Professional Development In Relational Learning Communities

In this book, Raider-Roth offers an innovative approach to teacher professional development that builds on the intellectual strength and practical wisdom of practitioners. Focusing on nurturing relationships between and among participants, facilitators, subject matter, texts, and the school environment, this book helps educators create a repertoire of teaching approaches founded on sustained, deep, democratic, local, and active learning. The author demonstrates that, within the context of trustworthy relationships, teachers can better connect with all that they know about teaching, learning, and their own identities. This, in turn, enables them to act on what they know in the best interest of their students and leads to the kinds of lasting change and commitment that can move the teaching profession beyond training for a particular skill set. Book Features: Examples showing how the work of relational learning communities can improve teachers’ practice.A focus on the cultural dimension in professional development for teachers.A view of teaching and learning as deeply relational and transformative. Strategies to help facilitators and participants create processes to best support a fertile learning environment. “An effective and powerful antidote to the usual models of PD, Professional Development in Relational Learning Communities is a thoughtful and engaging text that takes seriously the intellectual work of teachers and the importance of relationships in teacher learning.” —Curt Dudley-Marling, professor emeritus, Boston College

How can educators create a collective method of professional development that results in the genuine, sustained teacher learning essential to improving student achievement? That question is at the heart of this comprehensive and practical guide to process learning circles, a unique and powerful way to develop, strengthen, and enrich professional learning communities. Authors Geoffrey and Renate N. Caine have dedicated more than 20 years to researching how people learn naturally. From this foundation, they describe in detail how process learning circles work, and they provide readers with a clear understanding of how powerful and successful this approach to professional learning can be. Along the way, they explore * The three critical elements of great professional development * How to create a field of listening * The logistics and phases of process learning circles * Tips for success as a process leader * The effects of individual differences and group dynamics * Principles for developing a process that works Examples from schools that have implemented process learning circles provide evidence of the method's success, and the authors also include an explanation of 12 underlying brain/mind learning principles, guidelines for using online tools, and broader suggestions for how to move from teaching for memorization to teaching for understanding. Written with both teachers and administrators in mind, Strengthening and Enriching Your Professional Learning Community: The Art of Learning Together is an essential guide to professional learning and development that works.

“All who are interested and concerned about educational reform and the improvement of schools will find this book a must read. It stimulates, it challenges, and it informs, such that the reader is most surely enriched by its plenitude.” Dr Shirley Hord, Scholar Emerita “At last we have a book of international cases to add to the literature on networks! Policymakers and practitioners alike will find the reasons why networks are fast becoming the reform organizations of choice. The book elevates network understanding to a new level.” Ann Lieberman, Senior Scholar at the Carnegie Foundationfor the Advancement of Teaching What is a professional learning community? What are the key challenges facing these communities and how might they be resolved? Is it time to extend our thinking about professional learning communities? There is great interest internationally in the potential of professional learning communities for enhancing educational reform efforts and sustaining improvement. This international collection expands perceptions and understanding of professional learning communities, as well as highlighting frequently neglected complexities and challenges. Drawing on research, each chapter offers a deeper understanding of topics such as distributed leadership, dialogue, organisational memory, trust, self-assessment and inquiry, and purpose linked to learning. The last section of the book focuses upon three of the most challenging dilemmas that face developing professional learning communities - developing professional learning communities in secondary school, building social capital, and sustaining professional learning communities. The authors provide pointers on why these challenges exist, offering rays of hope for ways forward. Professional Learning Communities is key international reading for education professionals, school practitioners, policymakers, academics and research students. It is a must-read for anyone interested in building capacity for sustainable learning and the ability to harness your community as a resource for change.

This research-based sequel to Leading Professional Learning Communities focuses on the practical process of implementing, improving, and sustaining PLCs. Appropriate for groups at all stages of PLC development, this field book helps educators improve PLC operations by facilitating individual and group development and growth. The authors provide learning opportunities that generate conversations about adult learning and contribute to supportive conditions that strengthen teacher quality and raise student outcomes.

Given the emphasis on transforming professional work through the adoption of enquiry-based and trans-disciplinary approaches to service development, there is an urgent need for those involved in professional education to develop a robust understanding of how changes in practice occur. A more inclusive approach to the analysis of the processes involved across the varied and interrelated contexts in which they occur is thus very timely. In this book, Jenny Reeves sets out to explore the gap between the experience of professional learning as an interactive, dynamic and socially contextualised process, and descriptions that are often individualistic, overly linear and largely context-free. She makes the claim that this disjuncture is the outcome of modes of enquiry that concentrate on limited selections of the available data. Adopting a relational approach to describing practice-based professional development, including graphical means for exploring the spaces produced by the activity, provides a very different picture. It creates a basis for representing the complex movements, relationships and interactions between people and things that occur during professional learning. It also provides a productive approach to describing the exchange and creation of professional knowledge across different contexts over time. By building a picture of the ephemeral spaces and connections that educating activities produce, mapping relational space allows those engaged in professional education to think rather differently about how professional learning and changes in knowledge and practice may be understood, supported and developed.

Constant, high-quality collaborative inquiry sustains PLCs. Become disciplined and deliberative with data as you design and implement program improvements to enhance student learning. This book delves into the five habits of inquiry that contribute to professional learning. Get to know them and the action research process they represent. Detailed steps show you how to accomplish collaborative action research that drives continuous improvement.

Powerful tools for facilitating teachers' professional development and optimizing school improvement efforts! Combining professional learning communities (PLCs) and action research, this step-by-step guide provides coaches, workshop leaders, and staff developers with strategies, activities, and tools to develop inquiry-oriented PLCs. The authors present essential elements of a healthy PLC, case studies of inquiry-based PLCs, and lessons learned for improving coaching practices. Sample projects and reflection prompts will help readers: Organize, assess, and maintain high-functioning, inquiry-oriented PLCs Facilitate the development of study questions Enable PLC members to develop, analyze, and share research results Lead successful renewal and reform efforts