RSA#1 Continuous Inquiry Meets Continued Critique: The Professional Learning Community in Practice and the Resistance of (Un)Willing Participants

By Chris Bohula

Online Source: http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED510036.pdf

This week’s reading focused on setting up and organization of professional learning communities concluding with a self assessment for participants of a learning community (Martin-Kniep, 2010)  Martin-Kniep (2003) first suggest a purpose for the PLC be established and provides examples.   These goals should not only include learning objectives, but also expectations and opportunities for group members (Martin-Kniep, 2003).   The text gets into quite detailed suggestions for setting up, creating and assigning roles, and assessment of the community. 

Elbousty and Bratt (2010) almost provide a case study documenting the process of a Professional Learning Community from inception through the start or the following school year. They describe their PLC group as “[The PLC] quickly burgeoned into a fairly productive group, not limiting their community to their own confines but also expanding to provide assistance to middle school teachers and other high school colleagues.” (Elbousty & Bratt, 2010)  This article documented quite extensively the results from a survey gathering the teacher’s attitudes regarding collaboration similar to that found in PLCs.  The publication concludes the with the significance of having a productive and successfully established PLC.

The first and most obvious similarity between Martin-Kniep (2003) and Elbousty & Bratt (2010) was their theoretical framework regarding the implementation and rational for having a Professional Learning Community.  At time I thought I was reading the same publication.  As it turns out I was.  Both pieces citied 7 of the same sources including works from DuFour, Talbert, McLaughlin and Eaker.  Although both sources start out very similar, differences do emerge.  Most noticeably, Elbousty and Bratt (2010) move from theory to practice.  As a student hopping to apply these theories to practice, it is quite beneficial to analyze the results from a “real life” application.  For example, Martin-Kniep (2003) state “…those in a community should always want to be in it.” That would be great, but in the real world not everyone in a community will not be a member by choice.  In the Elbousty and Bratt (2010) case study it is noted that although there was not a requirement to be member, however many participants had a certain amount of peer pressure to join the community.  Seeing the results of applying PLC principles/strategies to a real world scenario provides a perspective the text doesn’t.  Another major difference between these works was the assessments uses in each.  Although both used a questionnaire/survey, the types of questions differed.  Many survey questions in the text (Martin, 2003) begin with “I am” whereas the case study questions ask for “your feelings.” (Elbousty & Bratt, 2010) This subtle difference in wording takes a survey where an individual is asked to judge oneself to share their feelings and beliefs.  I believe this shift will greatly increase the accuracy of the assessment itself. Ultimately Elbousty & Bratt (2010) provide an example where all participants in the community didn’t demonstrate the readiness suggested by the text and still created a very successful PLC.

References

Martin-Kniep, G. (2008). Communities that learn, lead, and last: Building and sustaining

educational expertise (pp. 77-110). San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Elbousty, Y.; Bratt, K. (2010). Continuous inquiry meets continued critique: the professional learning community in practice and the resistance of (un)willing participants.  Academic Leadership. Retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED510036.pdf