What are Professional Learning Communities?

Professional Learning Communities are groups of teachers who meet regularly as a team to analyse current levels of achievement, set achievement goals, identify essential and valued student learning, develop common formative and common summative assessments, share strategies, and research best practices. The expectation is that this collaborative effort will produce ongoing improvement in student achievement.

Why collaborate with Professional Learning Communities?

“A team can make better decisions, solve more complex problems, and do more to enhance creativity and build skills than individuals working alone…They have become the vehicle for moving organizations into the future…Teams are not just nice to have. They are hard-core units of the production” (Blanchard, 2007).

In order to achieve the goal of increased student achievement, members of the PLC need to define and answer the following key questions:

What do we want students to learn?

• How will we know if they have learned it?
• What will we do if they do not learn it?
• What will we do if they already know it?

The purpose of the PLC is for teachers to develop new understanding and apply it to their classroom to raise student achievement. Increased student achievement is the indicator of a successful PLC.

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