Professional learning community

A professional learning community (PLC) is a method to foster collaborative learning among colleagues within a particular work environment or field. It is often used in schools as a way to organize teachers into working groups of practice-based professional learning.

The phrase professional learning community began to be used in the 1990s after Peter Senge's book The Fifth Discipline (1990) had popularized the idea of learning organizations, related to the idea of reflective practice espoused by Donald Schön in books such as The Reflective Turn: Case Studies in and on Educational Practice (1991). Charles B. Myers and Lynn K. Myers used the phrase professional learning community in relation to schools in their 1995 book The Professional Educator: A New Introduction to Teaching and Schools, and a year later Charles B. Myers presented a paper at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association titled "Beyond the PDS: Schools as Professional Learning Communities" that proposed a path from professional development school (PDS) efforts to schools as professional learning communities. In 1997, Shirley M. Hord issued a white paper titled "Professional Learning Communities: Communities of Continuous Inquiry and Improvement". A year later, Richard DuFour and Robert E. Eaker published the book Professional Learning Communities at Work. Since the late 1990s, a large literature on PLCs has been published.

PLCs have many variations. In Shirley M. Hord's 1997 definition, it means "extending classroom practice into the community; bringing community personnel into the school to enhance the curriculum and learning tasks for students; or engaging students, teachers, and administrators simultaneously in learning". Hord noted that the benefits of professional learning community to educators and students include reduced isolation of teachers, better informed and committed teachers, and academic gains for students. In 1998, Richard DuFour and Robert E. Eaker explained:

If schools are to be significantly more effective, they must break from the industrial model upon which they were created and embrace a new model that enables them to function as learning organizations. We prefer characterizing learning organizations as "professional learning communities" for several vital reasons. While the term "organization" suggests a partnership enhanced by efficiency, expediency, and mutual interests, "community" places greater emphasis on relationships, shared ideals, and a strong culture—all factors that are critical to school improvement. The challenge for educators is to create a community of commitment—a professional learning community. [...] It sounds simple enough, but as the old adage warns, "the devil is in the details." Educators willing to embrace the concept of the school as a professional learning community will be given ambiguous, oftentimes conflicting advice on how they should proceed.

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