requires people throughout the system to act in new ways and to contribute to the collective effort to make schools a better place for both student and adult learning. People must be willing to look in the mirror for solutions, rather than out of the window while waiting for others in the system to save them. As the Persian poet Rumi wrote in the 13th century, “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself” (Goodreads, 2013). Changing the world of education will require us to be wise. Let’s begin.
ONE
Clarity Precedes Competence
Marcus Buckingham (2005) advises that the one thing leaders of any organization must know to be effective is the importance of clarity. Well-intentioned people will be unable to implement the PLC process unless they have a deep, shared understanding of the conditions they are attempting to create, the ideas that should drive their work, and the obstacles they are likely to encounter as they move forward. In this chapter, we address these issues in an initial attempt to establish greater clarity about what the PLC process encompasses. We argue that every person in the system has an opportunity and an obligation to contribute to systemic PLCs.
It is complicated enough to implement the PLC process when administrators and staff throughout the system are very clear on what the process entails and its implications. It is impossible to implement the process when, as is so often the case, people are not clear on the most basic element: what does the term professional learning community mean? Many staff members and leaders use the term ambiguously and do none of the things that members of a PLC actually do. We need to begin, then, by clarifying the characteristics of a PLC, the underlying assumptions that drive the process, the challenges of implementation, and the need for individuals at all levels of the organization to contribute to the process.
What Is a Professional Learning Community?
One of the first challenges in using the PLC process systemically is establishing clarity across the system regarding what it means to be a PLC and what is involved in the process of becoming and sustaining a PLC. There are six characteristics of high-performing PLCs as described by Rick and his colleagues Rebecca DuFour, Robert Eaker, and Tom Many (2010):
1. Shared mission (purpose), vision (clear direction), values (collective commitments), and goals (indicators, timelines, and targets), which are all focused on student learning
2. A collaborative culture with a focus on learning
3. Collective inquiry into best practice and current reality
4. Action orientation or “learning by doing”
5. A commitment to continuous improvement
6. A results orientation
Underpinning these six qualities are three big ideas, or assumptions, that serve as the core of the PLC process. These ideas help focus educators as they make the transition from traditional schools to PLCs:
1. A relentless focus on learning for all students—The fundamental purpose of the school is to ensure all students learn at high levels; the future success of students will depend to a great extent on how effective educators are in achieving that fundamental purpose. There must be no ambiguity or hedging regarding this commitment to learning. Educators must embrace this purpose and act in ways that demonstrate their commitment to it. Schools must also examine all existing practices, procedures, and policies in light of that fundamental purpose and ensure they align with and reinforce high levels of learning for all students. A corollary assumption stipulates that if all students are to learn at high levels, the adults in the organization must also be continually learning. Therefore, structures are created to ensure staff members engage in job-embedded learning as part of their routine work practices.
2. A collaborative culture and collective effort to support student and adult learning—Schools cannot achieve the fundamental purpose of learning for all if educators work in isolation. Therefore, educators must build a collaborative culture in which they work together interdependently and assume collective responsibility for the learning of all students. Working in teams, they will be empowered to make important decisions, support one another, and learn from one another as they engage in the hard work of changing a culture.
3. A results orientation to improve practice and drive continuous improvement—Schools will not know whether or not all students are learning unless educators are hungry for evidence that students are acquiring the knowledge, skills, and dispositions deemed most essential to their success. Therefore, educators must systematically monitor student learning on an ongoing basis and use evidence of student learning to respond immediately to students who experience difficulty. Teachers and principals must also use this evidence of student learning to inform individual and collective professional practice and to fuel continuous improvement.
In a PLC, four critical questions help educators focus relentlessly on learning for all students:
1. What is it we want our students to learn? What knowledge, skills, and dispositions do we expect them to acquire as a result of this course, this grade level, and this unit of instruction?
2. How will we know if each student is learning each of the skills, concepts, and dispositions we have deemed most essential?
3. How will we respond when some of our students do not learn? What process will we put in place to ensure students receive additional time and support for learning in a way that is timely, precise, diagnostic, directive, and systematic?
4. How will we enrich and extend the learning for students who are already proficient?
In addressing these questions, educators go beyond pooling opinions, sharing personal anecdotes, or citing past precedents. They engage in exactly what the PLC process calls for: learning together. Together they study curriculum frameworks and attempt to translate them into the specific knowledge and skills students must acquire for each unit of instruction. Together they make decisions regarding recommended pacing for those units, and individually they make decisions about the instructional strategies they feel will be most effective in their classrooms. Together they examine effective ways of assessing student learning in the classroom each day as well as through team-developed common formative and summative assessments. Together they analyze the evidence of student learning and search for ways to improve their practice. Together they explore strategies to enrich and extend the learning for students who have demonstrated they are highly proficient. As a school, they develop a coordinated plan of support when students experience difficulty to avoid subjecting them to the traditional educational lottery in which the response to a struggling student has been solely dependent on the individual teacher to whom he or she had been assigned.
The specifics of all this work are grounded in a solid foundation of common purpose, shared vision, collective commitments, and goals that shape the culture of the school and district. There is general agreement that the purpose of the school and district is to ensure all students learn at high levels. There is a shared vision of the school and district that educators are attempting to create in order to better fulfill that purpose. Individuals throughout the school and district articulate collective commitments regarding the actions they will take and behaviors they will exhibit in order to achieve the shared vision. A few clearly defined goals help them mark their progress in this process of continuous improvement.
The shared vision and specific commitments may exist on paper at the beginning of the process; however, they are not part of the collective mindset from the outset of a PLC process. Rather, the process itself cultivates
