PLC vs PLT
With the introduction of the idea of PLC's vs PLT it is important to investigate and analyse the major differences. I feel this was what was the major confusion was with the difference between PLC and PLT and how it therefore applies to our College.
A PLC has 3 Big Ideas according to Dufour (2004). Firstly, Ensuring that students learn. That the community moves from a focus on teaching to a focus on learning. He says that every professional in the building must engage with colleagues in the ongoing exploration of three crucial questions that drive the work of those within a professional learning community:
- What do we want each student to learn?
- How will we know when each student has learned it?
- How will we respond when a student experiences difficulty in learning?
Dufour suggests that how we answer the last question really defines whether they are a learning community or a traditional school.
When a school begins to function as a professional learning community, however, teachers become aware of the incongruity between their commitment to ensure learning for all students and their lack of a coordinated strategy to respond when some students do not learn.
Big Idea #2 is Creating a culture of collaboration. Dufour (2004) indicates that educators who are building a professional learning community recognize that they must work together to achieve their collective purpose of learning for all. Therefore, they create structures to promote a collaborative culture. He states that despite compelling evidence indicating that working collaboratively represents best practice, teachers in many schools continue to work in isolation. Even in schools that endorse the idea of collaboration, the staff's willingness to collaborate often stops at the classroom door.
The powerful collaboration that characterizes professional learning communities is a systematic process in which teachers work together to analyze and improve their classroom practice. Teachers work in teams, engaging in an ongoing cycle of questions that promote deep team learning. This process, in turn, leads to higher levels of student achievement.
This I feel is a really important point and I feel needs to happen at our college to foster the trust and collaboration that needs to occur to explore possible areas of improvement for teaching and learning
For teachers to participate in such a powerful process, the school must ensure that everyone belongs to a team that focuses on student learning. Each team must have time to meet during the workday and throughout the school year. Teams must focus their efforts on crucial questions related to learning and generate products that reflect that focus, such as lists of essential outcomes, different kinds of assessment, analyses of student achievement, and strategies for improving results. Teams must develop norms or protocols to clarify expectations regarding roles, responsibilities, and relationships among team members. Teams must adopt student achievement goals linked with school and diocese goals.
Big Idea #3 is a focus on results. Every teacher team participates in an ongoing process of identifying the current level of student achievement, establishing a goal to improve the current level, working together to achieve that goal, and providing periodic evidence of progress. Dufour suggests that teachers and schools suffer from the DRIP syndrome - Data Rich, Information Poor. The results-oriented professional learning community not only welcomes data but also turns data into useful and relevant information for staff that focuses on improving learning.
Whereas the idea of PLTs really seems to come from some of the work that came out of the Victorian Education Department on 'Working in Teams' which discusses some really key points such as: projects provide purpose, collective responsibility, teachers' professional learning, support for teachers, formal leadership, widespread leadership, attention to relationships and expect difference. I will explore all of these in a later post but I feel this is some great first steps in professional learning with a focus.
