Perhaps some questions to ask with districts as they begin to form PLCs
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Karl KowalskiMay 2004 | Volume 61 | Number 8
Schools as Learning Communities Pages 6-11
What Is a "Professional Learning Community"?
To create a professional learning community, focus on learning rather than teaching, work collaboratively, and hold yourself accountable for results.
Richard DuFour -
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KPI_Library BookmarksBy Richard DuFour, published in Educational Leadership, May 2004, V. 61, N. 8, p 6-11. Educational Leadership is a publication of ASCD. Author discusses the concepts of Professional Learning Communities, the ideas behind their core principles and how the principles guide schools' efforts to sustain the professional learning community model until it becomes inherent in a school's culture.
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not simply to ensure that students are taught but to ensure that they learn.
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Almost invariably, the school leaves the solution to the discretion of individual teachers, who
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vary widely in the ways they respond. Some teachers conclude that the struggling students should trans
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teachers become aware of the incongruity between their commitment to ensure learning for all students and their lack of a coordinated strategy to respond when some students do not learn
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May 2004
May 2004 | Volume 61 | Number 8
Schools as Learning Communities Pages 6-11What Is a "Professional Learning Community"?
To create a professional learning community, focus on learning rather than teaching, work collaboratively, and hold yourself accountable for results.
Richard DuFour
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.
The professional learning community model has now reached a critical juncture, one well known to those who have witnessed the fate of other well-intentioned school reform efforts. In this all-too-familiar cycle, initial enthusiasm gives way to confusion about the fundamental concepts driving the initiative, followed by inevitable implementation problems, the conclusion that the reform has failed to bring about the desired results, abandonment of the reform, and the launch of a new search for the next promising initiative. Another reform movement has come and gone, reinforcing the conventional education wisdom that promises, "This too shall pass."
The movement to develop professional learning communities can avoid this cycle, but only if educators reflect critically on the concept's merits. What are the "big ideas" that represent the core principles of professional learning communities? How do these principles guide schools' efforts to sustain the professional learning community model until it becomes deeply embedded in the culture of the school?
Big Idea #1: Ensuring That Students Learn
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Lisa MillerMay 2004 | Volume 61 | Number 8
Schools as Learning Communities Pages 6-11
What Is a "Professional Learning Community"?
To create a professional learning community, focus on learning rather than teaching, work collaboratively, and hold yourself accountable for results.
Richard DuFour -
29 Sep 11
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To create a professional learning community, focus on learning rather than teaching, work collaboratively, and hold yourself accountable for results.
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May 2004
May 2004 | Volume 61 | Number 8
Schools as Learning Communities Pages 6-11What Is a "Professional Learning Community"?
To create a professional learning community, focus on learning rather than teaching, work collaboratively, and hold yourself accountable for results.Richard DuFour
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
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May 2004
May 2004 | Volume 61 | Number 8
Schools as Learning Communities Pages 6-11What Is a "Professional Learning Community"?
To create a professional learning community, focus on learning rather than teaching, work collaboratively, and hold yourself accountable for results.Richard DuFour
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 .
The professional learning community model has now reached a critical juncture, one well known to those who have witnessed the fate of other well-intentioned school reform efforts. In this all-too-familiar cycle, initial enthusiasm gives way to confusion about the fundamental concepts driving the initiative, followed by inevitable implementation problems, the conclusion that the reform has failed to bring about the desired results, abandonment of the reform, and the launch of a new search for the next promising initiative. Another reform movement has come and gone, reinforcing the conventional education wisdom that promises, "This too shall pass."
The movement to develop professional learning communities can avoid this cycle, but only if educators reflect critically on the concept's merits. What are the "big ideas" that represent the core principles of professional learning communities? How do these principles guide schools' efforts to sustain the professional learning community model until it becomes deeply embedded in the culture of the school?
Big Idea #1: Ensuring That Students Learn
The professional learning community model flows from the assumption that the core mission of formal education is not simply to ensure that students are taught but to ensure that they learn. This simple shift—from a focus on teaching to a focus on learning—has profound implications for schools.
School mission statements that promise "learning for all" have become a cliché. But when a school
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May 2004
May 2004 | Volume 61 | Number 8
Schools as Learning Communities Pages 6-11What Is a "Professional Learning Community"?
To cre a te a professional learning community, focus on learning rather than teaching, work collaboratively, and hold yourself accountable for results.Richard DuFour
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 .
The professional learning community model has now reached a critical juncture, one well known to those who have witnessed the fate of other well-intentioned school reform efforts. In this all-too-familiar cycle, initial enthusiasm gives way to confusion about the fundamental concepts driving the initiative, followed by inevitable implementation problems, the conclusion that the reform has failed to bring about the desired results, abandonment of the reform, and the launch of a new search for the next promising initiative. Another reform movement has come and gone, reinforcing the conventional education wisdom that promises, "This too shall pass."
The movement to develop professional learning communities can avoid this cycle, but only if educators reflect critically on the concept's merits. What are the "big ideas" that represent the core principles of professional learning communities? How do these principles guide schools' efforts to sustain the professional learning community model until it becomes deeply embedded in the culture of the school?
Big Idea #1: Ensuring That Students Learn
The professional learning community model flows from the assumption that the core mission of formal education is not simply to ensure that students are taught but to ensure that they learn. This simple shift—from a focus on teaching to a focus on learning—has profound implications for schools.
School mission statements that promise "learning for all" have become a cliché. But when a school
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How will we respond when a student experiences difficulty in learning?
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mariella dorr"To create a professional learning community, focus on learning
rather than teaching, work collaboratively, and hold yourself accountable for results."PLC professional education professionalearningcommunity resources
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29 Aug 11
Rick SimsWhat Is a "Professional Learning Community"?
cel606 professional learning community Education plc dufour Garfield leadership
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unities can avoid this cycle, but only if educators reflect critically on the concept's merits. What are the "big ideas" that represent the core principles of professional learning communities? How do these principles guide schools' efforts to sustain the professional learning community model until it becomes deeply embedded in the culture of the school?
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Karen Littlefieldidea of improving schools by developing professioanl learning comunities
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May 2004
May 2004 | Volume 61 | Number 8
Schools as Learning Communities Pages 6-11What Is a "Professional Learning Community"?
To create a professional learning community, focus on learning rather than teaching, work collaboratively, and hold yourself accountable for results.
Richard DuFour
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In fact, the term has been used so ubiquitously that it is in danger of losing all meaning.
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To create a professional learning community, focus on learning rather than teaching, work collaboratively, and hold yourself accountable for results.
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In fact, the term has been used so ubiquitously that it is in danger of losing all meaning.
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In fact, the term has been used so ubiquitously that it is in danger of losing all meaning.
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In fact, the term has been used so ubiquitously that it is in danger of losing all meaning.
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What are the "big ideas" that represent the core principles of professional learning communities?
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Big Idea #1: Ensuring That Students Learn
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- 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?
As the school moves forward, every professional in the building must engage with colleagues in the ongoing exploration of three crucial questions that drive the work of those within a professional learning community:
- What do we want each student to learn?
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- Timely. The school quickly identifies students who need additional time and support.
- Based on intervention rather than remediation. The plan provides students with help as soon as they experience difficulty rather than relying on summer school, retention, and remedial courses.
- Directive. Instead of inviting students to seek additional help, the systematic plan requires students to devote extra time and receive additional assistance until they have mastered the necessary concepts.
the professional learning community's response to students who experience difficulty is
- Timely. The school quickly identifies students who need additional time and support.
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Big Idea #2: A Culture of Collaboration
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Big Idea #3: A Focus on Results
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- Timely. The school quickly identifies students who need additional time and support.
- Based on intervention rather than remediation. The plan provides students with help as soon as they experience difficulty rather than relying on summer school, retention, and remedial courses.
- Directive. Instead of inviting students to seek additional help, the systematic plan requires students to devote extra time and receive additional assistance until they have mastered the necessary concepts.
The staff addresses this discrepancy by designing strategies to ensure that struggling students receive additional time and support, no matter who their teacher is. In addition to being systematic and schoolwide, the professional learning community's response to students who experience difficulty is
- Timely. The school quickly identifies students who need additional time and support.
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Any student who continues to fall short of expectations at the end of six weeks despite these interventions is required, rather than invited, to attend tutoring sessions during the study hall period. Counselors begin to make weekly checks on the struggling student's progress. If tutoring fails to bring about improvement within the next six weeks, the student is assigned to a daily guided study hall with 10 or fewer students. The guided study hall supervisor communicates with classroom teachers to learn exactly what homework each student needs to complete and monitors the completion of that homework. Parents attend a meeting at the school at which the student, parents, counselor, and classroom teacher must sign a contract clarifying what each party will do to help the student meet the standards for the course.
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term has been used so ubiquitously that it is in danger of losing all meaning.
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mission of formal education is not simply to ensure that students are taught but to ensure that they learn
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Jessica Allen@jessievaz12 @B_Wagoner http://pdonline.ascd.org/pd_online/secondary_reading/el200405_dufour.html or the book PLC's by Richard Dufour
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The powerful collaboration that characterizes professional learning communities is a systematic process in which teachers work together to analyze and improve their classroom practice. Teachers work in teams, engaging in an ongoing cycle of questions that promote deep team learning. This process, in turn, leads to higher levels of student achievement.
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For teachers to participate in such a powerful process, the school must ensure that everyone belongs to a team that focuses on student learning. Each team must have time to meet during the workday and throughout the school year. Teams must focus their efforts on crucial questions related to learning and generate products that reflect that focus, such as lists of essential outcomes, different kinds of assessment, analyses of student achievement, and strategies for improving results. Teams must develop norms or protocols to clarify expectations regarding roles, responsibilities, and relationships among team members. Teams must adopt student achievement goals linked with school and district goals.
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What are the "big ideas" that represent the core principles of professional learning communities? How do these principles guide schools' efforts to sustain the professional learning community model until it becomes deeply embedded in the culture of the school?
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The professional learning community model flows from the assumption that the core mission of formal education is not simply to ensure that students are taught but to ensure that they learn.
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What school characteristics and practices have been most successful in helping all students achieve at high levels? How could we adopt those characteristics and practices in our own school? What commitments would we have to make to one another to create such a school? What indicators could we monitor to assess our progress? When the staff has built shared knowledge and found common ground on these questions, the school has a solid foundation for moving forward with its improvement initiative.
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- 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?
- What do we want each student to learn?
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- Timely. The school quickly identifies students who need additional time and support.
- Based on intervention rather than remediation. The plan provides students with help as soon as they experience difficulty rather than relying on summer school, retention, and remedial courses.
- Directive. Instead of inviting students to seek additional help, the systematic plan requires students to devote extra time and receive additional assistance until they have mastered the necessary concepts.
- Timely. The school quickly identifies students who need additional time and support.
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Big Idea #2: A Culture of Collaboration
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Big Idea #3: A Focus on Results
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dgermundsonWhatever It Takes: How a Professional Learning Community Responds When Kids Don't Learn (National Educational Service, in press).
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Sean HarvatineMay 2004 | Volume 61 | Number 8 \nSchools as Learning Communities Pages 6-11\nEducational Leadership \n\nWhat Is a "Professional Learning Community"?\n\nTo create a professional learning community, focus on learning rather than teaching, work collaboratively, and hold yourself accountable for results.\n\nRichard DuFour
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Nina LevineDuFour, Richard. "Schools as Learning Communities." Educational Leadership. May 2004 | Volume 61 | Number 8, pp 6-11.
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Professional learning communities judge their effectiveness on the basis of results.
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Every teacher team participates in an ongoing process of identifying the current level of student achievement, establishing a goal to improve the current level, working together to achieve that goal, and providing periodic evidence of progress
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data will become a catalyst for improved teacher practice only if the teacher has a basis of comparison.
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When teacher teams develop common formative assessments throughout the school year, each teacher can identify how his or her students performed on each skill compared with other students.
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Of course, this focus on continual improvement and results requires educators to change traditional practices and revise prevalent assumptions
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Educators must begin to embrace data as a useful indicator of progress. They must stop disregarding or excusing unfavorable data and honestly confront the sometimes-brutal facts.
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They must stop using averages to analyze student performance and begin to focus on the success of each student.
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Educators who focus on results must also stop limiting improvement goals to factors outside the classroom,
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This simple shift—from a focus on teaching to a focus on learning—has profound implications for schools.
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- How will we respond when a student experiences difficulty in learning?
The answer to the third question separates learning communities from traditional schools.
- How will we respond when a student experiences difficulty in learning?
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When a school begins to function as a professional learning community, however, teachers become aware of the incongruity between their commitment to ensure learning for all students and their lack of a coordinated strategy to respond when some students do not learn
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systematic, timely, and directive intervention program
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teacher conversations must quickly move beyond "What are we expected to teach?" to "How will we know when each student has learned?"
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DRIP syndrome—Data Rich/Information Poor
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90 minutes daily
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Lynn HawthorneOverview of PLCs. Links formative assessments to student learning. Links teacher focus to student results.
professionallearningcommunity duFour professionaldevelopment teacherled LHawthorne DESP7230
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ensure that they learn
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ongoing exploration of three crucial questions
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Brad McAllisterAnnotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fpdonline.ascd.org%2Fpd_online%2Fsecondary_reading%2Fel200405_dufour.html
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Big Idea #1: Ensuring That Students Learn
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formal education is not simply to ensure that students are taught but to ensure that they learn.
-
- 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?
three crucial questions that drive the work of those within a professional learning community:
- What do we want each student to learn?
-
- Timely. The school quickly identifies students who need additional time and support.
- Based on intervention rather than remediation. The plan provides students with help as soon as they experience difficulty rather than relying on summer school, retention, and remedial courses.
- Directive. Instead of inviting students to seek additional help, the systematic plan requires students to devote extra time and receive additional assistance until they have mastered the necessary concepts.
- Timely. The school quickly identifies students who need additional time and support.
-
Big Idea #2: A Culture of Collaboration
-
The powerful collaboration that characterizes professional learning communities is a systematic process in which teachers work together to analyze and improve their classroom practice. Teachers work in teams, engaging in an ongoing cycle of questions that promote deep team learning. This process, in turn, leads to higher levels of student achievement.
-
For teachers to participate in such a powerful process, the school must ensure that everyone belongs to a team that focuses on student learning. Each team must have time to meet during the workday and throughout the school year. Teams must focus their efforts on crucial questions related to learning and generate products that reflect that focus, such as lists of essential outcomes, different kinds of assessment, analyses of student achievement, and strategies for improving results. Teams must develop norms or protocols to clarify expectations regarding roles, responsibilities, and relationships among team members. Teams must adopt student achievement goals linked with school and district goals.
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Schools must stop pretending that merely presenting teachers with state standards or district curriculum guides will guarantee that all students have access to a common curriculum.
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Even school districts that devote tremendous time and energy to designing the intended curriculum often pay little attention to the implemented curriculum (what teachers actually teach) and even less to the attained curriculum (what students learn) (Marzano, 2003).
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In addition, faculties must stop making excuses for failing to collaborate.
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Big Idea #3: A Focus on Results
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The results-oriented professional learning community not only welcomes data but also turns data into useful and relevant information for staff.
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They must stop disregarding or excusing unfavorable data and honestly confront the sometimes-brutal facts. They must stop using averages to analyze student performance and begin to focus on the success of each student.
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They must stop assessing their own effectiveness on the basis of how busy they are or how many new initiatives they have launched and begin instead to ask, "Have we made progress on the goals that are most important to us?"
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focus on learning
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hold yourself accountable
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work collaboratively
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to ensure that they learn
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Jason Borgen" Educational Leadership
EL Cover
May 2004
May 2004 | Volume 61 | Number 8
Schools as Learning Communities Pages 6-11
What Is a "Professional Learning Community"?" -
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n avoid this cycle, but only if educators reflect critically on the concept's merits. What are the "bi
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"big ideas" that represent the core principles of professional learning communities?
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Add Sticky Note
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What are the "big ideas" that represent the core principles of professional learning communities? How do these principles guide schools' efforts to sustain the professional learning community model until it becomes deeply embedded in the culture of the school?
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23 Sep 09
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shift—from a focus on teaching to a focus on learning
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What school characteristics and practices have been most successful in helping all students achieve at high levels? How could we adopt those characteristics and practices in our own school? What commitments would we have to make to one another to create such a school? What indicators could we monitor to assess our progress?
-
- 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?
- What do we want each student to learn?
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systematic and schoolwide
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Based on intervention rather than remediation
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Adlai Stevenson High School
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The powerful collaboration that characterizes professional learning communities is a systematic process in which teachers work together to analyze and improve their classroom practice. Teachers work in teams, engaging in an ongoing cycle of questions that promote deep team learning. This process, in turn, leads to higher levels of student achievement.
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make public what has traditionally been private
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We did—because we find working alone safer than and preferable to working together.
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Every teacher team participates in an ongoing process of identifying the current level of student achievement, establishing a goal to improve the current level, working together to achieve that goal, and providing periodic evidence of progress.
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turns data into useful and relevant information for staff
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When teacher teams develop common formative assessments throughout the school year, each teacher can identify how his or her students performed on each skill compared with other students.
-
They must stop using averages to analyze student performance and begin to focus on the success of each student.
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stop limiting improvement goals to factors outside the classroom,
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Have we made progress on the goals that are most important to us?
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The rise or fall of the professional learning community concept depends not on the merits of the concept itself, but on the most important element in the improvement of any school—the commitment and persistence of the educators within i
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01 Sep 09
RJ StangherlinTo create a professional learning community, focus on learning rather than teaching, work collaboratively, and hold yourself accountable for results.
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31 Aug 09
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"learning for all"
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"learning for all"
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"learning for all"
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When a school begins to function as a professional learning community, however, teachers become aware of the incongruity between their commitment to ensure learning for all students and their lack of a coordinated strategy to respond when some students do not learn
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Every three weeks, every student receives a progress report.
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Collaborative conversations call on team members to make public what has traditionally been private—goals, strategies, materials, pacing, questions, concerns, and results. These discussions give every teacher someone to turn to and talk to, and they are explicitly structured to improve the classroom practice of teachers—individually and collectively.
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Teachers work in collaborative teams for 90 minutes daily to clarify the essential outcomes of their grade levels and courses and to align those outcomes with state standards.
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Each year, the teams pore over the results of the state test, which are broken down to show every teacher how his or her students performed on every skill and on every test item.
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Public Stiky Notes
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