Page 366 - DEDU503_EDUCATIONAL_MANAGEMENT_ENGLISH

Educational Management

Notes 28.1 Concept of PLC

A Professional learning Communities (PLCs) an ongoing process used to establish a schoolwide
culture that develops teacher leadership explicitly focused on building and sustaining school
improvement efforts.
Generally, PLCs are composed of teachers, although administrators and support staff routinely
participate. In some schools, PLCs are extended to community members and students, as appropriate.
Through participation in PLCs, teachers enhance their leadership capacity while they work as
members of ongoing, high-performing, collaborative teams that focus on improving student learning.

28.2 Definition of a PLC

Although there is no universal definition of a PLC the following definitions offer a range of ways to
describe a PLC :
• An ongoing process through which teachers and administrators work collaboratively to seek
and share learning and to act on their learning, their goal being to enhance their effectiveness
as professionals for students’ benefit (Hord, 1997)
• A school culture that recognizes and capitalizes on the collective strengths and talents of the
staff (Protheroe, 2008).
• A strategy to increase student achievement by creating a collaborative school culture focused
on learning (Feger & Arruda, 2008).
• Team members who regularly collaborate toward continued improvement in meeting learner
needs through a shared curricular-focused vision (Reichstetter, 2006).
• A group of people sharing and critically interrogating their practice in an ongoing, reflective,
collaborative, inclusive learning-oriented and growth-promoting way (McREL, 2003).
• Educators committed to working collaboratively in ongoing processes of collective inquiry and
action research to achieve better results for the students they serve (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, &
Many, 2006).
• An inclusive group of people, motivated by a shared learning vision, who support and work
with each other to inquire on their practice and together learn new and better approaches to
enhance student learning (Stoll, Bolam, McMahon, Thomas, Wallace, Greenwood et al., 2005).
While these definitions capture the spirit of PLCs, they are only a starting point for understanding
them.
What makes a PLC difficult to define is that it is not a prescription, a new program, a model, or an
innovation to be implemented. Rather, a PLC is an infrastructure or a way of working together that
results in continuous school improvement (Hord, 1997).

Give the definition of PLC given by hord.

28.3 Elements that Define a PLC

It can become complicated when educators seek to operationalize PLC definitions at the school
level. A PLC is more than simply a collection of teachers working together or a social network of
educators who share stories, materials, and advice. In fact, the PLC concept often is misused to
describe committees, grade-level teams, and/or weekly planning meetings in which the participants
undertake data-based decision making.

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