PLC tools: promoting learning about learning in a teachers’ professional community

ABSTRACT

Professional learning communities (PLCs) have become the gold standard of teachers’ professional learning. However, their success is far from guaranteed. Little is known regarding the processes that groups of learners undergo to become fully-fledged PLCs. This study followed a teachers’ PLC over three years. It shows how the facilitator learned to implement distributed leadership without losing control, how she used practical tools to influence the participants’ learning and collaborative work, and how she created a learning cycle that conceptualised this work and allowed the members to participate in designing the PLC’s future actions.

KEYWORDS:

• Communities of practice
• professional learning communities
• professional development
• teacher leadership
• facilitation tools

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).