PLCs have been around for years in a variety of guises, including Teacher Learning Communities in the Dylan Wiliam/Tapestry model.

As I understand them, PLCs aim to improve the learning of pupils through the professional learning of teachers.

Our implementation of PLCs at North Berwick High School has grown organically over a period of 18 months, and has been described both as "The Coaching Project" and "Coaching for Professional Enquiry".  We eventually settled on "Professional Learning Communities" when we realised that our model bore so many similarities to other implementations that it seemed pointless to hold on to our distinct name.

The North Berwick PLCs are groups of eight to ten teachers who have volunteered to participate.  They come together for 75 minute meetings six times per session, and participants engage in peer-observation, peer-coaching and collaborative professional enquiry throughout the year.  Each PLC is chaired by someone who has previously participated in a PLC. The meetings provide opportunities for planning, goal setting, reporting back on progress and discussions about pedagogy.

Our PLCs are founded on the following principles:

• every teacher needs to improve, because every teacher is capable of improving
• improvement comes through increased awareness of our impact on learners, and through taking responsibility for developing our own practice
• improvement comes through taking a positive, solution-focused approach
• improvement comes through being asked good questions, not through being told what to do
• improvement comes through looking in the right places
• improvement comes through reflection, enquiry, evaluation, discussion and feedback - not through judging or being judged

This will be something like the tenth post in a series (if I ever write the previous nine!) about the work I have been doing to establish and support professional learning communities (PLCs) at North Berwick High School (NBHS).  It's a long story, which began 18 months ago with the growing realisation that the real work of professional learning looked more like personal growth than  "going on courses".

A potted version of the story so far...

I became very enthusiastic in 2013 about the potential for peer-coaching to support the professional growth of teachers.  This enthusiasm coincided with my temporary promotion to depute head, and my embarking on the Flexible Routes to Headship programme.  My FRH project became the development of PLCs supported by peer-coaching, initially in a pilot project of ten volunteers.  I failed to secure the permanent depute post, but continued to lead the pilot PLC as head of maths during the 13-14 session.  The pilot was deemed sufficiently worthwhile by the participants that they all agreed to be facilitators of PLCs this session. Meanwhile I secured a permanent post as depute head at NBHS. I launched PLCs with the whole staff on the 19th of August, as a voluntary professional learning opportunity that they could opt-out of if they felt able to meet the aspects of the standard regarding engagement with research, evidence of impact and collaborative learning in other ways. Only a handful of staff opted out - all of whom who were about to retire this session or next.

I am absolutely delighted that so many colleagues are giving PLCs a go, but rather anxious too.  I am anxious to ensure  that we deliver on my promise that PLCs will provide  rewarding, challenging experiences for teachers - experiences that will lead to real learning for them, and thus to real improvements in the learning of our pupils.

The PLCs are meeting for the first time this Friday.  I am acutely aware, as Katz says (in the first video here, and in his book Intentional Interruption), that "there is no magic in collaboration" and that our PLCs must, therefore, adopt deliberate practices that avoid making "together... worse than alone".

Clearly PLCs are not new, so we benefit from the experiences of those who have gone before.  All of my reading points to the importance of each PLC establishing its own norms, so this will be the principle agenda item for Friday afternoon.  I like this activity, purloined from this pdf:

A Strategy for Establishing Team Norms  

Ask team members to think of a past negative experience they have had serving on a team or committee  and to identify a specific behavior that prevented that group from being effective: for example, whining and complaining, arriving late and leaving early, being disengaged during the meetings, and so on.  

For each negative norm identified by members of your team, establish a positive commitment statement (a norm)  your  team  should  adopt  that,  if  everyone  adhered  to it,  would  prevent  the  past negative experience from recurring. 

If any readers have experience of establishing PLCs, I would very interested in any advice they have to offer!

This will be something like the tenth post in a series (if I ever write the previous nine!) about the work I have been doing to establish and support professional learning communities (PLCs) at North Berwick High School (NBHS).  It's a long story, which began 18 months ago with the growing realisation that the real work of professional learning looked more like personal growth than  "going on courses".

A potted version of the story so far...

I became very enthusiastic in 2013 about the potential for peer-coaching to support the professional growth of teachers.  This enthusiasm coincided with my temporary promotion to depute head, and my embarking on the Flexible Routes to Headship programme.  My FRH project became the development of PLCs supported by peer-coaching, initially in a pilot project of ten volunteers.  I failed to secure the permanent depute post, but continued to lead the pilot PLC as head of maths during the 13-14 session.  The pilot was deemed sufficiently worthwhile by the participants that they all agreed to be facilitators of PLCs this session. Meanwhile I secured a permanent post as depute head at NBHS. I launched PLCs with the whole staff on the 19th of August, as a voluntary professional learning opportunity that they could opt-out of if they felt able to meet the aspects of the standard regarding engagement with research, evidence of impact and collaborative learning in other ways. Only a handful of staff opted out - all of whom who were about to retire this session or next.

I am absolutely delighted that so many colleagues are giving PLCs a go, but rather anxious too.  I am anxious to ensure  that we deliver on my promise that PLCs will provide  rewarding, challenging experiences for teachers - experiences that will lead to real learning for them, and thus to real improvements in the learning of our pupils.

The PLCs are meeting for the first time this Friday.  I am acutely aware, as Katz says (in the first video here, and in his book Intentional Interruption), that "there is no magic in collaboration" and that our PLCs must, therefore, adopt deliberate practices that avoid making "together... worse than alone".

Clearly PLCs are not new, so we benefit from the experiences of those who have gone before.  All of my reading points to the importance of each PLC establishing its own norms, so this will be the principle agenda item for Friday afternoon.  I like this activity, purloined from this pdf:

A Strategy for Establishing Team Norms  

Ask team members to think of a past negative experience they have had serving on a team or committee  and to identify a specific behavior that prevented that group from being effective: for example, whining and complaining, arriving late and leaving early, being disengaged during the meetings, and so on.  

For each negative norm identified by members of your team, establish a positive commitment statement (a norm)  your  team  should  adopt  that,  if  everyone  adhered  to it,  would  prevent  the  past negative experience from recurring. 

If any readers have experience of establishing PLCs, I would very interested in any advice they have to offer!

I discovered this week that all hockey goals in my authority are now padlocked in place by chains, following an unfortunate incident when someone climbed on top of one and it fell over on top of them, to their considerable injury. The PE teacher who told me this complained that the chains made it very awkward for them to move the goals, which they often want to do in order to use the playing area flexibly.

I discovered this week that all hockey goals in my authority are now padlocked in place by chains, following an unfortunate incident when someone climbed on top of one and it fell over on top of them, to their considerable injury. The PE teacher who told me this complained that the chains made it very awkward for them to move the goals, which they often want to do in order to use the playing area flexibly.

In a post last year - Behaviour Management and Avalanches - I wrote about the failure of professional development activities to lead to actual changes in behaviour from teachers.  At the time I thought that I had stumbled upon something new.  It turns out, as usual, that I was just ignorant of the existing work in this area.

Joyce and Showers established, back in the 80s, that fewer than 10% of participants in staff development actually implemented new strategies in their classrooms.  But they found that with  peer-observation and peer-coaching this percentage increased to 90%!

This research is very reassuring to me, given that I am currently working with staff to set up professional learning communities in school, supported by peer-observation and peer-coaching.

In a post last year - Behaviour Management and Avalanches - I wrote about the failure of professional development activities to lead to actual changes in behaviour from teachers.  At the time I thought that I had stumbled upon something new.  It turns out, as usual, that I was just ignorant of the existing work in this area.

Joyce and Showers established, back in the 80s, that fewer than 10% of participants in staff development actually implemented new strategies in their classrooms.  But they found that with  peer-observation and peer-coaching this percentage increased to 90%!

This research is very reassuring to me, given that I am currently working with staff to set up professional learning communities in school, supported by peer-observation and peer-coaching.

I introduced an S2 (year 9) maths class to the SOLO diagrams and the language of SOLO, prior to giving them some nrich problems to work on in groups. My description of the task was for them to 'do some mathematical thinking' using the problems as prompts. I used the  SOLO levels to give them a scaffold. When discussing their thinking, I asked them 'what level do you think you are working at now?' and 'what would you have to do to move to the next level up?'. Many of them found this very useful - for example they saw that to move from relational to extended abstract, they would have to generalise, make some predictions, make connections with other mathematical topics etc.  and they then did so. I'm not sure how I could have given them this scaffold without some common language like SOLO or Bloom's taxonomy.  I prefer SOLO, but I'm know people find Bloom's useful.  It appeared to me that the language of SOLO created in the minds of youngsters some clarity about how to engage with a problem in increasingly deep ways. That seemed to me to be a good thing.

I introduced an S2 (year 9) maths class to the SOLO diagrams and the language of SOLO, prior to giving them some nrich problems to work on in groups. My description of the task was for them to 'do some mathematical thinking' using the problems as prompts. I used the  SOLO levels to give them a scaffold. When discussing their thinking, I asked them 'what level do you think you are working at now?' and 'what would you have to do to move to the next level up?'. Many of them found this very useful - for example they saw that to move from relational to extended abstract, they would have to generalise, make some predictions, make connections with other mathematical topics etc.  and they then did so. I'm not sure how I could have given them this scaffold without some common language like SOLO or Bloom's taxonomy.  I prefer SOLO, but I'm know people find Bloom's useful.  It appeared to me that the language of SOLO created in the minds of youngsters some clarity about how to engage with a problem in increasingly deep ways. That seemed to me to be a good thing.

I've read a few blog posts recently about behaviour management - "Top Ten Tips for Behaviour Management" is a fine example. Many of them seem to be aimed at NQTs.  I have agreed with almost everything in all of the posts, and use many of the strategies myself.

And yet these posts leave me with nagging questions - who are they for, and will they help?  The short answers are, of course, that they are for whomever wants to read them, and that they are bound to be helpful to some teachers - the strategies are, after all, tried and tested, and they work!  I think these posts would be particularly useful for an experienced teacher who is looking to expand his or her repertoire of behaviour management strategies.  I have certainly found them useful (as a faculty head with over 20 years of teaching experience).

So what is my gripe?  Is it just end-of-term malaise?  Maybe.  But I think this quote from a fascinating post by Harry Fletcher-Wood about trying to effect change in the behaviour of teachers highlights my concerns:

I noticed that later that week, delivering practice lessons for one of the other tutors and focusing upon their subject pedagogy, very few teachers actually employed the techniques they had learned.

This brings me to avalanches. I've attended many avalanche awareness sessions over the years, and all the recent ones have acknowledged this uncomfortable fact: training in avalanche awareness makes very little difference to the behaviours of mountaineers and skiers in the mountains! People in avalanche-prone areas fall into a number of heuristic traps: they continue to behave in the way they used to, even when that behaviour is now dangerous. In order to have a chance of making better decisions in the mountains, people need to become more conscious of the operation of these heuristic traps in their own decision-making processes.

I don't want to stretch the analogy too far, but it seems to me that giving teachers, especially NQTs, lists of behaviour management tips is akin to running avalanche awareness sessions for mountaineers.  Teachers will not begin to change their behaviour until they become conscious of the heuristic "rules of thumb" that are subconsciously guiding their behaviours in classrooms when events are happening too quickly to allow considered reflection.  For most teachers, this replacement of heuristic, unconscious patterns of behaviour with more effective conscious behaviours is the work of many years of practice. There are no easy short-cuts.  If I were to posit a possible tool to accelerate the process, it would be coaching  - providing teachers with the space to reflect on their own practice and a structure to guide their reflection in a positive direction.

Now if it is true, as I suggest, that NQTs in particular will struggle to implement the strategies listed in these "top tips", then what impact will the lists have on them? Will they not simply serve to demoralise them, by highlighting the gap that exists between them and highly experienced teachers?