Alberta‘s Commission on Learning; Every Child Learns. Every Child Succeeds; October 2003; “Recommendations: Recommendation 13”;
Alberta’s Commission on Learning (ACOL, 2003) describes PLCs as communities in which “teachers and school administrators continuously seek and share learning and then act on what they learn.” They further state that the goal of PLCs is “high achievement and continuous improvement for all students no matter what their individual circumstances” and the objectives are to enhance the effectiveness of educators as professionals and improve students' learning. The authors identify the following key ingredients of successful PLCs:

• Supportive leadership from principals.
• A shared vision that reflects a commitment to student learning.
• Collaboration and strong collegial ties between teachers.
• A capacity to analyze and utilize data towards effective decision-making.
• A supportive environment.
• Shared accountability for the achievement of students.
• Structured time for professional activities such as collaborating among teachers, assessing students’ learning, adjusting practice, and continuously improving students’ results.

The authors also cite research that suggests the following benefits of PLCs:

• The benefits for teachers and administrators include a shared responsibility in the development and success of students, an increased commitment to the school’s mission and goals, a clearer definition of good teaching and classroom practice, a better understanding of how to adapt teaching to meet students’ needs, less professional isolation, more job satisfaction, higher morale, and lower rates of absenteeism.
• The benefits for students include decreased drop-out and absentee rates, greater academic gains in math, science, reading, and history, enhanced critical thinking, and a narrowing of the achievement gap between students of different backgrounds.

Note: ACOL’s recommendation 13 required “every school to operate as a professional learning community dedicated to continuous improvement in students' achievement.” Alberta Education, upon acceptance of this recommendation, has supported the development of PLCs in Alberta’s schools through the completion of a literature review about PLCs and the financial support of several Alberta Initiative for School Improvement (AISI) projects. See http://education.alberta.ca/department/ipr/commission/status.aspx for more information about actions taken by Alberta Education on recommendation 13.

Alberta Teachers’ Association; Developing a Professional Learning Community Workshop;
As part of its focus on professional development, the Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) offers a workshop designed to help schools create a PLC. The ATA describes a PLC as “a holistic approach to school improvement that involves such strategies as creating a school vision and mission, using collaborative learning teams to solve problems, engaging in collective inquiry, using results-based decision-making and facilitating continuous learning.” This one-to-three hour workshop provides an overview of the principles put forward in Schools as Professional Learning Communities (Roberts and Pruitt, 2003).

Alberta Teachers’ Association; Leadership in a Professional Learning Community Workshop;
Designed primarily for administrators, this workshop is provided by the Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) to help acquaint school leaders with the behavioural changes and strategies needed to effectively foster a PLC.

Annenberg Institute for School Reform; Professional Learning Communities: Professional Development Strategies That Improve Instruction; 2004;
The Annenberg Institute for School Reform (AISR) researches and proposes systematic efforts to improve learning experiences and opportunities, particularly in communities characterized by low income and English Language Learners. Recent research by the AISR indicates that PLCs can enhance teacher effectiveness and can help to develop a community-oriented culture of personal and professional improvement. They report that this professional culture can be accomplished in four ways:

1. By building productive relationships in which collaboration, reflection, and action characterize school-improvement activities;
2. By engaging educators in collective, consistent, and context-specific learning;
3. By addressing inequalities in teaching and learning opportunities by supporting teachers that work with students requiring the most assistance; and
4. By promoting efforts to improve results in teacher practice and student learning.

From the AISR’s experience in creating and sustaining PLCs, the following challenges were identified:

• Focusing on process diverts attention from instructional content and approaches.
• Failing to make work public limits more rigorous feedback.
• Challenges concerning trust and equity are often not addressed.
• Leadership capacity proves hard to develop and fill.
• Structural changes alone are not enough, effective PLCs require a cultural change.

However, considerable research about successful PLCs suggests that these challenges are being overcome to realize the following common benefits:

• PLCs often result in reductions in teacher isolation, increased learning about good teaching, higher morale and greater job satisfaction, a collective responsibility for student learning, and increased instructional efficacy.
• PLCs promote positive cultural change that results in lower dropout and absentee rates, academic gains in major subjects, decreased achievement gaps, and a strengthened community atmosphere that promotes trust and respect.
• Leadership enhances and is enhanced by PLCs, often requiring strong leadership from a principal who in turn incorporates others in the leadership and decision-making process.

Ciurysek, Handsaeme, Palko, Sterling, Toth; Ed. Townsend and Adams; University of Lethbridge; Professional Learning Communities: A Literature Synopsis; 2006;

Prepared for Alberta Education, this survey of recent literature on PLCs highlights the following characteristics considered by the authors as essential for shifting and creating a successful culture of professional educational practice:

• An established groundwork of trust, effective communication, clear goals and objectives, and strong administrative support and impetus.
• Shared mission, vision, values, and goals form the “four pillars” of the community.
• Leadership arising from administrators and skilled teachers that can guide and make decisions towards efficacious and sustainable ends.
• An emphasis on collaboration that shifts the focus from the individual to the group.
• An orientation to action that “turns aspirations into actions and vision into reality.”
• A collective inquiry and continuous drive for improvement; the focus is on learning more than teaching, the students’ learning as well as the teachers’ learning.
• A constant eye towards identifying and discovering best instructional practices, which includes a commitment to professional development.
• A timely, collaborated, and regularly occurring system for meaningful assessment.
• The ability to generate encouragement through the celebration of milestones and achievements attained.

The authors also indicate that the process of becoming a PLC takes time, is no easy task, and follows no single path; however the professional, academic and social gains that can be achieved are worth the effort.

Note: The authors provide an extensive annotated bibliography of helpful resources related to PLCs.

Inpraxis Group Inc.; Professional Learning Communities: An Exploration; 2006;

Written for Alberta Education, this review of research and literature discusses the conceptions and understandings of PLCs, the attributes and structures of PLCs, and the benefits of PLCs.

According to the literature, PLCs parallel Senge’s (2000) learning organizations, in which everyone expresses their aspirations, builds their awareness, and develops their capabilities together. PLCs are most often defined in terms of “a group of professionals, who focus on learning within a supportive, self-created community.” For example, Morrissey (2000) defines PLCs as “a supporting structure for schools to continuously transform themselves through their own internal capacity.” Mithchell and Sackney (2000) define PLCs as “a group of people who take an active, reflective, collaborative, learning-oriented and growth-promoting approach toward both the mysteries and problems of teaching and learning.” Hord (1997) describes PLCs in terms of their key characteristics including supportive and shared leadership, shared values and vision, collective learning and application of learning, supportive conditions, and shared personal practice. PLCs recognize the importance of constructivist and inquiry-based teacher learning in multiple learning environments (Reitzug, 2002) and can be school-based, district, cross-district, national or international in make-up. Membership in PLCs is determined by its focus (Annenberg Institute, 2003). Most of the literature over the past ten years stresses the following key characteristics of PLCs:

• An emphasis on inquiry and reflection.
• A focus on building capacity for leadership, learning and growth.
• An emphasis on the learning process of teaching and a recognition and respect for the professional knowledge embedded in teacher practice.
• A respect for the principles of adult learning and the need to provide relevant and meaningful professional development.
• A recognition that PLCs act as an impetus for change when motivated by the desire for improvement in teacher quality and student learning, growth, and achievement.

Though PLCs differ in how they are structured, how time is organized, how leadership is distributed, and how resources are used, several characteristics are standard in the literature. These include

• supportive and shared leadership capacity;
• shared mission, focus, and goals;
• collective learning and application of learning;
• continuous inquiry and practice;
• collaboration and a culture of professional collegiality
• focus on improvement; and
• supportive conditions and environment.

This literature review also discusses three pathways to initiating and sustaining the PLC journey in Alberta Schools: 1) Developing a shared identity by taking responsibility for each other; 2) improving teaching by learning from our differences as practitioners; and 3) defining and naming together what student success looks like. These pathways blend current research on PLCs with experiences in Alberta schools.

Drawing on research from over 15 studies, this review lists the benefits of PLCs as follows:

• Reduced isolation and encouragement of teacher collegiality and collaboration.
• Increased efficacy and collective responsibility.
• Higher morale, greater job satisfaction, greater retention rates and enthusiasm.
• Greater commitment to change and increased participation in decision-making process.
• Increased student learning, lower dropout rates, and smaller achievement gaps.
• Increased leadership capacity throughout staff.
• Communities that promote ongoing development and continuous improvement.
• Changes in classroom pedagogy resulting in increased student achievement.

Naylor, Charlie, British Columbia Teachers Federation (BCTF); Recent Literature on Professional Learning Communities: Informing Options for Canadian Teacher Unions; BCTF Research Report: Part of the BCTF Information Handbook; October 2007;
Naylor’s review of the literature was produced to support discussions of collaborative professional development in general, and PLCs as one example of such collaboration. He cited several author’s descriptions of PLCs, noting the dichotomy that appears to exist between collaborative versus prescriptive descriptions. For example:

• Hargreaves (2003) describes PLCs as involving collaborative work and discussion among school professionals, a strong and consistent focus on teaching and learning, and the use of assessment and other data to inquire into and evaluate progress and problems over time. Hargreaves stressed that PLCs can be powerful and productive but only if teachers are not coerced into structures and processes that are inappropriate to their needs.
• Darfour et al (2005) describes a more prescriptive form of PLC as follows: “Educators must develop a deeper, shared knowledge of learning community concepts and practices, and then must demonstrate the discipline to apply those concepts and practices in their own setting if their schools are to be transformed.”
• Eaker (2002) describes PLCs in terms of the significant cultural shift required (i.e., from isolation to collaboration, from generic to specific statements about student learning, from random to specific values and goals).
• Stoll (2006) describes several features of PLCs such as shared beliefs and understandings; interaction and participation; interdependence; concern for individual and minority views; meaningful relationships; shared values and vision; collective responsibility; reflective professional inquiry; collaboration; promotion of group as well as individual learning; mutual trust respect and support; inclusive membership; and openness, networking and partnerships beyond school boundaries.
• Copland and Knapp (2006) describes PLCs in terms of five essential tasks including building trusting relationships, creating structures and schedules to sustain interactions, helping to frame collaborative work and shared responsibilities, and promoting a focus on learning and associated core values.

In addition, Naylor discusses some of the challenges related to creating successful PLCs (e.g., group conflict) and the need to establish various models of collaborative and distributed leadership to effectively build and sustain PLCs (i.e., the need to move away from charismatic individual leaders).

Naylor also describes effective PLCs or “Learning Teams” that are operating in Coquitlam. The over seventy learning teams in this district are described as “small groups of educators that meet to engage in a professional growth inquiry-based experience focused on improving instructional practice and students learning.” Learning teams are facilitated by leaders who have expertise in the focus of the inquiry, and the skill of facilitation.

Naylor concludes by stating that although evidence can be found for “a growing dichotomy between forms of PLCs – those which appear coerced, and those which both support and challenge teachers in environments of trust – there exists significant evidence for building and supporting the latter.”

Ontario Ministry of Education; The Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat; Capacity Building Series; Secretariat Special Edition #3; “Professional Learning Communities: A Model for Ontario Schools”; October 2007;
The Capacity Building Series is produced by the Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat of Ontario to encourage the development of leadership and teacher effectiveness in Ontario schools. Special Edition #3 focuses on PLCs. PLCs are described as “a group of people who are motivated by a vision of learning and who support one another toward that end.” They represent a collective effort to enhance student learning, to promote and sustain the learning of all professionals in the school, to build knowledge through inquiry, and to analyze and use data for reflection and improvement. According to the Secretariat, the defining characteristics of PLCs are as follows:

• A commitment to student learning is located at the centre of professional learning, decision making and action.
• Different types of assessment data are used to monitor student learning to determine whether the efforts of educators are resulting in improved student achievement.
• Strong relationships, characterized by trust and respect, create a supportive culture in which teachers are able to share, challenge and focus their beliefs and practices and thereby build collective knowledge.
• Collaborative inquiry (e.g., team teaching, study groups, action research, mentoring and peer coaching) is used to share best practices, examine student work, and plan for instruction.
• Principals build and maintain distributive leadership models to promote supportive environments, foster reflection, encourage risk taking, and challenge the status quo.
• Beliefs and effective practices evolve and become aligned with teachers within and between grades, divisions and schools collaborate to promote high levels of learning, investigate research, examine data, and monitor progress.