Teachers and students together in a professional learning community

ABSTRACT

Students represent the majority of the people in a school organisation, but are rarely considered as participants in literature on professional learning communities (PLC). This article explored a PLC with the legitimate participation of students in the classroom. Data was based on interviews with 11 teachers. Community of practice theory provides 3 dimensions that were used as analytical tools: shared repertoire, mutual engagement, and joint enterprise. Shared repertoire refers to how teachers introduce and develop tools for learning; mutual engagement to how to establish relationships and atmosphere with a respect for learning; and joint enterprise to how students’ associations and experiences are used to shape content knowledge in planning for learning. We conclude that the theory of community of practice is useful to describe and understand the formation of a PLC.

KEYWORDS:

• collaborative learning
• community of practice
• professional learning community
• student participation

Acknowledgements

Many thanks are due to the teachers and school leaders in the project presented. This paper would not have been possible to perform without your documentation and active participation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Lesson plans: (1) goals extracted from the curriculum; (2) goals described with language suited to the students’ age; (3) working methods to reach the goals; (4) methods for pedagogical differentiation within the class; (5) methods for formative and summative assessment; (6) evaluation (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2011).

Additional information

Funding

This study is part of a research project with financial support from Swedish Research Council [grant number 2012–5953].