123 - Evaluating Professional Learning Communities - A Skill Building Workshop

Abstract Information: Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) are a way to structure organization-based communities of practice. Education sector based PLCs are most often composed of P12 teachers, who work together to navigate issues of teaching and learning in their classrooms. Despite their ubiquity and theorized benefits, the value, merit, and worth of PLCs as an approach to professional development and organizational learning is under-evaluated.

In this workshop, participants will use the Team Collaboration Assessment Rubric (TCAR) to reflect on the quality and outcomes of a PLC (or any team) of which they are a member, learn how to make evidence-informed decisions about how to improve PLCs, and become familiar with resources that can advance PLCs as a primary improvement intervention in P12 and other organizational settings. All elements of this skill-building workshop will be grounded in Domain 2: Methodology of the AEA evaluator competencies, and will highlight how the TCAR and the evaluation process in which it is embedded works to honor the primary elements of AEA's statement on Cultural Competence and how PLCs can advance social justice in educational settings (Leonard, A. & Woodland, 2022)

Participants will learn how the TCAR has been used in a formative process to evaluate and improve PLCs in a multi-year district-wide initiative to advance the enactment of a culturally responsive Computer Science curriculum (Mazur & Woodland, 2018). Evaluation stakeholders have used the TCAR to assess ~56 PLCs (each with 3-8 members) since 2018. As part of the process, educators self-administer the TCAR to guide their reflection on the merit, value and worth of their own PLC, and leaders use the results to celebrate and diffuse lessons learned, and to provide targeted support and resources to strengthen the work and outcomes of the PLC.

Workshop participants will engage in small-group and large-group discussions on the applications of this assessment tool within their contexts, with a focus on the use of the tool to improve the quality of organizational collaboration. AEA conference participants interested in evaluating and improving organizational learning, professional development, and PLCs in any context, particularly in P12 educational contexts, will find this workshop and the tools and resources provided therein to be highly engaging and useful.

Works Cited

Mazur, R. & Woodland, R. (2018). A Fringe Topic in a Fragile Network: How Digital Literacy and Computer Science Instruction Is Supported (or Not) by Teacher Ties. ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE), 18(4), 1-20.
Leonard, A. & Woodland, R. (2022): Anti-racism is not an initiative: How professional learning communities may advance equity and social-emotional learning in schools, Theory Into Practice, DOI: 10.1080/00405841.2022.2036058