[MUSIC] Hello again. We are in lecture four, Working with Leaders, Teachers and Support Staff. That's week three working with your colleagues and school leaders. In this lecture, I will be looking at professional learning communities as a way of working with our leaders, teachers and support staff. So what do we mean by a professional learning community? What is a professional learning community for teachers? This is where teachers participate in decision making. We as teachers have a sense of purpose. We engage in calibrating work and accept joint responsibility in the outcomes of our own work. In other words what we do in our classes, it's it comes out of a collaborative effort of the other teachers within our school environment and outside our schools. And we take responsibility of the decisions that we make. We provide opportunities for teachers to innovate, develop and learn together. So we, in a sense, we create a learning community where we learn from each other, we share our ideas, we share our concerns, and as a group, we come up with new innovations. We come up with ways to deal with the concerns or deal with the issues that one or many of our teachers might face. In creating the professional learning community, we create a platform where all teachers develop together within the the community. So what does actually a professional learning community give us? It has, research has shown it has a positive impact on student achievement, and this is likely because professional learning community itself allows us to share our issues, our concerns with the rest of the teachers, the rest of the group where we totally come up with ways of tackling it, that in turn would lead to student achievement. Develop capacity of teachers to improve teaching practices. So when sharing our practice with someone else, a good practice will develop the capacity of all our teachers. It enables teachers to engage in collaborative enquiry and change, so one of the things that we should do as teachers is constantly change. Because our profession, where we work is so diverse and is changing all the time, that we need to change our approaches. Hence, a professional learning community will help us doing, in achieving that. Research has shown that in professional learning communities, we teachers tend to be more effective in the classroom. We make sure that enquiry is at the heart of effective professional learning communities, and it is a key driver in improving classroom practice. Because we make enquiry an the heart of our community, we, in turn, put that into our classes and to, in turn, put that into our students as well. In in parts where, of the world where there has been passive instruction or there hasn't been active classroom interactions. Professional learning community would help students to become more active as well because teachers would be more confident in professional learning communities. Professional learning communities would allow teachers to focus their professional development efforts on improving learning outcomes. And it will allow the teachers in the community to work together to improve those learning outcomes. We learn through active construction of knowledge rather than passive receipt of information, as I mentioned earlier. This, in turn, would lead to student development as well. What are the key principles of a professional learning community? It's enquiry and collaboration. Enquiry comes from, like an issue, a concern of one of the teachers or a group of teachers, or initial phased by one teacher or a group of teachers. He or she would be sharing that with the community of teachers, the group of teachers in the professional learning community. And they would have collaborative discussions on how to tackle those issues and come up with an idea of solving those issues. So the principles are enquiry, starts with an enquiry and collaboration. Some of the characteristics of PLC, or professional learning communities, are distributed or collaborative leadership, so we have teaching communities or learning communities where we have collaborative leaders when you don't have an alternative. If we focus our goals on the learner needs, rather than our personal development, we give attention to the instructional core. So we try to find ways in which to improve our instruction. And it is an enquiry driven outcomes, leading to a change in practice. So we don't stick with the [INAUDIBLE] with of [INAUDIBLE] our instruction, but rather, we enquire about innovative ways to change our practice. Now we have looked at professional learning communities and what it is and how important they are. How do we actually established one? The first thing that we need to do is identify a group that would have sort of common goals and come up with common focus for our group. That forms a group of professionals, group of teachers within our school. This can be the whole school or it can be a group within the school as well. Or it can be even outside the school, so any group of professionals any group of teachers who have a common focus can establish a professional learning community. Once the group is formed, then we start the process of learning. This starts with an action with an enquiry. So I might have an issue that I face during my class. I have an issue dealing with a parent. I might an issue deal with another colleague. So I just share that with the community. With my professional learning community or with a group with a common focus. So once shared, the group will start discussing on the different ways in which to deal with those issues and how to innovate, how to change the ways that we deal with issues. How to change the instruction, how to address a particular type of student. These are things that will be discussed within the community, and they will come up with a change in practice and ideas. So once the idea is formed, we will try it as a group, we'll try it in our classrooms, and then we will get feedback. Feedback on what happened after the trial, and based on that, if any refining is needed, then we will do the refining of our innovation. And once it's complete, we will share our outcomes with the rest of the community as well. We will share each with other teachers even outside a group. So this is a cyclic process. So again, the same action can begin to trigger innovation changes, trial and refining and sharing our outcomes. So that's how you establish a professional learning community. And some of the things that we need to know and understand is in order to make a professional learning community successful, we need to have data that is shared data that is important and accessible to the rest of the community. We need to have a culture of collaboration, a culture of making decisions together. We need to build trust within our community, and we need to have common values. That's all I have for you this session regarding professional learning communities and working with colleagues. In the next session, Professor Tony Townsend and we'll be going through with you looking at developing positive teacher parent relationships. By looking at why involving parents will help students to be more successful. Thank you very much. [MUSIC]
