This paper investigates how teachers' professional agency afforded and constrained their decisions to participate in or withdraw from professional learning communities (PLCs). While PLCs are often thought to position teachers as agents, explicit links between teacher agency and key features of PLCs have not been explored. Data from interviews with…

This article explores which tensions teachers experience during one year of participation in a professional learning community (PLC). Tensions are more or less temporal negative feelings of stress, loss of self-efficacy or anxiety caused by conflicting personal features and workplace affordances. A qualitative study including two semi-structured…

School principals play a key role in the creation and nurture of school conditions conducive to Professional Learning Communities (PLCs). In China, whereas the term PLC itself is an imported concept and rarely used by school practitioners, the precept of PLCs, collaborative teacher learning activities, are firmly embedded in teachers' daily work.…

In order to support professional development of their teachers 14 Dutch secondary schools developed and implemented a series of interventions. The concept of School as Professional Learning Community was used to frame these school interventions. Data were collected through project documents, interviews with school principals and project leaders,…

This study aims at exploring the influence of The "Alliance of Thinking Schools," a multi-regional, researcher-practitioner partnered teachers' "professional learning community" (PLC) on the teaching of thinking in China, on bridging teachers' "belief-action gap." Specifically, this study aims to investigate the…

Research on professional learning communities (PLCs) in early childhood education (ECE) contexts is still relatively rare and little is known about how such communities can be established and embedded. This article reports findings from research into the sustainability of professional learning communities in New Zealand's early childhood sector…

In this study, the professional learning of two groups of secondary mathematics teachers are compared as they participate in an education research project to explore the uses of iPads within formative assessment processes. Data from lesson observations, meetings and teacher interviews show how collaborative participation in a design research cycle…

Professional learning communities (PLCs) as a means of raising the teaching profession are becoming more attractive in education systems seeking to improve school improvement processes and outcomes. The main intention is to increase the individual and collective capacity of teachers so as to support school-wide capacity for teaching and learning.…

For investigating a comprehensive PLC framework, instruments are needed that capture the multi-layered PLC characteristics and that take into account the complex influencing educational context. Such instruments are currently lacking. This study aims at describing the development and validation of two qualitative classification instruments usable…

Through a discourse analysis of the qualitative data collected in an ethnographic approach, this study investigates learning emerging in an English teachers' professional learning community (PLC) at a Chinese secondary school in Shanghai. It explores the discourse features of situated interactions in two types of typical events occurring regularly…

Recently there has been growth in researching teacher agency. Some research has considered the relationship between teacher agency and professional learning. Similarly, there has been growing interest in professional learning communities as resources for professional learning. Connections have been made between professional learning communities…

A great number of studies have focused on professional learning communities in schools, but only a limited number of studies have treated the construct of professional learning communities as a dependent variable. The purpose of this research is to investigate Turkish schools' capacity for supporting professional learning communities and to…

Professional development programs provide an opportunity for environmental educators to develop networks to exchange ideas and practices in professional learning communities. This study investigated how diverse educators develop professional networks for exchanging information through online and face-to-face professional development activities. We…

This article presents a review of 70 empirical articles focussing on professional learning communities (PLCs) for teachers in the Global South. The review highlights an upward trend in the quantity of the publications on PLCs from 2010 onwards. The evidence suggests that PLCs could be initiated as a result of a mandate, a project of professional…

Professional learning communities are receiving increasing attention within the schooling sector but empirical research into their development and use within early childhood education contexts is rare. This paper reports initial findings of an exploratory study into the development of professional learning communities in New Zealand's early…