Professional Learning Communities for Elementary Visual and Performing Arts
What Is a 'Professional Learning Community"?
To create a professional learning community, focus on learning rather than teaching, work collaboratively, and hold yourself accountable for results.
Richard DuFour
The most powerful forms of professional development occur in ongoing teams that meet on a regular basis for the purposes of learning, joint lesson planning, and problem solving. These teams, often called learning communities or communities of practice, operate with a commitment to the norms of continuous improvement and experimentation and engage their members in improving their daily work to advance the achievement of school district and school goals for student learning.
Learning teams may be of various sizes and serve different purposes. For instance, a school’s staff as a whole may meet once or twice a month to reflect on its work, engage in appropriate learning, and assess its progress. Or specialists may meet cross-district to examine student work together using protocols and rubrics. In addition, some members of the faculty may serve on school improvement teams or committees that focus on the goals and methods of school wide improvement. These teams may make important contributions to school culture, learning environment and other priority issues. At the heart of effective Professional Learning Communities are professional conversations focused on instructional issues.
Learning teams meet and concern themselves with practical ways to improve teaching and learning. Members of Saint Paul Public Schools’ Professional Learning Communities take collective responsibility for the learning of all students represented by team members. Learning teams, which consist of four to six members, assist one another in examining the standards students are required to master, planning more effective lessons, critiquing student work, and solving the common problems of teaching.
The teams determine areas in which additional learning would be helpful and read articles, attend workshops or courses, or invite others to assist them in acquiring necessary knowledge or skills.
Information gleaned from the National Staff Development Council
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