Synthesizing Research Articles

The professional learning community will develop the steps of transforming our schools. It will use these eight steps as professional development protocols in reducing the dropout rate and increasing college and career readiness.

Professional Development measures the degree to which teachers value continuous personal development and school-wide improvement.

PLCs are 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 (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, & Many, 2006). The PLCs should be crafted around the idea of cultivating a sense of shared responsibility between all stakeholders.

Roberts, S. & Pruitt, E. (2003). Schools as Professional Learning Communities: Collaborative Activities and Strategies for Professional Development. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Successful PLCs involve having student data. The data does not need to come from tests, but it can come from student work or from observations. Through PLCs, the teachers should grow as an educator, and the students should benefit from it.

A. School Improvement Initiatives: We discussed two school improvement initiatives: 1. Professional Learning Communities’ (PLC) continue to dominate the intervention and improvement discussion. This year the San Juan School District (SJSD) schools went from district based PLC’s

Unfortunately, thorough research on the impact of professional development on student achievement is limited because it is challenging, complex and expensive to study. Nonetheless, Hoaglund, Birkenfeld, and Box, (2015), conducted a study that illustrated that learning communities are viable tools for providing professional development to both pre-service teachers and current teachers. Their study showed how a group of pre-service teachers and their supervisors participated in a professional experience learning community for two terms prior to the pre-service teacher’s junior year at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Questionnaires and interviews were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the program. The results of the study indicated that all participants valued the experience and consequently were able to gain and identify some benefits of a professional learning community (PLC). Participants specifically reported a greater appreciation of collaboration with more experienced educators as a practical way of solving issues and implementing processes and procedures for increasing student achievement. The activities incorporated within the

Overall, high rates of teacher turnover have direct monetary costs and alter the distribution of teacher experience and skill across districts. Dr. Maxwell, the Superintendent of PGCPS formed a Transition Team from which four subcommittees were formed one being the Teaching and Learning Committee (TL). The TL examined research on professional literature to answer the question and determined that in order for students to receive the high-quality education that prepares them to succeed in post-secondary opportunities, staff members must have instructional resources and professional learning opportunities to build their capacities

During our second Bear Creek visit, I observed the English Language Arts Professional Learning Community also known as ELA. When I first heard about the PLC, I was surprised because it is a brilliant concept. I never knew this existed. The English Language Arts PLC ran smoothly because the teacher that was presenting knew the standard she was going to focus on and how she was going to present the content to the students. All of the ELA teachers also had a schedule about how the meeting was going to flow so that no one was confused. They also used technology to present the standards and the content so that all of the teachers could see and make suggestions and ask questions. One teacher was questioned about why she chose a particular book

Dr. Fremstad has been instrumental in the implementation of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) at West Fargo High School. She understands the power of teacher collaboration and has led the charge to train and monitor the program with fidelity. Jennifer has inspired educators to share student evidence of learning and extend intervention or enrichment learning opportunities based on the data. In addition, she advocates on the importance of frequent classroom visitations with her leadership team and establishes annual visitation goals to support teachers and

PLC's where instructors work cooperatively to ponder their practice, inspect proof about the relationship in the among practice and student results, and roll out improvements that enhance showing and learning for the specific students in their classes (Kagle, 2014).

As the logic of action model (figure 1) shows, implementing PLCs in schools and districts can ultimately lead to improved student outcomes. First, by reforming the current culture around professional development and aligning teacher planning periods according to grade and subject, teachers will be able to attend PLC meetings consistently. Following this step, there are two different routes in the logic model that both work to increase teaching quality within the school. The combination of the effects from both strands will then amplify improvements in student outcomes.

During my second preclinical experience at Westview Hills Middle School, I learned the importance of cooperation and collaboration among teachers at a school. I was able to observe team and department meetings during this experience. It became clear that it is important for teachers to work together in order to provide a positive atmosphere at a school and in a specific department. Although it became obvious that personalities and teaching styles were different throughout the school, the teachers still acted professionally and used each other as resources in

Administrators and teachers must work together to develop the PLC plan addressing the needs of their students. This means administrators need to trust teachers and allow them to work in a way that is autonomous from leadership. Delegating more responsibilities to staff was a way of creating a more knowledgeable community that could cope with the diversity of demands created by schools moving from being relatively simple organizations to highly complex ones. It was also recognized as in accord with the rhetoric of distributed leadership recommended as a strategy for school improvement and raising pupil attainment (Bolam et al. 2005, Webb, et al.

Learning styles is one of the ways schools have changed over the past couple of years in regards to diversity. The varieties of learning styles of students have become more