RSA # 2 Learning Communities and What is a, “Professional Learning Community”? by Rick DuFour

Online Resource:  http://www.allthingsplc.info/pdf/articles/DuFourWhatIsAProfessionalLearningCommunity.pdf

By:  Bridget Heenan

1/29/2011

            The readings from this week focused on community outcomes by improving teaching, learning, understanding, and evaluating the growth and expertise of community members.  I am going to focus on summarizing improving teaching, learning, and understanding.  I will compare and contrast Martin-Kniep’s view of these topics with those of Rick DuFour.    

            Martin-Kniep discusses in chapter six, “Participants who focus on student learning delve deeper into curriculum, instruction, and assessment work related to students.” (Martin-Kniep, 2008, p.113).  The first thing that teachers of a PLC need to focus on when trying to improve student achievement is the curriculum.  Teachers want to discuss if their current curriculum is “good”.   If the teachers feel that they do not have a “good” curriculum then they need to discuss what they can do to make it a “good” curriculum for their students.  Once the teachers have discussed and created a “good” curriculum they are going to want to discuss their teaching strategies and assessment tools. 

            It is not good enough for the teachers in a PLC to say that their students have or have not mastered a concept instead they actually need to discuss and create a good assessment tool.  Martin-Kniep mentioned that some methods for assessment might involve creating templates, discussing criteria, and or creating rubrics.  It is important for the PLC to discuss specific components of a rubric and how it would be scored.  These methods of assessment will allow for a deeper understanding of what the students have mastered and allow for teacher reflection.

            Martin-Kniep is not the only one that thinks that professional learning communities should focus on student achievement, so does Rick DuFour.  “When teacher teams develop common formative assessment throughout the school year, each teacher can identify how his or her students performed on each skill compared with other students….Each teacher has access to the ideas, materials, strategies, and talents of the entire team.”  (DuFour, 2004, p. 10)  DuFour is discussing common assessment and using a method to check student success.  DuFour does not give specific methods for grading the students work like Martin-Kniep suggested using a rubric.  A common grading rubric would also help in my opinion along with the discussion of the teaching strategies used from each member of the team.  “Teachers work in teams, engaging in an ongoing cycle of questions that promote deep team learning.  This process, in turn, leads to higher levels of student achievement.” (DuFour, 2004, p.9).  It is important to see where the students made mistakes and their level of mastery but it is also important be able to discuss and question the content covered and the teaching tactics used by all members.  If the concepts that were missed were crucial to the curriculum then it would be worth re-teaching using one of the other team member’s strategies perhaps.   

            Collaborating with a team of teachers about student achievement is crucial in the education field if all educators are serious about helping all students learn.  Two of the most important concepts that I took from both readings was that teachers need to be willing to discuss their teaching strategies as well as the results from the common assessments.  Creating a “good” curriculum that allows for teachers to develop common assessments that can be used as a reflection tool for the teachers will help student achievement.  The teachers can reflect on how many students mastered a concept, what teacher had the greatest success rate with their student’s achievement, and what teaching strategies were successful.  All of the previously stated components allow for teacher improvement as well as increasing student achievement. 

References

Martin-Kniep, G. (2008).  Communities that Learn, Lead, and Last.  San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

DuFour, R. (2004).  What is a “Professional Learning Community”?  Educational Leadership.  Retrieved from http://www.allthingsplc.info/pdf/articles/DuFourWhatIsAProfessionalLearningCommunity.pdf