A professional learning community (PLC) is a structured, collaborative group of educators who come together regularly to discuss their teaching practices. They take collective responsibility for student learning by working toward shared goals and relentlessly focusing on the evidence they collect and analyze from students. Research strongly suggests that PLCs can positively impact both teacher practice and student achievement.

In working with some 115 schools around the country, we’ve seen that PLCs are effective only if they foster a culture of continuous improvement in which educators learn together as a team. As they work through multiple cycles of improvement, they build collective confidence in the belief that they, as a group, are having a positive impact on student learning.

This process starts with taking a strengths-based approach that focuses on what students know and can do, and how to use those strengths for further development. If a PLC devolves into just another department meeting, its potential to create meaningful change is lost. Rather than focusing on questions such as “What are we going to do about these kids who aren’t paying attention?” a strengths-based PLC might begin by asking, “How are we learning together as a team to engage students?”

To move the conversation from the abstract to the specific, effective PLCs include one or more activators — teachers or coaches who have completed training in how to maintain the group’s focus on learning together. By emphasizing the team’s strengths as well as its members’ shared responsibility for student success, activators cultivate a supportive environment that makes teachers feel that they are part of something important, effective and bigger than themselves.

When teams first come together, they tend to set relatively easily attainable goals for themselves, so one of the activator’s roles is to encourage the PLC to establish appropriately challenging aims for the group. The activator monitors how the team works, always with an eye toward getting the most efficient use of the team. As members develop procedures and norms together, they build trust in one another and in the group as a whole, which leads them to set increasingly challenging goals for themselves.

Read the full article about professional learning communities by Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey at The 74.