Developing and sustaining professional dialogue about teaching and learning in schools

Abstract

This article presents empirical evidence from a follow-up study of schools which had been members of a school-based research consortium. It offers insight into the work of professional learning communities at the level of practice and so contributes to the growing research interest in probing their development. It investigates the extent to which activities to support professional dialogue that evolved in a schoolbased research consortium had been sustained and developed three years after the period of external funding. It was found that only those activities most explicitly focused on immediate classroom practice were sustained. The findings support the view that learning in partnerships and networks is highly contextualised and consequently not easily transferred.