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Volume 39
Teachers Articles
October 20009
Article 1

Article Title
Professional Learning Communities:
 What are they and what do they have to offer TEFL?

 Author
James Venema
Nagoya Women’s University,
Japan

Bio Data:
James Venema was born in Canada, has taught ESL/EFL in Canada and Thailand, and has now been teaching in Japan for over 10 years. He obtained a BA in Psychology from the University of Alberta in 1993 and an MSc. in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages from Aston University in 2002. He is presently an Associate Professor at Nagoya Women’s University where he is also the English teacher coordinator. He is currently most interested in curriculum development and teacher education.

Abstract
Professional learning communities (PLCs) have been advocated as a means of restructuring schools to maximize learning in the public education systems of the United States and Canada. This article will discuss the relevance of PLCs within the TEFL community. It will begin with a brief overview of PLCs and some of their common characteristics before outlining some steps TEFL schools and programs would have to take to become PLCs. Next this paper will outline some possible benefits of PLCs for the TEFL field along with some questions and concerns. Finally, some tentative conclusions will be drawn as to what PLCs have to offer the EFL community.

Key words: Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), teaching teams, program development, teacher collaboration, objectives, standards movement, evidence-based education

Introduction
The primary focus in the EFL field has tended to be two-fold, language learning and pedagogy, and on the link between the two areas. This can lead to the situation, criticized by Bax (2003), where “methodologically driven” or “language driven” approaches to teaching are advocated regardless of teaching context. Similarly, teacher training programs, where they disregard the teaching context of participants, run the risk of irrelevance when teachers return to their schools. In contrast, Bax (1997) has advocated principles for a context sensitive approach to teacher training programs. However, there is little in EFL literature on an organizational approach to teacher training, where the engine of professional development is the organization itself, in the way the school or language program facilitates the goal directed exchange of teaching practices. Based in part on Senge’s concept of learning organizations (1990), just such an approach has been advocated in the North American public school system: professional learning communities (PLCs). While the context in which PLCs have emerged differs significantly from much of the TEFL field, the organizational principles that underlie the development of professional communities of teachers can be very relevant. 

What are PLCs?
PLC proponents forcefully argue the benefits of PLCs in opposition to a status quo as described in studies such as that by Lortie (1975). Lortie offered an “egg carton” analogy, arguing that professional isolation is a defining characteristic of a teacher’s workplace. Lortie also argued that teachers typically express doubts about a common technical culture and “endemic uncertainties” about the consequences of their teaching. Schools advocating PLCs would seek to imbed teamwork within the structural and cultural fabric of the school to facilitate teacher development and student learning. To do so, as the name would suggest, PLCs borrow heavily from the ideas of “learning communities” for which Mitchell and Sackney give the following definition:

A learning community consists in a group of people who take an active, reflective, collaborative, learning-oriented, and growth-promoting approach toward both the mysteries and the problems of teaching and learning. (Mitchell & Sackney, 2001, p. 1)

PLCs claim to harness the power of teacher learning communities for demonstrable improvements in teaching practices and student learning.
   Perhaps the clearest and most prescriptive description of PLCs was given by DuFour (2005). In an attempt to reclaim an idea he felt to be in danger of confusion, DuFour describes three critical “big ideas”: there is a focus on learning, there is a culture of collaboration, and judgements are based on results. A focus on learning requires that teachers define what they want students to learn, determine how they will know when students have learned it, and, most importantly according to DuFour, decide what to do in the event that any student fails to meet learning goals. A culture of collaboration requires the allotment of regular time for teachers, organized into teams, to meet. Teachers in these teams share details of their classroom practices and continually work towards refining and improving instruction. The results upon which judgements are based need to be defined in terms of student learning, and teaching teams need to work towards specific learning goals. Additionally, assessment is continuously carried out as a means to facilitate learning rather than just measure end results.

Implementing PLCs in the TEFL Community
PLCs involve the systematic, goal directed exchange of effective teaching practices among teams of teachers in a professional community.  This professional community does not arise spontaneously but, instead, is imbedded within the structural and social fabric of the school. A school or language programme would need to demonstrate a number of characteristics.

1. There would need to be clear goals for teachers to work towards. These goals would need to be described in terms of student learning and would need to be measurable.
2. There would need to be an agreed upon system measuring learning vis-à-vis learning goals. This assessment process would need to be timely, if not continuous, so that information on learning progress is used to measure progress not just end results.
3. Teachers would need to be organized into teams. Within these teams there would need to be an open culture of collaboration where teachers share and reflect on teaching practices. The discussion would be continuously guided by results.
4. There needs to be a commitment on the part of teachers to work towards meeting (or even raising) learning goals, as well as addressing learning gaps wherever they might occur.
5. Time and resources would need to be allocated to teaching teams. This would require a commitment on the part of the school administration and coordinators.

What do PLCs have to offer the TEFL community?
The TEFL community has been buffeted by more than its fair share of teaching fads, and teachers would do well to view new approaches promising revolutionary changes with due caution. To some extent, the literature on PLCs reflects the highly charged political climate of the American public education system grappling with the introduction of the standards movement. Titles like “Whatever it takes” or “Learning together, leading together” can read suspiciously like the latest management fads. Still, this paper argues that aspects of PLCs offer the potential for positive change in the TEFL community, and three broad categories are outlined below.

PLCs have potential to synthesize diverse strands of educational research.
I suspect that many components of PLCs as outlined in this paper would be familiar to TEFL educators. Indeed the concept of learning communities as outlined by Mitchell and Sackney above holds many parallels with “action research.” There is the same focus on investigation into a specific question or problem within a given teaching context. In the case of PLCs the key difference is that the process of investigating the efficacy of classroom practices is carried out in teams and is imbedded within the school structure. In Brown’s description of curriculum development we see the similar themes of exploration, teacher dialogue, and student learning:

…curriculum development is a series of activities that contribute to the growth of consensus among the staff, faculty, administration, and students. This series of curriculum activities will provide a framework that helps the students to learn as efficiently and effectively as possible in the given situation. (Brown, 1995, p. 19)

A focus on learning, and learning objectives, is also a common theme in TEFL literature and a growing emphasis on results is reflected in the concurrent “evidence-based-education” movement whose effects have begun to permeate the TEFL field. Mitchell (2000) has outlined the potential of evidence-based education as a means to bridge the gap between applied linguistics and teaching practice in language education. The focus on systematic analysis of classroom instruction and its effects on learning parallels that advocated by proponents of PLCs. Instead of offering any radically new ideas, PLCs would appear to offer an opportunity to work towards a synthesis of current educational trends and their amalgamation in a given school or language program.

They present an opportunity for the breakdown of teacher isolation.
For the vast majority of TEFL teachers, our everyday teaching experiences occur primarily within the boundaries of classroom walls. The potential for teacher isolation holds as true for many of us today as it did for teachers in Lortie’s groundbreaking study more than 30 years ago (1975). PLCs tackle this problem where it needs to be dealt with: a teacher’s immediate teaching environment, be it a school or a language department. It does so by trying to imbed teamwork, including the open and critical exchange of teaching practices, within the administrative and social fabric of schools. One could claim that their approach can be a little heavy handed, as some advocates appear to give teachers few options:

Collaboration by invitation will not work. It is never enough. This is a key point. In a professional learning community, collaboration is embedded into every aspect of school culture. (Eaker, 2002, p. 11)

This of course begs the question of whether true collaboration can be induced. Whatever the advantages for those teachers who embrace the transition, those who cannot adapt may find themselves on the way out. Still, setting aside for the moment the process of implementing PLCs and the means by which teachers are, gradually or not, brought on board, I suspect one would be able to find broad agreement among TEFL teachers that a movement towards the systematic sharing of ideas and information would be beneficial for teaching and learning. It is precisely this opportunity to build context specific professional communities that has the potential to be the greatest source of appeal to TEFL educators. 

They offer a means to adjudicate competing pedagogies.
Another possible advantage of PLCs lies in their insistence on a teacher’s immediate context as the arbiter of potentially confusing and conflicting methodologies. The efficacy of workshops, presentations, and TEFL literature is often blunted by a lack of relevance to a teacher’s workplace. In PLCs, an ongoing critical examination of teaching practices and their effects on student learning serves as the selection process for effective methodologies. No claim is made as to best methods beyond that which can be demonstrated as effective in raising student learning. Innovations are welcome but only the successful are retained. Ideally, this would shelter teachers from the tides of teaching revolutions, and the overreactions and overgeneralizations they appear to repeatedly inspire.
   Similarly, the teacher dialogue that PLCs demand should provide a filter for the sometimes overwhelming information on language learning and teaching methodology. How many TEFL teachers, if any, can claim to have a complete knowledge of language acquisition research and teaching pedagogy? How many teachers even feel confident that they are effectively and accurately filtering the information available for that which is relevant to their teaching context? A lot of what teachers “know” is often based as much on intuition and conjecture as on teaching theory and critical insights into practices. A community of teachers may not be foolproof but, as Brown writes: “the collective wisdom of all the teachers (as helped by the curriculum developers and supported by the administrators) would logically be more appropriate, energizing, and creative in developing curriculum than the sum of each teacher trying to do so on his or her own” (p. 94). This collective wisdom should be all the more effective where it is guided by the extent to which teaching practice results in measurable learning.

Questions and concerns about PLCs

Further research is needed.
Any conclusions about the effectiveness of PLCs, particularly for a movement that so fervently embraces the importance of evidence, need to be grounded in research. In particular, PLC advocates need to demonstrate that studies indicating the effectiveness of PLCs are not simply descriptive. By their own admissions PLCs demand a high level of commitment and hard work from teachers, perhaps above and beyond that which is the norm. If so, this would suggest that they only take root in schools with a level of dedication among teachers also beyond the norm. While the evidence for the positive effect of PLCs on learning appears promising, EFL programs would need to demonstrate improvements in instruction and learning among a stable group of teachers over time.

There is a potential for exploitation.
Some might argue that the movement towards PLCs is also a process of exerting more control, effort, and work from reluctant participants. Indeed, one gets the sense that many results driven administrators would not hesitate to make extra demands on teachers to achieve learning targets. I suspect some in the TEFL field would see the potential for a sinister side to the breakdown of classroom walls demanded by PLCs, especially where salaries and job security do not warrant the level of work and commitment that could be demanded by an overzealous administration. To some degree, the participative process of PLC teaching teams at the local level should work towards negating systemic exploitation. The process is both participative and situation-specific, necessarily involving negotiations among teachers in schools and language programs. Still, it would appear that, in implementing PLCs, there is the potential for misunderstanding, and even exploitation, to occur. Administrators and program coordinators would certainly be wise to work towards consensus, and teaching teams should be granted reasonable autonomy in setting goals and working towards them.

Are the results sustainable?
Another issue is the sustainability of PLCs. There is no point at which a professional community of teachers, devoted to improving teaching and learning, can call their job complete. The work requires sustained effort, with ever-evolving goals and student needs. Some research does seem to indicate that, while beneficial results can be obtained at the outset, sustaining that initiative over the long term may be more difficult (Giles & Hargreaves, 2006). In particular, the question whether PLCs can maintain increased learning over the long term while making reasonable demands on the time and efforts of participants, both teachers and students, needs to be addressed.

The diverse cultural and organizational environments of TEFL could present insurmountable hurdles.
The ultimate relevance and effectiveness of PLCs for the TEFL field will be determined by context, both cultural and institutional. PLCs have developed specifically within the public education system of North America and there no doubt will be serious, and even insurmountable, hurdles in applying those ideas to diverse TEFL contexts. To illustrate, the effective implementation of PLCs in my own context, the Japanese tertiary education system, would typically involve both structural changes and cultural changes. The structural changes would include the development of common objectives and teacher teams as well as the allocation of time and resources to allow teachers, both full-time and part-time, to regularly meet. The cultural changes would include a renewed focus on education and an atmosphere that encourages collaborative dialogue and reflective teaching practice. For many programs and schools these kinds of radical innovations may simply not be viable. PLCs are first and foremost context specific, and their feasibility will inevitably be determined at the school and language program level.

They require a commitment to assessment
Not surprisingly for a movement that owes some of its impetus to the development of the standards movement in the U.S., PLCs require a continuous commitment to measuring learning. Assessment, if done well, takes time and careful consideration and schools may be limited by a lack of time or resources, or by resistance from the students, teachers, or administration. However, schools need not commit themselves to a time consuming standard of assessment that would withstand the critical eye of a standardized testing expert. Standardized tests are not only an unrealistic goal they are also an inappropriate one within in a limited body of students. The goals, as well as the means of assessment, are decided locally by teams of teachers. In addition to traditional means of testing such as paper based tests or interviews, other means of assessment such as regular homework, student writing portfolios, student feedback, and even anecdotal teacher impressions of student progress, would be legitimate barometers of progress. The indispensable component would remain a reasonable degree of consensus among teacher teams in assessing student progress in achieving learning goals, and the willingness to measure, by any and all means available, success or the lack thereof.

Conclusion
What do PLCs have to offer the TEFL profession? The benefits would appear to lie in the coherence and focus of their ideas rather than any revolutionary concept underlying them. The important shift lies in asking the questions, “What makes for effective schools?” rather than just “What makes for effective teachers?” The answer, according to PLCs, lies in the development of organizational structures conducive to the development of successful communities of practice. I would suggest that this shift offers the following possible benefits for the TEFL field.


* There is a renewed focus on the importance of a teacher’s context, not simply their classroom but also the immediate school or language program in which they are working. There is renewed opportunity for context specific teacher development programs while simultaneously improving overall education with the school or language program.

*Schools and programs, not just individual teachers, are challenged to break down the professional isolation that still typifies much of the teaching profession, and facilitate focused and open sharing among all teachers. Organizations are held accountable for providing the support and resources to facilitate the development of constructive teacher dialogue.

*By requiring accountability for student learning, and a results-oriented dialogue among teachers regarding classroom practices, there is an opportunity to demystify the teaching-learning process and filter the often overwhelming, and even conflicting, research on language acquisition and methodology into relevant and coherent chunks.

In the end, one need only hold PLCs to the same standards they ask of participants, that of results.

References
Bax, S. (1997). Roles for a teacher educator in context-sensitive teacher education. ELT  Journal 57 (3), 278-287.

Bax, S. (2003). The end of CLT: a context approach to language teaching. ELT Journal 51 (3), 232-241.
Brown, J. (1995). The elements of a language curriculum: A systematic approach to   program development. Boston: Heinle & Heinle.

DuFour, R. (2005). What is a professional learning community? In R. DuFour, R. Eaker,  & R. DuFour (Eds.), On common ground: The power of Professional Learning   Communities (pp. 31-43). Bloomington, Indiana: Solution Tree.

Eaker, R. (2002). Cultural shifts: transforming schools into professional learning
communities. In R. Eaker, R. DuFour, & R. DuFour (Eds.), Getting started:  Restructuring schools to become professional learning communities (pp. 9-30).  Bloomington, Indiana: Solutions Tree.

Giles, C., & Hargreaves, A. (2006). The sustainability of innovative schools as learning organizations and professional learning communities during standardized reform Educational Administration Quarterly, 42(1), 124-156.

Lortie, D. (1975). Schoolteacher: A sociological study. Chicago: University of Chicago  Press.

Mitchell, R. (2000). Applied linguistics and evidence-based classroom practice: The case of foreign language grammar pedagogy. Applied Linguistics, 21(3), 281-303.

Mitchell, C., & Sackney, L. (2001). Building capacity for a learning community. Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy. 19, Retrieved, May, 2007    from <http://www.umanitoba.ca/publications/
cjeap/articles/mitchellandsackney.html>

Senge, P. M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline. The art and practice of the learning   organization, London: Random House.