Professional learning communities (PLCs) are an essential avenue for high-quality change and work. Maintaining unity among groups with differing opinions is challenging. This mixed-methods study aimed to assess elementary teachers' current perceptions of PLCs to determine their effectiveness by answering four research questions: What are the…

In chemistry, a catalyst accelerates change without being depleted. As we seek school improvement, we need sustainable, scalable changes, and therefore catalytic structures are ideal. From communities of practice to professional learning communities to Networked Improvement Communities (NICs) much has been made in the scholarly and consultancy…

"Professional learning communities," the name given to teachers' collaborative professional learning--or PLCs, as they are often called--has become so overused that the term's meaning is often lost. Only when teachers reflect on their instructional practice, consider the effect instruction has on students, and implement insights gained…

The Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Southeast developed a Professional Learning Community (PLC) Facilitators Guide to support educators in the implementation of recommendations from the What Works Clearinghouse's. The practice guide focuses on the foundational reading skills that enable students to read words, relate those words to their…

Elementary music teachers are required to attend long-term, campus-wide professional development outside their content area. The purpose of this interpretive qualitative study was to better understand how elementary music teachers in a North Texas and a South-Central Colorado school district who have had five or more years of teaching experience…

Educators understand that an academic divide endures between groups of students, and schools often perpetuate inequities that result in unequal lives. There are effective strategies that any principal, in any setting, might consider implementing as a means to overcome the challenges faced by educators who aim to improve student learning in their…

Guiding student growth minute-by-minute--aka classroom formative assessment--has a track record of boosting student and teacher engagement. Discover concrete ways leaders can support this high-impact instructional practice throughout your school or district. Learn: (1) how to clarify who owns the learning and who is responsible for the learning…

As your school district undertakes the process of evaluating its K-12 reading program, literacy curriculum, or literacy instructional practices, this book will be your go-to resource. Pennell offers a step-by-step guide for educators, school leaders, or professional learning communities to evaluate high-quality instructional materials and…

To support proactive leadership, the Aspen Institute Education & Society Program proposes five potential strategies system leaders can use to implement the ideas proposed in the "Call to Action" and, ultimately, to pursue social, emotional, and academic development (SEAD) through a racial equity lens. The strategies discussed in this…

Using a naturalistic inquiry approach and thematic analysis, this paper outlines the findings of a research study that examined 12 Manitoba principals' conceptions of professional learning communities. The study found that these principals consider the development of professional learning communities to be a normative imperative within the…

School accountability reports reveal that wide achievement gaps exist among different subgroups of students in PK-12 schools. Research findings reveal that general and special education teachers improve their classroom practices when working in professional learning communities (PLCs). In addition, research shows that special education teachers…

What would a learning community look like "if we really meant it" when we committed to ensuring the learning of each student? What would we consider good enough for our own children? In "Every School, Every Team, Every Classroom," the authors suggest that these two questions drive PLC leaders to embed PLC at Work[TM] practices in their entire…

This resource presents success-proven practices, processes, and procedures grounded in time-tested theories, current research, and the creative, innovative, real-life experiences of educators in the field who are transforming underperforming schools into thriving educational learning communities. An invaluable guide to what today's educators need…

This article describes how ten exemplary urban school principals worked together under a Wallace Foundation Grant to advance the understanding of urban school leadership. The grant's intent was to contribute to the development of a national model for the assessment of master principals by demonstrating how building-level leadership in urban…

This document contains the Phase III report from the "What Works in Oklahoma Schools" study. As opposed to describing the findings from the study that was conducted, it provides a tool-kit that can be used by Oklahoma principals and teachers to determine the best courses of action for their schools and classrooms. The tools provided in…