Commitment to learning for all

The purpose of educator professional learning communities is to ensure that students learn. We know that the quality of teaching has a significant effect on students’ learning outcomes (Alton-Lee, 2003). It follows that improved learning outcomes for students depend in part on a commitment to learning by their teachers and that improved professional learning for teachers depends on a commitment to learning by ISTEs.

What the literature says

In education, effective professional learning communities:

• have an unremitting focus on student learning;

  If … the fundamental purpose of schooling is to ensure that all students acquire the knowledge, skills, and dispositions essential to their success as ongoing learners, the need for improvement is immediate and imperative. The PLC concept is grounded in this making-a-difference sense of moral purpose.

DuFour, Eaker, and DuFour, 2005, page 15

• have an equally unremitting focus on professional learning for educators;

  The reason that professional learning communities are essential is that they are learning organizations …. They do interact to produce shared commitment and they constantly worry about what is worthwhile and how to get there. Because of their purposeful interactions, they are organically suited to converting tacit knowledge to explicit (shared, definable, learnable) knowledge on an ongoing basis. They are energy and knowledge creators – exactly what a learning organization is, and precisely what is needed to make change meaningful and substantial.

Fullan, 2001, pages 270–271

• measure the effectiveness of professional development by its contribution to educator learning and, ultimately, to student learning.

  Professional development … is a collective good rather than a private or individual good. Its value is judged by what it contributes to the individual’s capacity to improve the quality of instruction in the school and school system.

Elmore, 2002, page 14

Implications for ISTEs

As educational leaders, ISTEs need to have a deep knowledge of pedagogical approaches that support effective learning in particular contexts and to be able to model those approaches in their own practice. This requires them to engage in ongoing learning in their own professional learning communities. It also means that the main measure of the effectiveness of professional learning should be its impact on teaching practice and student outcomes.

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