Participation in networks and partnerships

If our goal is to provide the best possible learning opportunities for all New Zealand students, it is not enough to focus on learning within individual professional learning communities. Members of professional learning communities need to contribute to a system-wide focus on shared learning and improvement. As Fullan (2005) argues, entire systems must be actively engaged in the reform of schooling and take collective responsibility for increasing the capacity for continuous improvement in student performance.

What the literature says

Effective professional learning communities understand the need for everyone to learn together, not only within but beyond their communities. They:

• seek external expertise. In their synthesis of the features of professional learning and development that have had significant outcomes for diverse students, Timperley, Wilson, Barrar, and Fung (2007) found that deep learning almost always requires the engagement of external expertise.

  The need for external expertise is understandable … because the substantive new learning involved in most core studies required teachers to learn new content and skills and to think about their existing practice in new ways. It is unlikely that any group of professionals would be able to manage this level of new learning without support and challenge from someone with expertise in the area. It is not sufficient simply to provide time and opportunity.

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• participate in systemic networks.

  A network increases the pool of ideas on which any member can draw and as one idea or practice is transferred, the inevitable process of adaptation and adjustment to different conditions is rich in potential for the practice to be incrementally improved by the recipient and then fed back to the donor in a virtuous circle of innovation and improvement. In other words, the networks extend and enlarge the communities of practice with enormous potential benefits.

Hargreaves, 2003, page 9

Implications for ISTEs

Large-scale improvement requires educators at all levels of the education system to use the best knowledge and practices available in order to build their capacity to help bring about improved student learning outcomes. It follows that effective ISTE practice requires the creation of networks and partnerships with other professional learning communities in all parts of the education system to support reciprocal learning for all.

In professional communities writ large, the system as a whole adopts the agenda of fostering deep learning communities. In other words, schools and communities explicitly pursue the development of new cultures of professional learning; districts, regions, and schools establish infrastructures to support and mentor such development; and states or provinces commit themselves to policies and strategies for systemically addressing the evolution of professional learning cultures.

Fullan, 2005, page 3

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