PLC Center: Building Professional Learning Communities That Drive Impact

Why Professional Learning Communities? 

The purpose of Professional Learning Communities is to provide a safe learning space where educators work collaboratively to improve teacher practice and, in turn, student learning outcomes. Within effective PLCs, educators are able to increase student achievement, learn through a professional growth mindset, enhance teacher practices, develop a culture of collaboration, support risk-taking, emphasize data-informed decision-making, and strengthen their collective efficacy. While all of these outcomes are at the top of the list for improving student and educator outcomes inside our school improvement plans, strategic directions, or professional development plans, the reality is many educators participating in PLCs experience very few breakthroughs in teaching and leadership practices. 

Common frustration from PLC teams and PLC leaders includes:

• “It’s hard to keep people focused during collaboration.”

• “We collaborate about standards. When do we talk about the challenges in my classroom?”

• “This might work for math, reading, and science, but I am the only Spanish teacher – who do I collaborate with?”

• “How do we know if the strategies we work on in PLCs really work?”

Indeed, the research behind educator collaboration and the reality of educator collaboration don’t always match up. Many teachers, leaders, and district administrators are frustrated with the time, energy, and resources that are poured into Professional Learning Communities without the results they are hoping to see. At the FIRST PLC Center, we have developed collaborative support for schools and districts regardless of where they are in their Professional Learning Community journey. These supports include: keynotes, breakout sessions, virtual support, leadership coaching, workshops, long-term support, and PLC analysis. At the center of all our PLC supports is our model for educator and student improvement…Observable Impact. We created our laminated guide (Building PLCs from the Ground Up) to help schools understand the steps that can truly lead Professional Learning Communities to the impact they envision for their teams and their students.

What is Observable Impact?

We define Observable Impact as the changes in practice that are observable in the classroom and lead to improved educator and student outcomes. Too often in our PLCs we attempt to answer the same questions, discuss the same students, and circle around the same interventions from one meeting to the next. We don’t need a PLC to have the same conversations on repeat. The Observable Impact Toolkit which was first published in the book PLC2.0 from authors Cale Birk and Garth Larson provides educators with actionable steps to confront practices inside PLCs and classrooms. Imagine having structures in place that allow your collaborative teams to know whether or not their instructional strategies are working. The tools and protocols within PLC2.0 and the Observable Impact model finally help us answer the question, “what works in our classrooms?” The reach of our Observable Impact tools doesn’t stop in PLCs. We frequently help schools realize the impact of their school improvement plans, district strategic directions, and professional development plans. Observable Impact helps teams focus on the strategies that are most relevant to their students and directly impact their classrooms. 

As Jenni Donohoo (Director of The Jenni Donohoo Collective Efficacy Center and world thought leader on collective efficacy) writes in PLC2.0:
I have witnessed occasions when PLCs stray from a focus on student learning needs. ‘Activity traps’ - a term Katz, Earl, and Ben Jaafar used to describe “those ‘doings’ that, while well intentioned, are not truly needs based and have the effect of diverting resources (both human and material) away from where they are most necessary” get in the way. This won’t happen for those engaged in PLC2.0 because it is designed to ensure that efforts remain focused on the team’s co-constructed, observable vision of a learner. Furthermore, PLC2.0 [and the Observable Impact Model] reframes the identification of student learning needs from a deficit model into an asset-based model through powerful visioning protocols.

Creating a Vision for Collaboration

How might we create a vision of collaboration that leads to impact we can see for ALL learners and educators in our classrooms? Teachers and leaders within a PLC often struggle to see collaborative benefits because they fail to create a vision of what their PLCs will lead to. Everyone in education who has participated PLCs has been part of activities that are designed to build roles, norms, and accountability within collaborative learning teams with varying levels of success. At the FIRST Education PLC Center, we believe that when we create a highly observable vision of what we want, we are much more likely to realize that vision. In addition, we will recognize those PLC attributes when they happen because of our highly observable vision. 

One of our more popular Observable Impact tools used to create structures for our PLCs is called Worst/Best. Just as the name suggests, collaborative teams are asked to create a list of the worst experiences or attributes they can think of in PLCs. This is followed by practicing creative inversion to develop an observable vision of the best PLC environment by using the exact opposite of the worst attributes they can describe in PLCs. 

From our list of ‘bests’, our teams select priorities that will function as their norms during their time as a Professional Learning Community. Typically, this is where norming tools and activities. In the Observable Impact model, we consistently keep the focus on the classroom and student success. To truly create the structures and norms within a PLC that lead to impact, teams will design a specific and observable statement of what we would actually see in a PLC team meeting if all of our norms (‘bests’) were present. And finally, teams are asked to develop a statement of impact as a result of their collaborative efforts. Again, when our PLCs create a specific and observable vision of what they want to see from both themselves and their students, they are much more likely to know when the vision becomes reality (and also when it doesn’t). By looking through the lens of impact and the team’s collaborative vision, we create a system of accountability and student success. 

Leading PLCs

Leading a Professional Learning Community is vastly different from participating in one, and many PLC leaders struggle with defining their roles and responsibilities. Common challenges include accountability, team dynamics, new teacher engagement, and role distribution.

This approach ensures that PLC leaders are not just facilitators but strategic coaches who drive meaningful collaboration and instructional improvement.

Data that Matters

The data that matters most to teachers is the data they collect on a daily basis that allows them to make informed decisions on instructional strategies for the next lesson. In working with professional learning communities, two statements that focus on data almost always hold true. First, the teams have a system for analyzing district data, and they are efficient with this process. Second, the teams don’t know what the data is actually telling them or how it can change their instruction to support their students. Our teachers have access to state assessments, district screeners, curriculum-normed assessments, common assessment data, and so much more. Typically, when we observe PLCs, the districts have a data warehouse where all the data is available at their fingertips, teams have created color-coded spreadsheets, and teachers have possibly even grouped students by their performance on one of more of these assessments. And while these assessments tell part of the story, they often don’t tell us what we need to know…” what are the next supports my students need?”

We call the scores listed above “education box scores” because we compare them to a boxscore you might see in the sports section of a newspaper or your favorite sports app. Imagine you looked on your app to find out if your favorite basketball team had won the night before. After finding the box score, you’re happy to see your team won by 3 points. What that box score won’t tell you is that in the final seconds of the game, your team hit the game-winning halfcourt shot to win in dramatic fashion. The data on the app can tell us that our team won, but the boxscore alone can’t tell us about the last possession, the complete silence in the stadium as the shot was in the air, the agony of defeat for the other team, and the explosive roar of the crowd when they storm the court to celebrate. 

This is not to say those boxscores aren’t important. Student test scores do serve several purposes as they will, in many cases, determine programs, interventions, and college entrance for our students. However, we fall short if these are the only data points our PLCs use to make instructional decisions. At the PLC Center, we help teams discover the current evidence-based reality in their classrooms. As stated previously, the data that is most important to our teachers is collected through a vision and understanding of our students. This data is collected through observations of our students, observations of our peers, activities, assessments, and tasks. When we know where our students are in relation to their learning goals/standards/lesson objectives, on a day-to-day basis, our Professional Learning Communities are then equipped to provide the next instructional strategies that lead to impact.

Bringing the L Back to Professional Learning Communities

In the Observable Impact model and as stated in PLC2.0, PLCs need to engage our educators in three ways: Connection, Accessibility, and Accountability. Our PLCs should always be connected to a pressing instructional challenge. If a collaborative team is not working to design and test instructional strategies based on a current challenge they are observing in their classrooms, we would have to question their function as a Professional Learning Community. 

Professional learning can occur through multiple sources. Instructional leaders with an understanding of current challenges within the building can lead focused professional development during staff meetings. PLC leads might receive professional development and tools to bring back to their teams. Schools could send a select team to workshops offsite. All of these professional development opportunities have merit in the right context. With that said, our educators need an accessible, consistent process for collaborative learning during their PLC meetings. The PLC Center provides structures such as the Rapid Research tool that make professional development accessible to teams and focused on instructional strategies that lead to impact. By using this link, teams can access a video that explains how the Rapid Research tool can guide their PLC through quick and sustainable professional development. 

If the learning our teams engage in inside our PLC meetings is going to lead to the impact we hope to see in our classrooms, the structures and tools of our PLC must hold us accountable. Professional learning simply won’t have the impact we hope to see unless we have a plan for impact. By helping teams create a theory of impact coupled with a template to document their learning, our PLCs engaging in the Observable Impact model are able to see their vision become reality in the classroom. We routinely work with PLCs that can easily name the biggest challenge in their classrooms. This alone doesn’t get us the results we hope for. By supporting teams with structure, connection of their collective actions to their students, accessible and understandable professional development, and tools for accountability, PLCs can connect the learning from their meeting to the impact of their instruction in the classroom.

Collective Efficacy in Professional Learning Communities

We mentioned it before: the research surrounding PLCs supports educators working in collaborative teams to improve instruction. The reality of educators working in PLCs to improve their craft and the success of their students can often tell a different story. At the PLC Center, we believe we have found a common pathway that closes this gap. A pathway that uses common language, common tools, the groundwork for effective collaboration, and the impact we want to see in the classroom based on our collaborative efforts. We see success in our Observable Impact schools because this pathway leads to collective teacher efficacy.

As John Hattie’s meta-analysis continues to demonstrate, collective teacher efficacy is the number one factor that contributes to student learning. To better understand the research, Hattie created the Barometer of Influence that gives us a visualization of the hundreds of factors and the influence they have on student achievement. As you can see from the graphic, a factor of .4 is a typical year of growth. Any strategies or programs with a greater factor than .4 are labeled desired effects and research supports these strategies for increasing student achievement. Anything less than a .4 factor can be looked at as less than desirable or even having a harmful effect on student learning. Collective teacher efficacy has a factor rating of almost 4 times a typical year of growth for students. When our teachers believe that their collective experiences and collective actions will have an impact on student achievement, the research says our teachers are more likely to design effective teaching strategies, fight through instructional challenges, and collaborate with purpose. 

Of course, telling teams of teachers that collective efficacy is the best way to source student achievement doesn’t lead to teams being able to demonstrate collective teacher efficacy. At the PLC Center, we provide the support to show teachers what collective efficacy looks, sounds, and feels like. Observable Impact teams use our Strategy Review tool to summarize their learning journey and prepare to share their learning with other PLCs. When our Professional Learning Communities focus on the content rather than the delivery, collective efficacy becomes more readily accessible. We have provided our Strategy Review tool for you to download and try with your teams. 
 
By bringing teams of teachers together to share the structures, tools, documentation, and stories listed above, our PLCs participate in collective efficacy-building activity called Presentations of Impact. During Presentations of Impact, each member of a PLC connects with 3-4 members of other PLCs who have also documented their journey, prepared a theory of impact, and designed instructional strategies. By collecting the data that matters most from classroom observations and real-time measurements, Professional Learning Communites actually experience collective teacher efficacy and leave with the tools and documentation to grow the efficacy of a building or an entire school district.