Buckingham (2005), a global researcher and thought leader, contends that, above all else, leaders of any effective organization must know the importance of clarity. Having clarity means communicating consistently in words and actions the organization’s purpose, the future the organization will attempt to create, the specific actions members can immediately take to achieve its goals, and the progress indicators it will track. Engaging the staff in considering the four pillars of the PLC foundation is the key to establishing that clarity.
However, leaders must do more than simply invite people to share opinions. A fundamental prerequisite in decision making in a PLC is building shared knowledge about the most promising practices. In other words, staff members must learn together about the research base and evidence that can help them intelligently answer the PLC foundation questions. Uninformed people make uninformed decisions. Therefore, in building consensus in a PLC, leaders must take responsibility for providing staff with the information they need to make good decisions at all points in the process.
A Collaborative Culture
The second big idea driving the PLC process is that for a school to help all students learn, it must build a collaborative culture in which members take collective responsibility for all students. The traditional mantra of “These are my students” gives way to “These are our students, and we share the responsibility to ensure their learning.” Here again, the issue of equity comes to the fore. What to teach, content sequencing, appropriate pacing, assessment, intervention, extension, and instructional strategies have traditionally come under the individual classroom teacher’s purview, which, as previously mentioned, makes equity virtually impossible.
The PLC process calls on collaborative team members to make these decisions collectively rather than in isolation. The entire team decides what students must know and be able to do for the entire course and for each unit within the course. It establishes the content’s sequencing and the appropriate pacing for each unit. The team develops common formative assessments for each unit and agrees on the criteria it will use in judging the quality of student work. The team identifies students who need intervention or extension, and the school creates the systems to ensure students receive this additional support in a timely manner. It analyzes transparent evidence of student learning in order to inform and improve its practice. None of this will occur without effective leadership that ensures it puts structures and supports in place to foster effective collaboration. We will address the elements of that leadership later in this introduction.
A Results Orientation
The third big idea that drives the PLC process states that educators must assess their effectiveness on the basis of results rather than intentions. Project-based goals such as “We will integrate technology into our language arts program” and “We will develop six new common assessments” give way to SMART goals that ask educators to focus on how their projects and efforts will impact student achievement. The SMART goal acronym helps educators focus on evidence of student learning (Conzemius & O’Neill, 2014). A SMART goal is:
• Strategic—The goal aligns with a school or district goal. A team that achieves its SMART goal contributes to the school or district goal.
• Measurable—The goal provides a basis of comparison to determine whether evidence of student learning indicates improvement or decline.
• Attainable—The goal is realistic enough that team members believe they can achieve it through their collective efforts.
• Results oriented—The goal focuses on results rather than activities or intentions. In order to achieve a SMART goal, a team must typically help more students learn at higher levels than in the past.
• Time bound—The goal specifies when the team expects to achieve its goal.
Teams can and should create SMART goals for the entire school year and for every unit they teach during the year.
We cannot overemphasize the importance of collective inquiry and open dialogue about the three big ideas for successful implementation of the PLC process. More rigorous standards and more informative assessments cannot, by themselves, improve a school. If educators convince themselves that they fulfill their responsibility simply when they present content, that they work best in isolation, and that they need to use evidence of student learning only to assign grades—rather than to inform professional practice to better meet student needs—even well-designed structures and processes have little impact on student learning. School transformation requires significant changes in the culture of schooling, which, in turn, requires educators to engage in meaningful and informed dialogue about the assumptions, beliefs, and expectations that should drive their work.
Critical Questions for Team and School Consideration
It stands to reason that any school that claims it is committed to helping all students learn must engage collaborative teams in collectively considering certain critical questions. The four critical questions of learning in the PLC process include (DuFour et al., 2016):
1. What is it we want students to learn?—What knowledge, skills, and dispositions do we expect each student to acquire at the end of this instructional unit, course, or grade level?
2. How will we know if students are learning?—How will we monitor each student’s learning during daily instruction and during the unit?
3. How will we respond when students don’t learn?—What systems do we have in place to provide students who struggle with additional time and support for acquiring essential knowledge, skills, and dispositions?
4. How will we extend learning for students who are highly proficient?—What systems do we have in place to extend learning for students who have already learned the essential standards?
In Collaborative Teams That Transform Schools, Robert Marzano, Tammy Heflebower, Jan K. Hoegh, Phil Warrick, and Gavin Grift (2016) recommend two additional questions that educators in a high reliability school should consider.
5. How will we increase our instructional competence?—What systems are in place to help teachers improve their pedagogical skills?
6. How will we coordinate our efforts as a school?—How will we ensure that all initiatives in the school are operating in a cohesive and coherent manner?
Let’s compare and contrast how a traditional school and a PLC would attempt to address these six questions.
What Is It We Want Students to Learn?
Marzano’s (2003) research in What Works in Schools has made the term guaranteed and viable curriculum part of the educational lexicon. Thanks to his work, two general understandings persist: (1) effective schools provide students with access to the same curriculum content in a specific course and at a specific grade level, regardless of their assigned teacher; and (2) teachers can teach this curriculum in the amount of instructional time provided. (Chapter 4, page 107, elaborates on the importance of a guaranteed and viable curriculum.)
Traditionally, districts have addressed this key element of effective schooling by creating district curriculum and pacing guides and distributing the appropriate guide to each teacher based on his or her grade level or course. This practice often creates the illusion of a guaranteed and
