The Ideal PLE Described
In a true Professional Learning Environment, teachers and administrators are constantly working together to improve student learning outcomes through shared inquiry and experiment and professional learning/professional development. Learning is done as a community as much as, or even more so than, individually, and that benefits everyone and creates a shared purpose. That purpose may derive from the school's mission and goals, but it is stated regardless.
Clear communication is another essential element in a successful PLE, both from administrators to teachers and back, and amongst teachers. This is true whether it concerns a small undertaking or a larger initiative.
Administrators provide meaningful feedback and the support that teachers need to both teach and learn, by providing mentors and coaches and technical support and the funds required to continue learning, be it in workshops or at conferences or by inviting outside experts into the school. Administrators also ensure that teachers have the time to pursue professional learning, both in and out of the school.
Each teacher, then, is part of a department but also a team - often grade-level - and meets regularly (though not necessarily often) with the department and the team. These meetings are substantive, not administrative. Each teacher also has an administrative partner who is there to provide meaningful and substantive feedback - not to assess, but to support. In the same way, teachers regularly observe both their departmental colleagues, their team members, and other faculty and provide feedback and share ideas, again not to assess but to support.
Administrators provide ongoing opportunities for teachers to pursue professional development through workshops and conferences, ensuring that teachers have the time and funds to attend these. For broader initiatives, administrators bring people into the school so that the entire faculty can be involved and trained. The Dean of Faculty (or some position with similar responsibilities) ensures that learning materials at the school are plentiful - these may include a library full of books that teachers can read and discuss, as well as access to online sites - professional organizations and tutorial sites - that provide a variety of training and learning opportunities. Discussions (optional) are held frequently about various topics of interest to teachers in general, but also specific to the school, so that teachers have frequent opportunities to engage with others.
The takeaway from any and all meetings and workshops and conferences are shared widely - through an online resource created and maintained by the school - so that the entire community can benefit.
Teachers also share resources - self-created or purchased or found online - and work in concert to improve curricula.
It is important to note that teachers should be energized by these opportunities and not burdened by them.
Here are the attributes that the North Carolina State Board of Education offers as being necessary:
- Caring deeply about learning.
- Feeling free to take risks.
- Challenging each other and raising the expectations of everyone.
- Respecting and valuing perspectives other than their own by seeking and valuing every member's input.
- Intentional in seeking to do the work better.
- Aggressive in continually building capacity of each member to work smarter.
At Boones Mill Elementary School, a K-5 school serving 400 students in rural Franklin County, Virginia, the powerful collaboration of grade-level teams drives the school improvement process. The following scenario describes what Boones Mill staff members refer to as their teaching-learning process.
The school's five 3rd grade teachers study state and national standards, the district curriculum guide, and student achievement data to identify the essential knowledge and skills that all students should learn in an upcoming language arts unit. They also ask the 4th grade teachers what they hope students will have mastered by the time they leave 3rd grade. On the basis of the shared knowledge generated by this joint study, the 3rd grade team agrees on the critical outcomes that they will make sure each student achieves during the unit.
Next, the team turns its attention to developing common formative assessments to monitor each student's mastery of the essential outcomes. Team members discuss the most authentic and valid ways to assess student mastery. They set the standard for each skill or concept that each student must achieve to be deemed proficient. They agree on the criteria by which they will judge the quality of student work, and they practice applying those criteria until they can do so consistently. Finally, they decide when they will administer the assessments.
After each teacher has examined the results of the common formative assessment for his or her students, the team analyzes how all 3rd graders performed. Team members identify strengths and weaknesses in student learning and begin to discuss how they can build on the strengths and address the weaknesses. The entire team gains new insights into what is working and what is not, and members discuss new strategies that they can implement in their classrooms to raise student achievement.
At Boones Mill, collaborative conversations happen routinely throughout the year. Teachers use frequent formative assessments to investigate the questions “Are students learning what they need to learn?” and “Who needs additional time and support to learn?” rather than relying solely on summative assessments that ask “Which students learned what was intended and which students did not?”
Collaborative conversations call on team members to make public what has traditionally been private—goals, strategies, materials, pacing, questions, concerns, and results. These discussions give every teacher someone to turn to and talk to, and they are explicitly structured to improve the classroom practice of teachers—individually and collectively.
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 district goals.
NEXT STEPS
- Imagine what you want your PLE to look like, then describe it. You might use prose, or a mind-mapping tool.
- Ask another administrator or a teacher to do the same, then compare them.