Effective collaboration

Session 2 – Professional learningcommunities

Developing collaborative learning

• Welcome to Session 2, where we are going to use the work you did in Session 1 to build skills to use in collaborative teaching.

• The previous session explored teachers working collaboratively, and some of the ways in which both teachers and students benefited from this approach.

• In this session we are going to look at teachers working together within school. In particular we are going to consider professional learning communities (PLCs) and how they operate.

• The theme for this session is ‘Shared focus on student learning’.

An introduction to PLCs

• In exploring PLCs, we are going to be referring to the Welsh Government’s guidance on PLCs.

• We will also be referencing the Practising Teacher Standards (PTS). In addition to those standards mentioned in Session 1, you will also be addressing:

17. Understand their role in improving literacy and numeracy skills across the curriculum.

What are PLCs?

Although we can all identify ‘natural’ groups we work with (colleagues in subjects, phases, pastoral responsibilities) PLCs are different.

What are PLCs? (continued)

Activity 1

Using your learning journal, please note down what you understand by a PLC. When you’ve done that check below to see whether your definition matches that given by scholars in the field.

[Please press the space bar to reveal the text.]

• PLCs constitute a group of people especially brought together to address a specific issue, using an enquiry based approach.

• The group will have a shared aim, will develop some enquiry strategies and evaluate the results for dissemination with peers.

• The group may all come from one school, or from across schools, or may involve agencies and institutions outside of school.

• PLCs are a highly structured approach to a form of professional development that has as its focus improved learner outcomes.

What are PLCs? (continued)

Activity 1 (continued)

• Did you find areas in common with your definition and those of researchers in the field? What was the same? What was different?

PLCs: the stagesThe Welsh Government have identified seven stages of a PLC.

1. Identification of group participants.

2. Identification of the focus.

3. Action enquiry.

4. Innovation and change.

5. Trialling and feedback.

6. Refining.

7. Sharing outcomes.

In this session, we are going to use an in-school PLC to explore and demonstrate how a PLC can work in a particular context. We are going to use and develop the areas using a school-based example.

PLCs: the stages (continued)

Activity 2

• To help with your own planning, you should use the issue analysis grid (please refer to the ‘Facilitators’ handbook’).

• The grid will guide you through each stage of the planning.

• It might be helpful to share this via Hwb or similar so that everyone can access and amend the document as you work together on developing this enquiry.

PLCs: Stages 1 and 2• During this session we are going to illustrate the decision-making

processes through our own project. For this example, we are going to use an in-school PLC group who are working on one of the Welsh Government’s priorities: literacy.

• The first two stages of a PLC are clearly linked: in order to know who should be in the group, you have to know the issue to be addressed.

• Our example focus is going to be raising standards of literacy in Year 7 students. Who should be involved? This will vary from school to school, but in this example we are going to have a PLC group with the school literacy coordinator, Year 7 coordinator, the head of English, two Year 7 English teachers, and two learning support assistants (LSAs) who work with Year 7.

• LSAs are an extremely valuable resource in any classroom so their involvement in PLCs are important. The following six-minute video is an example of a teacher and LSA working together.

Our example: Literacy• Before we go further, we have to define the questions

(rather than just the area) we want to understand and be able to develop strategies to support.

• What does ‘raising standards of literacy in Year 7 students’ mean for our school? Is it about reading? Writing? Speaking and listening? Spelling? All of those? (That’s a big task!) So you might get the group to begin by defining the question. That means spending some time as a group reading and discussing the area so you come to a shared understanding of the issue.

• For our example of literacy, we could begin by all looking at the National Literacy Trust website.

Exploring the question

• The first stage is to make the area of enquiry manageable and measureable. You cannot find out everything at once and you would only find superficial and temporary approaches if you tried to address too many areas at once.

• So your task is to segment the issue. Select one or two areas to focus on and break these down into small, measureable steps. Using school and national data to inform your choices is a helpful starting point.

• Once you have selected the area and accessed available data, you will begin to have a sense of the boundaries of your enquiry.

Exploring the question (continued)

Activity 3

• For your own school, begin by considering the ‘focus’ and ‘staffing’ sections of the issue analysis grid (please refer to the ‘Facilitators’ handbook’).

• For our project, we are going to focus on reading for pleasure.

Defining the question

• You have already identified the area you have chosen to address. You now need to list 3–5 component parts of the issue that you will be looking at. The expertise of the PLC will be crucial in identifying these component parts. The key to success is to be specific and precise in your selection of areas.

• For our project, we want to look at promoting enjoyment of reading in Year 7. In developing our understanding of the area, we are going to look at the following video and, from that, identify some key areas within promoting reading.

Defining the question (continued)

Activity 4

Now go to the issue analysis grid (please refer to the ‘Facilitators’ handbook’) and describe the component parts you have chosen to address.

Finding out about the area• The next stage is to find out more about the component parts

you have identified. Share this task out between the PLC members – everyone should have an area to find out about and report back to the group on.

• You can use a wide variety of resources to help understand the issues. You might, for example, call on existing expertise in the group for advice. The internet will have a range of sites to evaluate. You might even all watch a shared resource as a starting point for discussion.

• For our focus, there is a helpful resource from DfE on research evidence on reading for pleasure.

• The issue analysis grid asks you briefly to summarise your findings. This way the whole PLC will have an overview of the area. Share the issue analysis grid via an online resource such as Hwb so everyone has access.

Finding out about the area (continued)

Activity 5

Use the learning journal (please refer to the ‘Facilitators’ handbook’) to summarise the findings you have about the area you are going to use for your action enquiry.

How will we know what works?• Segmenting the area and identifying key components

makes the next activity – collecting information (data) on success criteria – much easier, as you have already clearly defined what it is you want to explore.

• Again, this stage is linked with Stages 4 (innovation and change – deciding on the strategies) and 5 (trialling and feedback – evaluated impact). Linking choices of strategy and success criteria is an iterative process. As a PLC, when you consider one area you will naturally consider and refine your approaches elsewhere. Thinking about strategies leads to impact; thinking about measuring impact helps focus approaches to strategies.

Strategies and impact• The next stage then is for the PLC to develop strategies

to support your action enquiry project, and to devise the success criteria you are going to use to measure impact. You might do this by sharing existing good practice in school; by finding out about ideas in other schools in your area; or by exploring resources online.

• Our example shows our strategies selected to promote reading for pleasure and our success criteria. For example, in our project, pleasure in reading is the key issue. We will be investigating whether girls and boys choose different reading materials, whether they read at home, whether they use the library at school or locally, and what books they have read for pleasure recently.

Strategies and impact (continued)

Activity 6

Complete your own issue analysis grid (please refer to the ‘Facilitators’ handbook’) with a summary of the strategies you are proposing to use and the success criteria you will use.

Stage 5: trialling and feedback

• Your PLC will now have areas to explore as well as information about those areas, and you will have had the opportunity to talk about these areas in some depth. You have identified how you will know ‘what works’ and your approaches to collecting information. So the next stage is to try out the strategies in the classroom.

• Again, this is something to plan for – who will be using which strategies, with which classes/students, when and where. This might sound obvious, but planning will reveal that certain logistics need to be factored in.

Stage 5: trialling and feedback (continued)

Activity 7

Please use the issue analysis grid (please refer to the ‘Facilitators’ handbook’) to plan the teaching sequences.

Accessing impact• When your PLC is thinking about evidence for impact,

you will want to consider various ways of collecting that information. Measureable does not have to mean quantifiable, though this can be a useful type of data. It can also mean qualitative data such as individual student interviews or focus groups used to collect information.

• In the reflective practice PowerPoint presentation, Session 3 suggests a number of ways of collecting data in the classroom, including use of video and audio; interviews and questionnaires; observation; graphic representation and peer research assistants. All the members of the PLC should be involved in decisions about what data to collect, how to collect it, when and with which class or student(s) and who will do that.

Accessing impact (continued)

Activity 8

Now using the issue analysis grid (please refer to the ‘Facilitators’ handbook’), plan the data collection, considering the who, what, where, when and how questions you will find there.

Accessing impact: a PLC learning journal and critical incidents

• As the teaching or intervention is underway, you might also think about keeping a learning journal, also introduced in the reflective practice PowerPoint introduction resource . However, as this is a professional community, we would suggest a slightly different approach.

• A PLC learning journal should be a shared document, either online using Hwb or similar, or a shared hard copy document.

• Selecting what should be recorded as significant might be left to the individual, or might be directed by the PLC, so that, for example, all incidences of students talking positively about reading (in our project) would be recorded there.

Accessing impact: a PLC learning journal and critical incidents

(continued)• Creating such a record means you are, as a community,

identifying critical incidents which you know to be significant in understanding the impact of your action enquiry.

• Critical incidents can be defined as follows:

‘A critical incident need not be a dramatic event: usually it is an incident which has significance for you. It is often an event which made you stop and think, or one that raised questions for you. It may have made you question an aspect of your beliefs, values, attitudes or behaviour. It is an incident which in some way has had a significant impact on your personal and professional learning.’

Monash University

Accessing impact: a PLC learning journal and critical incidents

(continued)• In your PLC, discuss what might be the type of critical

incident you would want to see captured in the PLC learning journal. This is valuable data that you can use in Stages 6 and 7, refining and sharing the outcomes. Your evidence does not have to be written.

• The PLC can be creative in allowing video, audio, student drawing, staff drawing – so long as it is authentic evidence for the PLC learning journal.

Stage 6: Refining the outcomes

• This is the stage where all your evidence will come together to tell the ‘story’ of your strategies or interventions, the successes, and the areas which need developing or even excising. What worked and what did not will be based on evidence.

• It is also the point where as a PLC you can reflect on your own professional learning.

• What do you now know that you did not before you began your action enquiry? How did working as part of a PLC support that? How has your teaching been developed as a result?

Stage 7: Sharing outcomes

• Szulanski (1996; 2003) has described the knowledge that resides in institutions – in our case schools and staff rooms – as ‘sticky knowledge’. It is knowledge that does not get shared or transferred into the wider world. So sharing outcomes is an important part of any knowledge generation.

• Your audience will be colleagues, but may also include governors, parents and carers, and other schools.

• There are a variety of ways of presenting and sharing knowledge as a PLC. Poster presentations over a lunch hour, with evidence and example, are both ‘light touch’ and informative. Inclusion of video clips, extracts from the PLC learning journal, discussion on critical incidents, all serve to enhance and enrich the evidence.

Stage 7: Sharing outcomes (continued)

• It’s also a valuable resource to create a website which might record the stages of your own research, the outcomes and extracts of your own developing professional knowledge as a PLC. Free sites such as WordPress are straightforward and accessible ways of recording your action enquiry journey. Designing it is a good PLC activity – consider what each of you would like to know about your own action enquiry and what information you need to include.

• And do not forget the critical incidents approach you have used for the PLC learning journal. This is valuable data to draw on to demonstrate impact.

Summary

In this session you have:• explored taking part in an in-school PLC which has

developed professional knowledge through an in-school action enquiry

• considered the seven stages of a PLC and learned about selection and representation of evidence, including a PLC learning journal and the idea of critical incidents.

In the next session we will be exploring opportunity for collaborative teaching using resources between schools and other institutions.