces yet they were addressed more often in public spaces. • Fellows addressed team leaders three times more than team leaders did to fellows. (Directional Reciprocity) • Out of 130 community members, 20% chose not to post and just observe (lurk). • While the community was designed with loose governance, the higher the perceived leadership role the comments took on a more specific direction.

26. FLOW (cont.)

27. FLOW (cont.)

28. FLOW (cont.)

29. FLOW (cont.)

30. Content of Discussions by Role

31. Content of Discussions by Role Learning and Teaching

32. Content of Discussions by Role Professional Learning

33. Content of Discussions by Role Resources

34. CONTENT While it was expected to have a high concentration of comments in T&L and Professional Dev areas, we were surprised at the number of comments around resources. While members posted mostly in group spaces, the topic of L&T was discussed more in public areas of the community. However, the opposite happened with professional learning as it occurred more often in the smaller, intimate setting of the groups-with the exception of the CL role. Members talked about resources everywhere (both public and private) however, Fellows discussed resources more in groups. CL continued to be public in their leadership role.

35. Content of Discussions by Role

36. Content of Discussions by Role

37. Content of Discussions by Role

38. Function of Discussions by Role

39. FUNCTION The three most utilized levels of knowledge building were sharing info, sharing/contrasting exp, and sharing point of view. The content they were sharing, contrasting, or giving a point of view on aligned nicely with the top content areas as well. Least used knowledge functions were the highest order skills- negotiation of meaning and professional growth, with negotiation of meaning only occurring at the CL level. Most mentoring took place in the CL role. The content being mentored was PL, Leadership, and L&T

40. International perspectives deepened the professional conversation that took place by those involved in the coding. However, because of the under utilization of the EV (international visitors) further study needs to occur as to make the most of the opportunity for diverse conversations at the community level. • Tools were mastered within the context of knowledge building for the most part, with the exception of resource sharing. • More focus to the development of a shared vision for community outcomes needs to happen at the start of the project. • Job-embedded PD that results in significant shift doesn’t occur in 4 months. • Pulse holds tremendous potential for unlocking emprical truths in CMC because of the ease of use and authenticity of data placement

41. References Bonk, C. J., & Kim, K. A. (1998). Extending sociocultural theory to adult learning. In M. C. Smith, & T.Pourchot (Eds.) Adult learning & development: Perspectives from educational psychology. Mahwah, NJ, USA: Erlbaum Associates. Freelon, D.G. (2010) ReCal: Intercoder Reliability Calculation as a web service. International Journal of Internet Science 5 (1), 20-33. Gunawardena, C. Lowe, C & Anderson, T. (1997). Analysis of global online detabe and the development of an interaction analysis model for examining social construction of knowledge in computer conferencing. Journal of Educational Computing Research 17(4), 37-431. DEECD (2008). ePotential Teacher ICT Capabilities Survey; Powerfuil Learning Enabled by ICT.

42. What is PULSE? Pulse is a unique online content analysis tool that enhances the capacity of students, teachers and researchers to document, manage, understand and assess distributed online content by associating rich meta-data with it. It is an embedded contemporary assessment tool that provides a platform for assessing 21st century skills in a meaningful and authentic manner.”

43. Roadmap • Beta testing cycle completed on February 2011 • Product and/or service available to public March 2011 Expressions of interest : pulse@ideaslab.edu.au