“The challenge confronting public education is not recruiting more good people to an ineffective system, but rather creating powerful systems that allow ordinary people to achieve success.”
     -Richard Dufour and Robert J. Marzano

In almost all professions, except education, it is understood that group collaboration is the fastest way to excellence and innovation. In the medical field, research indicates patients perceive a higher quality of care in group versus solo practice. Trends in scientific research also point toward the benefits of teamwork. Thomas M. Koulopoulos, author of The Innovation Zone: How Great Companies Re-Innovate for Amazing Success, looked at Nobel prize recipients in the physical sciences and found that “[i]n the first fifty years of the twentieth century, thirty-nine Nobel prizes were awarded to individuals and four to teams. In the second fifty years, thirty-three were awarded to individuals as opposed to thirty-six for teams.” The problems of our day are more complex and group work toward a common goal is becoming a necessary factor for success.

As schools begin to develop Common Core-aligned curriculum and assessments, teachers will need new skills to teach to and assess the higher order skills embedded in the new standards and ensure consistent levels of rigor school-wide. In most schools, this will require redefinition of staff roles and responsibilities. In order to meet the challenge of the task ahead, schools will need a new model where teachers work collaboratively to push their students and their practice. The efficacy of educators will be less about the competencies of individual teachers and more about maximizing the shared knowledge, resources and skills of the collective.

In Leaders of Learning: How District, School and Classroom Leaders Improve Student Achievement, Richard Dufour and Robert J. Marzano provide a framework for building collective capacity using professional learning communities (PLCs). The establishment of PLCs necessitates a shift in culture from the individual teacher working in isolation to purposefully grouped teams of teachers working collaboratively to achieve shared goals. Dufour and Marzano define a PLC as “an ongoing process in which educators work collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve. Professional learning communities operate under the assumption that the key to improved learning for students is continuous job-embedded learning for educators.”

It is not enough to randomly group teachers and require them to meet on a weekly basis. A properly developed PLC has a shared vocabulary, group norms, and specific goals focused on the issues that will have the greatest impact on professional practice and student achievement. In addition, school leaders committed to the successful implementation of PLCs must provide teachers with the time, guidance and support structures necessary to meet their objective.The key to maintaining an effective PLC is to focus on the right work and to ask the right questions. Dufour and Marzano offer the following four questions as a starting point for any PLC:

What is it we want our students to know?
How will we know if they are learning?
How will we respond when individual students do not learn?
How will we enrich and extend the learning for students who are proficient?

After implementing last year’s Common Core pilot program, the Department of Education concluded, “ the importance of structures like teacher teams, common planning time, as well as support from school leadership, are integral to a school’s ability to make significant shifts in their everyday classroom practice.” Many principals intuitively know that teacher teams done poorly--without leadership support, clear goals and an outcome driven focus--are a questionable investment of scarce educational resources. It is critical that principals develop strong distributed leadership with specific goals tied to measurable outcomes. In some schools, it may be best to start with a few groups facilitated by strong teacher-leaders and grow from there.  

What successes have you seen as a result of collaboration among teachers? What challenges does the PLC model present for traditional schools? What concrete or practical suggestions do you have for schools hoping to implement PLCs? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

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Teaching Matters’ Common Core Summer Series
Monday August 1, 2011: An Introduction to Teaching Matters’ Common Core Summer Series
Monday, August 8, 2011: All Together Now: Common Core and the Necessity of Professional Learning Communities
Monday, August 22, 2011: Writing Matters Case Study: How Teacher Teams Led to Improved Student Outcomes in ELA
Monday, September 12, 2011: Innovation and Collaboration: Four Easy Ways Technology Can Support Professional Learning Communities


Suggested Reading
Leaders of Learning: How District, School and Classroom Leaders Improve Student Achievement
by Richard Dufour and Robert J. Marzano

Learning by Doing: A Handbook for Professional Learning Communities at Work™, 2nd Edition
by Richard DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, Robert Eaker, and Thomas W. Many

Learning by Doing Study Guide (free PDF download)
by Richard DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, Robert Eaker, and Thomas W. Many


Additional Resources:
All Things PLC
http://www.allthingsplc.info

The Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement: An Introduction to PLCs
http://www.centerforcsri.org/plc/index.html