Professional Learning Communities:

Placing the focus on student learning, not on content delivery

Dictated by the lack of easy travel and communication, the traditional teaching culture required teachers to be independent and self-sufficient, interacting only occasionally with other teachers. Today, the world is smaller. Travel is easy and communication is instantaneous, but much of our education culture remains driven by the same independent, self-sufficient practices.

Teachers and principals across Knox County are engaging in a process to change this traditional culture into collaborative, results oriented professional learning communities that come together to share experiences and to focus on individual student achievement.

The concept of professional learning communities is not new, and there is research to show where they have been implemented, students have benefited.  The concept is based on teacher collaboration, a focus on learning and performance results, a commitment to shared goals, teachers as leaders and persistence.

Collaboration is key element to success of professional learning community

Ed Hedgepeth

“I think the key element to a successful professional learning community is collaboration,” said Ed Hedgepeth, director of secondary education for Knox County Schools.  “Collaboration is a process through which we learn from one another.  It happens in most businesses without a second thought.  When an engineer stops what he is doing and walks across the hall to discuss a project with a colleague, collaboration has occurred,” he said. 

“A lot of folks would call this a no brainer,” said Hedgepeth. “But, it requires us to really change the professional culture in education that has developed over the last 100 years.  The way we have structured the school day and our staff development programs, we have generally kept what collaboration we have to within a grade level or an academic discipline.  The PLC requires us to collaborate across disciplines and between grade levels.  This extends to collaboration among elementary, middle and high school staffs.

“Our culture has generally been one where teachers work in isolation or in groups based on grade or subject matter,” he said.   “If you ask teachers what they teach, many will answer with a subject or a grade.  What professional learning communities do is refocus the culture so our first response will be - I teach students.

 “Some experts have characterized the traditional school model as a collection of independent contractors united by a common parking lot,” he said.  “We want to move away from that approach to education and have school faculties that are more collaborative and function as a team.  Establishing professional learning communities will help us make this a reality.”

KCS has been piloting professional learning communities for four years

Knox County has been implementing parts of the PLC model for a number of years.  Farragut and West high school staffs started testing the full professional learning community process for the school system five years ago.  The staffs at Mount Olive and Amherst Elementary schools also began to pilot the program four years ago. The results experienced by these four schools have led the school system administration to move to use the process on a much broader scale. 

Dr. Fred Nidiffer

“We are currently training teachers and principals in how to implement the professional learning community process in their schools,” said Fred Nidiffer, director of elementary schools for Knox County.  “One of the great challenges in this process is going to be finding time in the day for teachers to have meaningful collaboration at all levels.  I think we are going to have to be very creative in how we address this challenge.  For example, many of our high schools are meeting some of this need by using late start Wednesdays where classes begin at 9:00 a.m. instead of 8:30.”

“Time is our greatest constraint,” said Hedgepeth.  “It is probably also a factor that has caused the education culture to develop in the way it has over the years. Teacher interaction and collaboration up, down and across subject areas has to occur for us to meet the needs of our students today.  We have to make time to collaborate and to share strategies and tactics that make our students successful.  Our focus must be students learning – not content delivery.”

PLC will tap collective knowledge as teachers' roles change

“PLCs are also going to help us take advantage of a largely untapped resource,” said Nidiffer.  “That resource is the combined expertise and experience of all teachers in a school.  When we tap our collective knowledge, our students will excel as never before.

“Knox County schools is a leader nationally in using students’ performance data to make informed decisions about how we educate or students,” he said.  “The PLC emphasis on collaboration will allow us to expand what we are doing with data driven decision making to include building a culture based on shared goals and education values within all of our schools.”

“To make collaboration and PLCs work, we have to change the role of the teacher somewhat,” said Hedgepeth.  “We have to look to our teachers as educational leaders.  In the current culture teachers are frequently seen as implementers of strategies and techniques that come from the administration. This view has to change both in the administration and among our teachers.  Every position on the team has to contribute for our students to meet the demands they will face in our global economy.

“We will look to our teachers to be developers of strategies and techniques to reach all of our students,” he said.  “I think many of our teachers are filling this role now, but the PLC will provide a vehicle for them to share what they know and to help other teachers make use of successful education strategies.”

Developing relationships plays big role in success of the PLC

Melissa Stowers

“I’m no longer isolated,” said Melissa Stowers, English teacher at West High School who is in her fifth year. “When there is a problem, I have someone to go to.” Stowers emphasized that developing relationships played an important role in the success of the Professional Learning Community.  I had a student whose behavior in my classroom was atrocious, but who was doing fine in another classroom. By conferring with that teacher, I learned specifically what problems were causing the behavior and what practices that teacher used to help the student be successful.”

The PLC also helps standardize the curriculum while maintaining academic freedom for each teacher. “If Ms. Stowers 9th grade English class is writing a research paper, then all the other 9th grade English classes are also writing a research paper,” said Shannon Jackson, English Department Chair at West. “There is no longer a good-guy bad-guy. We are teaching the same thing in each course, but still have the academic freedom to teach it within our own style.”

Shannon Jackson

Experienced and  beginning teachers learn from each other

Sharing experiences is not a one-way street running from experienced teachers to new teachers. “We both learn from each other, “ said Jackson. “Having new teachers bring in fresh ideas straight from college often helps those of us who are more experienced to see things from a different perspective while the new teacher benefits from the years of experience of the established teacher.”

“We also have to be persistent,” said Nidiffer.  “We cannot be in such a hurry to see results that we do not give PLCs time to work.  We are, after all, talking about culture change and that does not happen overnight.  We cannot mandate a new way to think.  We have to grow into it.  We are also not talking about moving at a glacial pace.  I think as we see success the pace of change will quicken.

“We have to remember this is something that will never be finished,” he said.  “It is a process of changing how we teach and how we think.  It is not a task we can complete and move on to the next task.”