1.
Building Teacher Practice Let’s focus on two questions:
Through Professional
Learning Community  What is a Professional Learning Community and
how can it strengthen the teaching profession?
Scottish Learning Festival
September 20, 2007
Glasgow
 What is the role of classroom visitations and
Gary Bloom
New Teacher Center @ University of California examination of student work in PLC’s?
Santa Cruz
gsbloom@ucsc.edu
A Short Experiment… The Moral of the Story….
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2.
Changing Expectations
What Is a Profession? Changing our Profession
Professional
Area Traditional Model
Model
 Specialized body of knowledge Teaching Loosely coupled and Standards based and
 Set of skills Content idiosyncratic articulated
Teaching Teacher as artisan, isolated,
Teacher as professional,
standards based, public,
 Group mission or identity Practice idiosyncratic
collaborative
 Standards of behavior and practice Accountability De-emphasized, mystified Public, prominent
Equity Implicit and input oriented Explicit and outcome oriented
What Can Coronary Stents and PLC’s are grounded in Etienne Wenger’s
Luxury Cars Tell Us About What it Communities of Practice
Means to be a Profession?
“ Communities of practice are formed by people
who engage in a process of collective learning in
a shared domain of human endeavor: a tribe
learning to survive, a band of artists seeking new
forms of expression, a group of engineers
working on similar problems, a clique of pupils
Vs. defining their identity in the school, a network of
surgeons exploring novel techniques. In a
nutshell, communities of practice are groups of
people who share a concern or a passion for
something they do and learn to do it better as
they interact regularly.”
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3.
A Medical Model:
Elements of
Professional
Content
Content Clinical Oncology
Development
Job-
Job-  Hospital rounds
Embedded
Embedded Reflective Elaboration
Elaboration
Work
Work Practice
&
Personal
Responsibility
• Weekly Cancer
Conference
Communities of
Communities of
Reading &
Reading &
Research
Research
Practice:
Practice:
Networking and
• Mortality Review
Networking and
Benchmarking
Benchmarking
Attributes of PLC’s
Richard Elmore’s Definition Southwest Educational Development Lab, 1997
 Collegial and facilitative participation of the
 High alignment among responsibility, principal; shared leadership
expectatons and accountability  Unswerving commitment to student learning
 High transparency of practice  Collective professional learning applied to
 Explicit norms, processes, structures of practical solutions addressed to student
accountability needs
 Visitation and review of each teacher’s
 High support: focused, individualized classroom behaviors and results by peers
 High agency: “If I can’t do it, they will help with feedback directed at individual and
me. If we can’t do it, we will learn how.” community improvement
 Physical conditions and human capacities
that support such an operation
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4.
Grade-Level/
Nested
Department Teams
K
Let’s Visit a Classroom
Instructional
Principal Leadership 1
Professional Teams Teams
2
Classroom
Learning
3 Learning
4 Communities
 First year teacher
Communities
ES 5
 Kindergarten class
E
M  English Language Learners
S
H
MS FL
A
 What do you see in this classroom?
E
M
S
HS H
FL
A
How Would You Discuss Your Some Thoughts on Adult
Observation With Your Colleagues? Learners
 Non-judgmental statements  Adults want to be the origin of their own learning
and should have some control over the what, who,
 Evidence v. opinion how, why, when of their learning.
 Focus on student engagement  Adults come to the learning process with self-
direction and a wide range of previous knowledge,
 Focus on student learning interests,and competencies.
 Focus on cause & effect  Adults will resist activities they see as an attack on
their competence.
 Safe and supportive
Speck & Knipe, Professional Development; Why Can’t We Get it Right In Our Schools?
4

5.
Learning Walks, Quick Visits,
A Typology of Collaborative Professional
Walkthroughs Classroom Visitations
Learning Walks
 Support professional learning communities Informing school level professional learning communities
focused upon teaching and learning
Data Walks
 Strengthen teaching as public practice informed Gathering quantitative school and/or district data
by standards
Peer Coaching
 Support the success of every teacher and every
Informing individual teacher professional development
student
Principal Professional Learning Walks
 Are organized around evidence based processes, Informing administrator professional development
protocols and cycles of inquiry
Quick Visits
Informing the teacher supervision and support process
Learning Walks Data Walks
 WHY: Informing school level PLC’s
 WHY: Gathering quantitative school and/or district
 WHO: Teachers, teacher leaders, heads data for program evaluation purposes
 WHAT: Gather quantitative and qualitative  WHO: Teachers, teacher leaders, heads, central
data to inform conversations and action leadership
planning in site level PLC’s; to give feedback  WHAT: Gather quantitative data to assess needs
to individuals and to groups and program implementation. Data are aggregated
to focus upon units, not individual teachers
 WHEN: Quarterly to monthly, usually
 WHEN: One to four times a year, usually announced
announced
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6.
Teacher Professional Learning Communities
Other Visitation Types Examine Student Work
 Peer Coaching
 Looking for evidence of
 Principal (Head) Professional Learning Walks  Rigor
 Quick visits  Fidelity to standards
 Learning!
 What sorts of student work might PLC’s
examine?
Cultural Shifts in a Professional
Learning Community
A shift in purpose…
 From a focus on teaching to a focus on learning
A shift in the work of teachers…
 From isolation to collaboration
A shift in school culture…
 From independence to interdependence
A shift in professional development…
 From external training to job embedded learning
Adapted from Learning by Doing , DuFour
6

7.
Professional Learning Communities informed
by public practice can be the chassis that
professional development and school Building Teacher Practice
improvement ride upon.
Through Professional
Learning Community
Scottish Learning Festival
September 20, 2007
Glasgow
Gary Bloom
New Teacher Center @ University of California Santa
Cruz
What support do you need to strengthen the gsbloom@ucsc.edu
establishment of PLC’s and learning walks and
other public practice at your site?
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