Identifying elements critical for functional and sustainable professional learning communities

SCIENCE TEACHER EDUCATION

Julie A. Bianchini, Sherry Southerland, and Mark Windschitl,Section Coeditors

Identifying Elements Critical forFunctional and SustainableProfessional LearningCommunities

GAIL RICHMOND, VIOLA MANOKOREDepartment of Teacher Education, Michigan State University, East Lansing,MI 48824, USA

Received 28 March 2010; revised 16 September 2010; accepted 4 October 2010

DOI 10.1002/sce.20430Published online 19 November 2010 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).

ABSTRACT: In this paper, we examined data collected as part of a 5-year project designedto foster reform-based urban science teaching through teachers’ communities of inquiry.Drawing upon a distributed leadership framework, we analyzed teacher “talk” duringprofessional learning community (PLC) meetings. This analysis yielded five elements:teacher learning and collaboration, community formation, confidence in knowledge ofcontent and guided inquiry, concerns about the impact of accountability measures onteaching and learning, and sustainability of reform. Follow-up interviews with participantsreinforced the importance of these elements. While accountability measures were found tohave a significant impact on science teaching, participants were also able to use their PLC-based experiences to develop strategies to deal with such external constraints. Facilitationand leadership also play key roles in establishing and maintaining PLCs in this urbansetting. Finally, we present a revised framework that incorporates the elements we identifiedto describe those local and systemic factors critical for successful implementation andinfluence of professional development efforts. C© 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 95:543 –570, 2011

Correspondence to: G. Richmond; e-mail: [email protected] grant sponsor: National Science Foundation.Contract grant number: ESI-013845.All opinions expressed are the authors’ and do not represent those of the funding agency.

C© 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

544 RICHMOND AND MANOKORE

INTRODUCTION

Science education reforms worldwide are focusing on ways to make science teachingand learning more meaningful to learners and to society at large. In the United States, manyresources have been channeled toward improving the teaching and learning of science inschools, particularly in urban settings where most schools are failing to meet standardsassociated with such reforms. Spillane, Halverson, and Diamond (2001b) have arguedthat increased expectations about students’ performance have also raised expectations forteachers’ practice. However, while some states have put accountability measures in placeas a way to promote higher student achievement, many school districts are still strugglingto meet the state achievement standards. Urban school districts are among the most affectedas they are faced with particular challenges in meeting this goal (Spillane et al., 2001b).

Nowhere is this challenge more evident than in the responses to national mandates thatall students be exposed to rigorous science experiences. Current educational reforms areaimed at providing more authentic science experiences (Lee & Butler, 2003; Richmond,1998) and increasing academic achievement (Geier et al., 2008). Needs assessment reportshave strongly emphasized the necessity for ongoing professional development (PD) forteachers and school principals (Loftus et al., 2001). As a result, teachers are under greatpressure to help students raise their academic expectations and to develop more effectivepedagogical strategies. These goals cannot be accomplished without substantial scientificunderstanding on teachers’ part and access to sufficient resources, neither of which is typi-cally characteristic of urban districts, where large numbers of teachers are teaching outsidetheir areas of subject matter expertise and where there are fewer available resources tosupport teaching and learning (e.g., Lankford, Loeb, & Wyckoff, 2002). At the time ofour study, the urban school district in which we worked was facing problems typical ofmany urban schools in the United States. The problems include decreasing enrollment,low graduation rates, high student and teacher mobility, inadequate resources, low stateachievement test scores, low teacher morale, and the impending retirement of numerousteachers. Twenty-five of the 32 elementary schools (78%) in the district where the projectwas based had not met the expectations for adequate yearly progress in student achieve-ment, and the entire district was in jeopardy of losing its state credentials and financialsupport. To address these issues and support the educators in the district, a 5-year projectwas designed to establish and maintain grade-specific professional learning communities(PLCs); this work would then serve as the backbone for improving the effectiveness ofteaching in the district. The goals of the project were to help science teachers to do thefollowing:

• develop disciplinary knowledge of core scientific theories, concepts, ideas, and mod-els, and scientific ways of generating, representing, and validating knowledge

• understand students’ ideas and ways of learning science• implement standards- and research-based methods for teaching science• recognize, critique, and adapt exemplary science curricula useful for their teaching

needs

As researchers and teacher educators, we recognize the extent of disagreement inthe literature about what constitutes a teacher learning community, particularly with re-spect to structure, goals, and work. According to Grossman, Wineburg, and Woolworth(2001), “[T]here have been terms like community of learners, discourse communities orschool communities . . . yet there are no clear common features shared across the terms”(p. 942). These authors also argue that researchers need to be able to distinguish between a

Science Education

FUNCTIONAL PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES 545

community of teachers and a group of teachers sitting in a room for a meeting. In this paper,a PLC is defined as a group of teachers who meet regularly with a common set of teachingand learning goals, shared responsibilities for work to be undertaken, and collaborativedevelopment of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) as a result of the gatherings (Borko,2004; Grossman et al., 2001; Lachance & Confrey, 2003; Little, 2002a). Our operationaldefinition of a PLC is inclusive of the main objectives of the project that serves as thecontext for the present study.

The research on teacher talk in learning communities, which suggests that much canbe understood about teacher learning through an analysis of such talk (e.g., Stoll, Bolan,McMahon, Wallace, & Thomas, 2007) also guided our work. Our overall goals were todetermine the extent to which teacher PD meetings functioned as PLCs and to identifyelements critical for the formation and sustainability of functional PLCs. To achieve thesegoals, we focused on what teacher talk might tell us about the nature of the groups inwhich professional work was being done, and the impact this work might have on theability of teachers to be reflective about their practice. We grounded this work in twofundamental questions: What were the features that characterized talk by participantsduring PLC meetings? To what extent did PLC membership shape participants’ reflectionon their own teaching practice?

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Educational reforms have been developed to address not only the specific science con-tent students must learn but the effective pedagogical strategies for the delivery of thiscontent. These documents raise the standards for student understanding and for teachers’instructional practices. PD, therefore, has become an essential element in science educa-tion reform programs. Nowhere is this need greater than in urban contexts, where there ismore teacher mobility, where historically, more educators have been teaching outside theirprimary area(s) of expertise, and where there are fewer available resources, larger classes,and more diverse students, many of whom have special needs.

Some researchers have argued that longer term PD can provide opportunities for teachersat different professional stages to improve on their subject matter knowledge and theirinstructional strategies (e.g., Borko, 2004; Grossman et al., 2001). It is envisaged thatwith long-term PD, teachers may improve on their practice by learning from each other orfrom outside experts, including university-based educators (Ball & Cohen, 1999; Borko,2004; Wilson & Berne, 1999). Professional development programs also can create newlearning opportunities for novice and veteran teachers as well as school- and university-based teacher educators and can prepare teachers to meet the needs of all students in diversesettings (Darling-Hammond, Bullmaster, & Cobb, 1995). Teachers prepared through high-quality PD can become leaders in their schools, supporting other teachers in improving thequality of science teaching and learning (Spillane, Diamond, Walker, Halverson, & Jita,2001a) and investing in efforts to ensure that reforms take root (Ackerman & Mackenzie,2006). However, large-scale reform will require large-scale teacher learning and the supportand guidance of experts (Borko, 2004). Ongoing, focused, and relevant PD is thus key toenactment of reform-based science teaching aimed at improving students’ achievement(Darling-Hammond et al., 1995; Grossman et al., 2001; van Driel, Beijaard, & Verloop,2000).

To develop effective, large-scale PD efforts, it is important therefore to understand howand what it is that teachers learn as they work in contexts designed to support such learningand practice; it is also critical to see this learning as complex and systemic in nature

Science Education


(Hewson, 2007). Thus, a close examination of teachers’ activities during time devoted toPD and to the perceptions teachers have regarding the benefits of such participation is timely.In this paper, we examine the extent to which PLCs afforded participants opportunities tolearn, to increase their confidence in science teaching, and to strengthen their PCK as theymake efforts to plan and enact reform-based science teaching.

Analytical Framework

For our analysis, we drew upon a model of distributed leadership described by Spillaneand his colleagues (e.g., Spillane et al., 2001a, 2001b) and examined by other researchersas well (e.g., Harris, 2003; York-Barr and Duke, 2004). While the framework of Spillaneet al. (2001b) is about teacher leadership, it provides an analytical lens to explore teacherlearning and by extension, those elements that are critical in establishing functional learningcommunities. Spillane and his group argue that “the interdependence of an individual andenvironment shows how human activity as distributed in the interactive web of actors,artifacts, and the situation is the appropriate unit of analysis for studying practice” (Spillaneet al., 2001b, p. 23). Their central argument is that practice is influenced by situationalcontext. In the context of the present project, teachers’ PLCs were viewed as an integralpart of the urban context in which the teachers practiced. Thus, the PLCs and their memberscould not be viewed in isolation; rather, their composition, functions, and effectiveness wereinfluenced by other factors, several of which we examined.

Spillane and his colleagues conceived of three critical dimensions of leadership, whichthey called physical capital, human capital, and social capital. They define physical capitalas a resource such as that requiring money; human capital as that concerned with teacherknowledge, skills, and expertise; and social capital as relations among individuals in a groupthat result from driving norms such as trust, collaboration, and a sense of obligation. Theinterconnectedness and dependence of these categories illustrate the need for a high level ofcommitment from all players. A shared vision that will result in creation of environmentsthat are supportive and conducive to teacher learning is critical for the development ofsuccessful and productive PLCs. We used these dimensions as tools in our analysis of teachertalk to identify elements important in the establishment and sustainability of productivelearning communities.

METHODS

School District Context

This study is part of a larger project designed to establish teacher professional learningcommunities. The larger project was implemented in a Title I urban school district witha student population of 17,500. Of these, 58% was minority (primarily African Americanand Hispanic), and 63% of students were on free or reduced lunch. For a number of yearsprior to the project’s inception, the district had been faced by decreasing enrollment, lowgraduation rates, high student mobility, low state achievement scores, low teacher morale,and the impending retirement of large numbers of teachers. In addition, at the time theproject began, while there had been some movement with regard to a reexamination ofobjectives and supporting curriculum in science at the K-8 level, there had been almostno attention paid to need for coherent professional support for district teachers in thisregard.

In the elementary grades in this district, four science units per year (one each quarter)were taught. Pacing guides were developed by district administrators to ensure the sequence

Science Education


and timing of these units. This was a response to the very high level of student mobilityacross schools within the district: administrators wanted to ensure that a student movingfrom one school to another would not be disadvantaged because the curriculum at the newschool was significantly different from the one at the school she left. The second majorreason was to ensure that science, which held a lower instructional priority than readingand mathematics would, in fact, be taught.

Project Design Context

The design of the project was grounded in two areas of research. The first of these,which is focused on learners, proposes that three kinds of development are necessary for aneffective progression of learning to take place: personal, professional, and social (Bell &Gilbert, 1996). The second, focused on the design framework for the PD itself and drawnfrom extensive research with PD professionals, has been described in detail by Loucks-Horsley and her colleagues (Loucks-Horsley, Love, Stiles, Mundry, & Hewson, 2003; seealso Hewson, 2007). They found that the central elements that must be taken into accountwhen designing PD include (1) the knowledge and beliefs held by those providing thePD, (2) the set of contextual factors influencing PD, (3) the critical issues the PD projectwill face, and (4) strategies for professional learning. Thus, the present project includedintegrated, ongoing opportunities to create a sense of trust, shared goals, and community,to investigate one’s own teaching and student understanding carefully, to review, adapt, anddevelop curricula and assessments responsive to learning objectives and to the particularsociocultural context and needs, to provide resources for teaching and learning, and toprovide support, during and after the school day, for developing and engaging in “risky”pedagogy.

Professional Development Cycle

The project was designed to be both cyclical and progressive. One focus unit was iden-tified each year. Teachers began each yearly cycle by participating in a 7–10-day SummerLearning Institute (SLI). Each SLI began by including activities that identified participants’motivations for joining the project, what they felt their strengths were, and what they wantedto learn from their participation. These were revisited periodically to determine the extentto which the project was meeting participants’ expectations. The norms for participation(e.g., listening and responding to peers, sharing the floor) were also discussed. After theseopening conversations and activities, participants identified core scientific concepts for thisunit and began supported work to strengthen their own understanding of these concepts.Each group also began examining published research on students’ ideas with respect torelevant concepts, identified national, state, and district benchmarks associated with theunit, explored candidate curricula, activities and assessments for further development, andco-constructed their goals for the coming school-year PLC meetings. During the biweeklyPLCs in the following school year, this work formed the basis for further development,classroom enactment, debriefing, and refinement of the unit, with the addition of classroomteaching support (through videotaping, coteaching, and debriefing activities), analysis ofstudent work gathered during the teaching of the focus unit, and debriefing and refinementof teaching strategies. An underlying focus continued to be teachers’ content and PCK. Bythe year’s end, the group identified the next focus unit to be investigated, and the cyclewould begin again, this time with some of the PLC time taking place during the teaching ofthe last focus unit, to any problems or refinements. Figure 1 illustrates the cycle of teacher

Science Education


• Refinement of SLI work• Research on student understanding • Development/modification/piloting

unit

• Identifying big ideas, objectives/benchmarks

• Participant content knowledge

• Resource identification

• Identifying objectives• Justification of plans• Support for teaching,

analysis, and revision

FOCUS UNIT

Figure 1. Project professional development cycle highlighting major activities and component elements. Eachyear, a focus curriculum unit was chosen that guided work of both the Summer Learning Institute (SLI) and thebiweekly, after-school professional learning community (PLC) meetings. Teacher participants also were supportedin implementing focus units by facilitators through classroom observation, coteaching, and instructional analysis(CO).

PD activities the participants were involved in each year, along with key features of theseactivities.

PLC Participants. Project participants were volunteers. They received stipends for thetime they spent attending the grade-specific PLC meetings, as well as any additionaltime they spent working on curriculum development or other agreed-upon project-relatedactivities. Teachers met biweekly in 2-hour meetings after school, usually rotating the siteamong the classrooms of each of the participants (although there were exceptions to thispractice, as described below for PLC1). The meetings were facilitated by either a universityscience education faculty member or a district science specialist. Communication betweenfacilitator and teacher participants and between teacher participants occurred most oftenvia e-mail but sometimes face to face between scheduled meetings. Participants met withthe same facilitator over the years. In addition, a graduate student in science educationserved as a documenter and assistant in support of the group’s work.

PLC Structure and Routines. During PLC meetings, participants regularly gave briefoverviews of what had been happening in their classrooms. As a result, their PLC peerswould offer comments that included alternative ways of addressing the same content, aswell as resources, such as relevant field trips, and activity or assessment modifications;others would ask for more information about resources. Participants also shared teachingmaterials, which were analyzed for alignment with learning goals and modified for in-clusion if the group agreed on their implementation and assessment of impact on studentunderstanding. Similarly, there were occasions where formative or summative assessmentitems, also aligned with learning goals identified by the group, were the focus of analysisand discussion, with participants analyzing assessment work of their own and each other’sstudents. In such sessions, based on a review of the extent to which the assessments orinstructional enactments successfully addressed the identified learning objectives, a revi-sion of the assessment(s) or of the activities or lesson sequences within the unit oftenfollowed. Discussions of enacted lessons often included issues of how well students were

Science Education


engaged, students’ misconceptions, the implementation challenges encountered, and waysof improving the activities based on what they revealed about student understanding; often,those who had not taught the same concept previously would solicit ideas from others in thegroup about ways to engage students meaningfully. The last item typically on the agendawas a summing up and identifying what the teachers would like to address in their nextPLC meeting, which were then incorporated into the next agenda.

Authors as Participant Observers

Documentation of PLC meetings involved taking fieldnotes, audiotaping the proceedings,and transcribing the taped sessions. The second author of this paper participated in theproject during the fourth year of the project as a documenter for both fourth- and first-gradePLCs. As an outsider within, she developed an overall picture of what was going on insome of the PLC meetings. The first author of this paper was the principal investigator ofthe entire project and served as facilitator of two other PLC groups.

Study Focus

In this paper, we examined how PLC participants in two of the project groups—first andfourth grade—utilized their PD time and identified the elements that made their learningcommunity productive and sustainable. We chose to examine first-grade and fourth-gradePLCs because they were typical of the other elementary-level PLCs in the project, both interms of participant background, activities, and the size and demographics of the schoolsin which participants taught.

PLC1. The first-grade PLC (PLC1) had three regular members from different schoolbuildings. This group was facilitated by a university professor. The first-grade group (PLC1)always met in the classroom of one teacher who happened to be the longest serving memberof the group. During the time of the last set of interviews, the project had officially ended,but the first-grade group was still meeting. First-grade teachers in the district were expectedto teach one science unit per quarter, and each year of the project; one of these units wasthe focus for development, implementation, and refinement. For example, during the fifthyear of the project, the first-grade group’s primary focus was on the refinement of a unitthey had constructed the previous year, which they called “Three Little Pigs.” The primaryfocus of this unit was on the properties of materials. PLC1 members piloted this unit andrevised its structure, activities, and assessments based on their enactment experiences anda careful analysis of student understanding as reflected in the formative and summativeassessments they had developed.

PLC4. The fourth-grade PLC (PLC4) had five teachers who participated regularly andanother three members who attended approximately once a month. All the participantswere from different schools. The facilitator of the PLC4 group was the district’s sciencespecialist. PLC4 rotated their meeting venue such that every member hosted the group inher/his classroom. At the time of the interviews included in this study, the fourth-gradegroup was no longer meeting as a PLC, although several of its members had joined ancross-grade group, which was working on curriculum projects for the district under theguidance of one of the project facilitators.

Science Education


Interview Process and Interviewees

At the end of the project, teachers were invited to participate in interviews through in-dividual e-mails from the first author. Those who indicated their willingness to participatein the interview were contacted by a research assistant to schedule an interview. Interviewswere designed to follow up on issues identified as a result of the PLC teacher talk analy-sis. In addition to capturing information about teaching preparation and experiences, theinterview addressed issues concerning how teachers respond to the district’s accountabilitymeasures, teaching and learning resources in the schools, and the impact of the projecton the their practice. Demographics of the interviewed participants reported in this paperfollow; pseudonyms are used to protect participant identity.

Amy is a Caucasian middle-class female who taught first grade. At the time of theinterview, Amy had 11 years of teaching experience. Her certification area is elementaryK-8 (self-contained classroom) in language arts, social studies, and history. Amy had beenteaching at her current school for 10 years; for the past 7 years she had been teaching firstgrade. Amy was the current representative of her school in an NSF-funded Math-SciencePartnership Program led by the same Midwestern University as this project. She was alsoa liaison for senior- and junior-year teacher candidates from the same university. She hadjoined the project during its second year and had been a regular participant since that time.Amy’s group had their meetings in her classroom even on some meeting days when shewas not able to participate. None of the other first-grade teachers in her school participatedin the PLC.

Ashley is a female first-grade teacher whose certification area is in early child develop-ment. Like Amy, Ashley is middle class and Caucasian. During the time of the interview,she had been teaching first grade for 7 years, five of which were at her current school. Sheindicated that she had been participating in the PLC for 4 years. Ashley joined the PLCafter being invited by a friend; unfortunately, this friend later dropped out of the group afterbeing transferred to a different school within the same school district. Ashley was one oftwo first-grade teachers at her school, but she was the only one who participated in the PLCmeetings. On several occasions, Ashley pointed out that her colleague was not very open todiscussing science teaching with her although Ashley had made several attempts to shareher teaching and project-related experiences.

Kyle is a Caucasian, middle-class male teacher who, while originally a traditional el-ementary teacher, now taught only science to all fourth- and fifth-grade students at hisschool. This was an unusual situation in the district, as well as at Kyle’s school. Kyle choseto attend both PLC4 and PLC5 meetings (facilitated by the same individual, who was thedistrict’s science specialist); this meant that Kyle participated in a PLC meeting each week.Kyle’s certification area is elementary K-8 (all subjects), second language, communication,and speech. At the time of the interview, Kyle had been teaching for 11 years, teaching allsubjects for the first 6 years and fourth-/fifth-grade science for the last 5 years. Like Amy,Kyle was representing his school at the math-science partnership initiatives for his schooldistrict. He also had served for 2 years as the chair of the district’s elementary sciencesteering committee (ESSC). The ESSC is composed of elementary science teachers in thedistrict and meets monthly to discuss issues related to elementary science teaching andlearning in the district. In these meetings, the district administration is represented by oneof the elementary school principals.

Jack is a Caucasian, middle-class male who taught fourth grade. He had 6 years ofteaching experience and had been teaching all subjects. Unlike the others in this study,teaching was a second career for Jack, who had been a lab technician in the zoologydepartment at Midwestern University for many years before deciding to return to obtain

Science Education


his teaching certification. He was certified in elementary K-8 and science up to eighthgrade. Midway through this project, Jack volunteered and was selected to become chair-person of the ESSC, having succeeded Kyle in this position. During the interview, Jackpointed out that he got the ESSC chairmanship mainly because of his involvement inthe project. Jack indicated that he also served on the Foundation board of an outdoorcenter whose mission is to assist teachers with hands-on activities related to environ-mental education and ecology. This board has one other project teacher on it, and theyserve as resources to other board members, advising them on appropriate activities forelementary school and the role that the center can play for teachers and students in thedistrict. At the time of the interview, Jack had participated in fourth-grade PLC for 3years.

Data Sources and Analysis

Fieldnotes and transcribed audiotape recordings of each PLC meeting, as well as teacherinterviews were used as primary sources of data for this paper. (Fieldnotes were usedprimarily to clarify context, detail, or other elements that might have been unclear from thereading of the transcripts alone.) Some participants in the focus PLCs joined the projectduring its third year, after a districtwide layoff and staffing redistribution; we thereforechose to examine transcripts from Years 4 and 5, after the PLC makeup became fairlystable once again. Using a combination of grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) anddiscourse analysis (Lemke, 2006), and the analytical framework proposed by Spillaneand his group (e.g., Spillane et al., 2001a, 2001b), we identified elements emerging inteachers’ conversations during PLC meetings. Issues that fell outside of this frameworkwere grouped into a separate category and reexamined to identify those that appearedrepeatedly and consistently across time.

In this paper, grounded theory refers to the approach where PLC and interview transcriptswere read and reread in an attempt to identify and categorize key elements. This is inaccordance with Glaser and Strauss’ (1967) characterization of grounded theory in whicha textual database is categorized and relationships between categories are identified. Theelements that emerged from our analysis of PLC teacher talk were described, and therelationship between them identified in accordance with grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss,1967). Spillane’s leadership framework (Spillane et al., 2001b) was used to inform ouridentification and categorization process.

We also employed discourse analysis techniques to interpret the PLC and interviewtranscripts. Using Frohmann’s view of discourse analysis as deconstructive and interpre-tative reading of text (Frohmann, 1994), we make contextual interpretation of the PLCtranscript text as we identify elements that may influence functional learning communi-ties. Each transcript was read and reread so as to categorize teacher talk into elementsidentified by Spillane et al. (2001b). However, we found out that categorizing teacher talkinto physical, human, and social capital (as described by Spillane et al. 2001a) resultedin elements that were too broad and did not enable us to fully describe and explain thekey elements that, in our view, were critical in creating and maintaining productive PLCs.Thus, we designed and conducted interviews with teacher participants to investigate inmore depth the nature of the elements that we identified in our initial analysis of PLC-based teacher talk. We also searched state- and district-level databases and Web sites forassessment data to validate some of the claims made by teachers during interviews orPLC sessions concerning their students’ learning and achievement on district and stateassessments.

Science Education


RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

In this section, we present and discuss findings that address the following two questions:What were the features that characterized teacher talk during PLC meetings? To what extentdid PLC membership shape participants’ reflection on their own teaching practice? We firstdescribe how we identified the elements that emerged from the transcripts of audiotapedPLC-based teacher talk. We then triangulate these data with those from teacher interviewsand state standardized science assessment score reports.

Identification of Elements

Ten transcripts were randomly selected from each PLC and examined for key elements.Remaining transcripts were then examined using these elements as a lens to characterizeteacher talk during the PLC meetings. Not all teacher talk fell into the identified categories.For example, participants occasionally talked about their families or health. However, suchtalk did not take up a significant amount of PLC meeting time. The elements also werenot mutually exclusive; this pattern is also often observed when using a grounded theoryapproach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Tables 1 and 2 both contain a representative segmentof teacher talk from PLCs 1 and 4 along with the elements reflected by this talk that weidentified.

After initial efforts to quantify the time spent engaged in talk as connected to the specificidentified elements, we decided against such an approach for several reasons. First, someof the issues raised did not come up in every meeting. Second, an issue raised in onemeeting could shape discussions that carried forward into future meetings—somethingusually encouraged by the facilitator and by many of the teacher participants—and thuseach PLC meeting was affected by its predecessor and in turn could influence the contentof the following meeting. Third, PLC agendas were sometimes renegotiated as a result ofan external event, such as approval of a given curriculum by the district or layoff of specialeducation staff. However, although each PLC meeting was not treated as a stand-alone unitof analysis, we did not identify something as a key element unless it was addressed for atleast 30% of the total meeting time (across sessions). Interviews were then conducted togain a more in-depth understanding of the impact of these elements for participants acrossthe PLC meetings.

In the section that follows, we describe patterns in teacher talk from biweekly PLC1 andPLC4 meetings. We then elaborate on each element by providing an illustrative excerptfrom the interview or PLC and describing its impact on teachers’ stances and practices.

Patterns of Talk Within PLCs

Discussions in the PLCs centered on agenda items, although teachers would bring tothe interaction issues they wanted to share as well. Because time was limited, there weresometimes issues of importance to participants’ teaching of science that could not beaddressed at a PLC meeting, and some of which were discussed as a result of the appearanceof a relevant trigger. For example, a discussion of the impact of the district’s accountabilitypolicy on their science teaching might not be echoed or elaborated in successive meetings,but only when a relevant trigger appeared or when this issue was negotiated as an agendaitem in advance. As illustrated by the excerpt in Table 1, for example, the agenda ofthe PLC4 meeting was to discuss ways of linking language arts and science. This was aresponse to concerns raised by teachers in previous meetings. PLC participants had raiseda concern that they were expected to focus more on language arts at the expense of science.

Science Education


TABLE 1Example of Elements Identified in PLC4 Teacher Talk

Element

(Excerpt from PLC4 teacher talk)Teacher S: We can’t do science until after MEAPa

1. District accountability measureimpacting on science teaching

Teacher L: I snuck Social Studies in because I hadto fill some time.

Facilitator: I don’t even want to go there.Jack: . . . I had mentioned to him (district official)

that we were told not to do science until after theMEAP. . . Why wouldn’t you be teachingsomething that is part of curriculum. . .?

2. Community formation (sharedvision of teaching science againstall odds, bringing questions anddilemmas for discussion withpeers)(The group discusses several other issues related

to professional development activities going on inthe district. The facilitator then refers the group tothe agenda of the day)

Facilitator: The main agenda for tonight was to linkliterature to science. We had read Paddle to theSea. This is something new for us and I am notsure how we want to proceed with this. . ..

Jack: We might be able to get through Paddle tothe Sea which creatures in time is more of asocial studies thing but ties in with some of theaspect that are similar between our unit in socialstudies and science. It has more in terms ofcertain things in science that does help out. Ithas descriptions in there with diagrams. I havenoticed the kids have actually used thedescriptions of the little diagrams that they havein there to understand Lake Superior dumps intothe other Lakes and that the water pushes down.

3. Teacher collaboration (helpingeach other to identify scienceconcepts in other subject areas)

Teacher L: My question was that this is more socialstudies and about the fur trade. I was thinkingthat the only science in there is when they aretalking about the forest and how big the treesare. Is there more science in this book?

(The group continues to discuss how they mightuse the book to link literacy to science.)

a MEAP is the state-level standardized assessment test.

In subsequent meetings, teachers did not discuss district policies; they focused on how toincorporate science as they taught social studies or language arts. As a result, althoughaccountability measures clearly shaped several meetings, it sometimes they did not appearin the teacher talk itself.

Examining the frequency with which these elements appeared over time resulted in iden-tification of teacher learning and collaboration as a recurring focus of PLC meetings. Therewere a number of contextual factors that affected what teachers discussed, as mentionedearlier; thus, a holistic analysis yielded a more representative outcome. Teachers talkedprimarily about how best to teach science and make the subject matter accessible to theirstudents.

Science Education


TABLE 2Example of Elements Identified in PLC1 Teacher “Talk”

Element

(Excerpt from PLC1 teacher talk)(Context: Teachers reviewing one of the state’s proposedK-8 grade-level science benchmarks (Grade-LevelContent Expectations or GLCEs)

1.Teacher learning andcollaboration:Participants evaluatecontent and scope of thestate’s new benchmarks.Amy: “Demonstrate the ability to sort objects according to

observable attributes such as color, shape, size, sinking orfloating.” That is our Testing Materials GLCE.

Facilitator: Part of itAmy: Yeah, part of it.Facilitator: The other one isAmy: PropertiesFacilitator: The usefulness of propertiesAmy: And that would be up here, would that be under

“Using.”. . . that’s what we are working on right now . . . .Facilitator: I think it fits right in with properties of Testing

Materials. . .the older framework has identified propertiesof objects and materials that make them useful so thatthere is that additional aspect of working with propertiesthat I don’t think is–

Amy: is part of thatAshley: YeahAshley: So this is the first grade science one with physical

matter, But then they want us to do solids and liquids.2. Accountability:

Participants concernedabout the state’sGLCEs. They clarifyteaching expectations inlight of new GLCEs.

Amy: Well, yeah.Ashley: And gases . . .

Amy: I got our Math GLCEs out and they say we are notsupposed to use thermometers till second grade.

Ashley: That’s right.Amy: And also first grade is supposed to use only

non-standard units of measurement. So they would haveto write paper clips. . .(things) other than rulers.

Ashley: Tongue depressors. 3. Teacher confidence:Participants recognizeneed to coordinatebenchmarks acrosssubject areas, such asscience andmathematics, and theimplications forinstruction.

Facilitator: So but our judgment here is that (this benchmark)is developmentally too low. . .

Ashley: It should be another grade higher.Amy: At least second gradeFacilitator: And what they ask in the surveya is, you know, is

it too high or is it too low?Ashley: OK.Facilitator: And so I think in terms of the survey, we would

call it, it’s placed, this item is placed too high?Chorus: Yes(The group goes through the GLCEs, identifying concepts

appropriate/inappropriate for first grade)

aRefers to survey sent by state Department of Education to teachers during review periodfor proposed GLCEs.

Science Education


It is clear from examining talk across PLC sessions that teacher participants were hopingto strengthen their content knowledge as well as their PCK (Shulman, 1987; van Drielet al., 2000). For example, as seen in Table 1, teachers discussed how they could identifyscience knowledge in various other content areas (e.g., by using trade books) and a varietyof media (e.g., books, Internet) so that they could make science accessible to their students.In another PLC4 meeting, participants brought up their desire to receive help in figuring outhow to create a coherent story so that students could understand the principles underlyingboth electrical circuits and static electricity. In addition to sharing work done by theirstudents and, guided by support from their peers and the facilitator, identifying strategiesfor assessing that work and what it could tell them about students’ thinking, PLC membersalso discussed their perceptions of their students’ predispositions toward learning science. Inaddition, teachers discussed students’ common learning difficulties, how to assess students’understanding, how to engage them with content, and how to choose activities that wouldmotivate students to learn, all of these are reflections of PCK.

During PLC discussions, teachers often talked about the level of student engagementwith a planned activity. This is an important aspect of scientific understanding (see Brophy,1999, for an extended discussion of the role of motivation for learning, and Anderman &Young, 1994, for its relevance to learning science in particular). If students do not value orfeel they can be successful in understanding school science, they develop a negative attitudetoward science learning, and this can have an impact on their achievement and choice ofcareer (Caleon & Subramaniam, 2007; Nair, 2003; Osborne, 2003).

In this paper, we argue that there are critical elements that are important for the estab-lishment and sustainment of a functional learning community. As stated earlier, these PLCswere defined not only as groups of teachers who meet regularly with a common set ofteaching and learning goals but who also share responsibilities for work to be undertakenand collaboratively develop PCK as a result of the gatherings (Borko, 2004; Grossmanet al., 2001; Lachance & Confrey, 2003; Little, 2002b). Our analysis suggests that partici-pants were learning about subject matter, pedagogy, and PCK. What follows is a discussionof the data that support these assertions.

Key Elements

As a result of our initial analysis of PLC talk, we identified four elements: teacher learningand collaboration, teacher community formation, teacher confidence, and impact of policyon classroom practice. As noted earlier, analysis of interviews revealed sustainability as afifth element. A summary of how these elements emerged from interviews with the fourfocus participants appears in Table 3 and in the text that follows.

Element 1: Teacher Learning and Collaboration

(The project) was worth the experience; the whole experience was beneficial, and thecollegial contacts I made were great! I can call my (PLC) colleagues and talk to them aboutscience teaching anytime . . . (Kyle, 4/16/2008 interview)

The collaborative act of sharing resources that individuals bring to and receive fromother PLC participants can result in learning. Together they constitute a key element offunctional PLCs and can be viewed as the product of the human and social capital notedby Spillane et al. (2001a).

Science Education

556 RICHMOND AND MANOKORETA

BL

E3

Su

mm

ary

of

Key

Ele

men

tsId

enti

fied

inTe

ach

erIn

terv

iew

s

Teac

her

Lear

ning

and

Col

labo

ratio

nTo

war

da

Pro

fess

iona

lC

omm

unity

Con

fiden

cein

PC

KA

ccou

ntab

ility

Mea

sure

sP

LCS

usta

inab

ility

Am

yD

evel

oped

acu

rric

ulum

unit

with

PLC

peer

s,ge

tssu

ppor

tfro

mP

LC;

Col

labo

rate

san

dco

mm

unic

ates

with

PLC

peer

sm

ore

ofte

nth

anth

eym

eetd

urin

gP

LCm

eetin

gs

Dis

cuss

eshe

rpr

actic

ew

ithhe

rP

LCpe

ers

and

not

scho

olco

lleag

ues

Fee

lsth

atsh

ew

asla

ckin

gin

cont

ent

and

still

need

sm

ore

cont

entk

now

ledg

e;F

eels

very

confi

dent

tote

ach

her

grad

ers

thou

ghno

tco

mfo

rtab

lew

ithhi

gher

grad

ele

vels

;E

mpl

oys

mor

ein

quir

yte

achi

ngst

rate

gies

Non

-PLC

scho

olco

lleag

ues

dono

tte

ach

scie

nce;

Sch

oolh

aspu

tin

plac

esu

perv

isor

ym

easu

res

tom

ake

sure

that

teac

hers

teac

hm

athe

mat

ics

and

lang

uage

art

and

that

does

not

happ

enw

ithsc

ienc

e;D

istr

ictn

otpu

shin

gfo

rsc

ienc

ete

achi

ng

Not

sure

how

topr

ocee

dw

ithou

tthe

faci

litat

or;W

ould

need

reso

urce

sto

cont

inue

mee

ting

Ash

ley

Dev

elop

edcu

rric

ulum

unit

with

PLC

peer

s;W

ishe

sto

cont

inue

revi

sing

the

unit

base

don

thei

rcl

assr

oom

expe

rienc

es

Sha

res

aro

omw

itha

peer

with

who

mth

eydo

notd

iscu

ssab

outt

heir

prac

tice;

Sha

reab

outh

erpr

actic

ew

ithP

LCpe

ers,

has

scie

nce

spec

ialis

tin

her

build

ing

buts

ays

she

lear

ned

mor

efr

omP

LCpe

ers

than

from

her

build

ing

scie

ntis

t

Has

ast

rong

back

grou

ndin

scie

nce

and

has

lear

ned

alo

tfro

mP

LCpe

ers

abou

tte

achi

ngst

rate

gies

espe

cial

lyin

quir

yte

achi

ngst

rate

gies

Teac

hing

ata

mag

net

scho

olso

they

are

alle

xpec

ted

tote

ach

scie

nce;

Sch

ool

adm

inis

trat

ion

very

supp

ortiv

ean

dpr

inci

pala

ttim

esvi

sits

clas

sdu

ring

scie

nce

less

on

Teac

her

attr

ition

rate

san

dtr

ansf

ers

affe

ctpa

rtic

ipat

ion

inP

LC;

Can

still

mee

tw

ithou

tfina

ncia

lsu

ppor

tbut

wou

ldne

eda

faci

litat

or

(Con

tinue

d)

Science Education


TAB

LE

3C

on

tin

ued

Teac

her

Lear

ning

and

Col

labo

ratio

nTo

war

da

Pro

fess

iona

lC

omm

unity

Con

fiden

cein

PC

KA

ccou

ntab

ility

Mea

sure

sP

LCS

usta

inab

ility

Jack

Inte

ract

ion

with

peer

san

dge

tting

feed

back

abou

tow

npr

actic

e

PLC

atm

osph

ere

cond

uciv

eto

lear

ning

and

shar

ing

idea

s

Got

enco

urag

emen

tfr

omP

LCpe

ers

and

faci

litat

orto

try

diffe

rent

inst

ruct

iona

lst

rate

gies

Dis

tric

tstr

essi

ngon

putti

ngm

ore

emph

asis

onlit

erac

yan

dm

athe

mat

ics

atth

eex

pens

eof

scie

nce

and

soci

alst

udie

s;To

ldno

tto

teac

hsc

ienc

eun

tilst

atew

ide

exam

inat

ions

wer

eov

er

Tim

ean

dm

obili

tyof

teac

hers

betw

een

diffe

rent

grad

ele

vels

;Fun

ding

not

anis

sue

butw

ould

need

afa

cilit

ator

;W

ould

wan

tto

faci

litat

ebu

tbus

yw

ithot

her

com

mitm

ents

Kyl

eS

hare

teac

hing

idea

sw

ithhi

sP

LCco

lleag

ues

and

has

the

liber

tyto

phon

eth

eman

ytim

ehe

wan

tto

disc

uss

abou

tsci

ence

teac

hing

Get

sa

loto

fsup

port

from

PLC

peer

sth

anbu

ildin

gco

lleag

ues;

Has

lear

ned

alo

tabo

utte

ache

rpr

actic

e

Fee

lslik

ehe

was

not

asgo

odin

scie

nce

teac

hing

befo

repa

rtic

ipat

ion

inP

LCN

owco

nfide

ntin

cont

enta

ndte

achi

ngst

rate

gies

;W

ithou

tpro

ject

wou

ldno

tbe

the

kind

ofte

ache

rhe

thin

kshe

isno

w;

Will

notw

antt

ogo

back

tool

dte

achi

ngm

etho

ds

Sch

oolh

asbl

ocks

and

hew

asgi

ven

the

resp

onsi

bilit

yof

teac

hing

scie

nce;

Fee

lsth

atso

me

teac

hers

are

taki

ngad

vant

age

ofre

adin

gfir

stpo

licy

and

nott

each

scie

nce;

Oft

heop

inio

nth

atif

dist

ricts

uppo

rted

scie

nce

teac

hing

itw

ould

have

enco

urag

edte

ache

rsto

bepa

rtof

the

proj

ect

Faci

litat

ion

ism

ajor

issu

ean

dfe

els

that

the

dist

ricts

houl

dta

kesu

chin

itiat

ives

Science Education


As Grossman et al. (2001) have pointed out, the key rationale for having PLCs is toprovide opportunities for teacher learning. All teachers interviewed acknowledged thatthey learned much about subject matter and pedagogy from their PLC peers and that theyenjoyed the collegial relationships that developed within the group. Not only did participantsinteract during meetings, but they also phoned their colleagues between meetings if theyneeded specific kinds of support or wanted to talk about science teaching and learning.During an interview, for example, Ashley said, “it is important to talk to others. I havelearned a lot from them (colleagues) and I am getting better every year,” a sentiment thatwas echoed by others.

Participating teachers viewed themselves as professional learners who came not only torecognize issues with their own understanding and practice but learned to leverage theirown and others’ knowledge as well. For example, at one PLC4 meeting, the followingtranspired:

Marie: I need the teacher’s guide; at times I fail to give an accurate answer on fossilrecords.

Facilitator: Which one (guide) do you want?Marie: hmmm, I think I need all of them!Facilitator: (takes out some of the resources he had with him and points the drawing

of a dinosaur skeleton) Do you think kids will be amused by this kind of(dinosaur) picture

Jack: Wow! I am not sure about that.Marie: Let’s see . . . maybe, but I think 5th graders would be amusedFacilitator: I have realized that kids often confuse extinction with fossils. They often

fail to get why, say, jellyfish have no fossilsJack: My students often say fossils are living!Lee: I have a question—where do you start when teaching about fossilsFacilitator: I thought you would start with talking about distributionJack: I have designed a lab on fossils and the kids are enjoying it. It’s in a basin

and they see all these layers and they really like it . . . . (PLC4 meeting,10/19/2006)

PLC members identified Marie’s concern and spent the remainder of that session review-ing concepts associated with evolution and the fossil record; the facilitator also highlightedsome of the misconceptions about fossils commonly held by students, and Marie’s col-leagues shared strategies for helping students develop an understanding of the significanceof fossils. The facilitator also shared with participants a book that had a dinosaur fossilrecord and related images. After Jack’s comment on the laboratory he had designed, thegroup asked him about students’ reactions to the activity, how he assessed their knowledgeof fossils and the fossil record, and how he responded to misconceptions about core ideasthat they had identified during their PLC work and in their teaching. As a result of thisdiscussion, the group planned to meet the next time in Jack’s classroom so that he couldshare with them the resources he used with his students. This kind of talk was commonin the PLCs. Each time a participant did an activity with their students that they felt wassuccessful in helping students understand a science concept, he or she shared it with othersin the group, bringing relevant student work for the group to analyze. This analysis thenserved to ground further discussion and work: Group members discussed what the studentwork revealed about student thinking, its usefulness as a formative assessment, how theymight adjust their teaching methods as a result, how they might use what they now knewconcerning the science content to motivate their students and make science accessible. Allthe teachers interviewed indicated that they had become cognizant of the importance of

Science Education


using age-appropriate assessments and science concepts and had learned many strategiesfor representing the material to maximize the learning opportunities for the diverse studentsthey taught.

In the interview, the teachers pointed out that they had gained skills in analyzing cur-riculum, and in their content and pedagogical knowledge. In one interview, Amy said, “Ilearned about curriculum analysis, looking more closely at benchmarks and helping mystudents construct their knowledge. I also look at the developmental appropriateness of con-tent” (4/29/2008). This supports what Rosenholtz (1989, as cited in Lachance & Confrey,2003) found—namely, that membership in learning communities helps teachers improvecurriculum and can result in improved teacher practice.

Teaching as a profession typically does not invite observation by colleagues (Stein,Smith, & Silver, 1999), and in the United States, there typically are no institutionalizedstructures to support ongoing teacher communities (Grossman et al., 2001); thus, teach-ers rarely talk about their practice with their peers. However, the project’s PLC meetingsprovided a structured opportunity, guided by common goals, and accepted norms for par-ticipation and learning, which enabled teachers to share their teaching experiences withtheir PLC colleagues, thereby creating the foundation for positive changes in the quantityand quality of attention to curriculum, assessment and eventually, classroom practice. Ourdata support the findings of Lachance and Confrey (2003), who argued that membership ina teacher professional community can motivate and support teachers to adopt reform-basedinstructional practices.

Participants had established cultural expectations within their PLCs that encouraged aclose examination of one’s own knowledge along with the motivation to strengthen thisknowledge base and to support the learning of others in the group. This is evident inquestions about content that were brought up in the PLC and the requests for assistance inalternative, effective, and engaging ways to teach certain topics. Our analysis of PLC field-notes and transcripts revealed that over time, teachers became very comfortable in askingabout PCK in ways that positioned them as professional learners within the community.During a PLC4 meeting, for example, Ms. M said,

I told my students that I was not sure about the answer; I told them I would be meeting otherteachers in our study group this evening and will ask this question to our group; I promiseto come up with an explanation to this (student’s question) tomorrow. (PLC4, 2006)

PLC membership motivated participants to try new instructional practices, and thesepractices then became vehicles for change in their schools. An example of this, as de-scribed earlier, was the interdisciplinary teaching that resulted from PLC members tryingto identify science concepts across subject areas and develop instructional strategies tosupport interdisciplinary, connected learning.

Element 2: Professional Community

. . . I am now comfortable with my Project colleagues more than my peers in this building. . ..we share about how to teach science better to our kids. (Ashley interview, 2/28/2008)

A PLC is characterized in part by participants who share a common vision and learn fromeach other. From our analysis of teacher talk, the PLC participants leveraged each other’sexpertise and experiences in ways that suggested a kind of interdependence. The teachershad a common aim of sharing and learning, the ultimate goal of which was to enable theirstudents to learn science in meaningful ways. Being able to voice what they did not know

Science Education


was a clear sign that the PLC participants viewed themselves as members of a learningcommunity. In addition, all the teachers interviewed indicated that they shared significantlymore about their practice with their PLC colleagues as compared to their peers in theirrespective schools. This sharing had multiple dimensions—content knowledge, experiencewith students, design and use of performance-based and formative assessments are only afew examples of key knowledge and practices around which such sharing took place. Theprofessional community element is aligned with the notion of social capital (Spillane et al.2001a). This is largely because its existence and persistence is dependent upon productivepeer interactions, which appear as a hallmark of the group.

Although teacher learning is difficult to measure (Fishman, Marx, Best & Tal, 2003;Wilson & Berne 1999), PLC teachers felt that they were learning pedagogy and subjectmatter from their interactions with their colleagues. Kyle, for example, stated,

I needed more science knowledge because my discipline was not science in college; Iwanted more content knowledge and teaching strategies. This project gave me professionalcourage to discuss best methods to teach each unit, I learned more from this project andnothing from colleagues in the building. (Kyle interview, 4/16/2008)

Like Kyle, Amy indicated that she needed to strengthen her science content knowledgebecause she felt it was not sufficient to enable her to teach science well, and that her workin the PLC provided her with resources and opportunities for such professional growth.

Teachers have a potential to learn from a variety of opportunities that may in turn influencetheir practice; thus, changes in the practice of the focus teachers in this study may havearisen from experiences in addition to those they took advantage of through participationin this project. Even though there was no direct measure of teacher learning in this reportedin this paper, reports by these teachers reveal that by being part of the PLCs, participantswere confident that their subject matter knowledge had become deeper and stronger andthat their pedagogical approach had been broadened, deepened and reoriented as well.

Of those interviewed, one out of four, Jack, mentioned that when he joined the PLC, hewas at a stage where he recognized the need to implement some significant changes. Suchintrinsic motivation could account for why some teachers volunteered to participate in theproject while others did not avail themselves of the opportunity. As Jack noted,

. . . when I started, I was in the process of change . . . . This project helped me look at certainthings, discuss things with colleagues, encouraged me to try different things; I got ideasfrom my project colleagues. (Interview, 3/18/2008)

All of the teachers interviewed indicated that they learned more about content and aboutteaching strategies from their PLC colleagues and facilitator and were more comfortablediscussing their practice with this group rather than with school colleagues. Of particularinterest was the claim by PLC participants that their school colleagues who were notattending the PLCs were not interested in teaching science. They implied that their voluntarymembership was an indication of their passion to teach science and to teach it well and to doso in a group in which professional growth was supported. We argue that PLC membershipwas a vehicle that provided the foundation for reform, in part by supporting the developmentof a shared vision of teaching, creating a safe space for teachers to share their practice andto learn with and from each other. They also received support from their PLC colleaguesfor taking instructional risks. All of these have been identified by investigators as beingdefining characteristics of PLCs (see, e.g., Grossman et al., 2001; Lachance & Confrey,2003; Little, 2002a; Stein et al., 1999).

Science Education


One significant target issue of the shared exchange within PLCs centered on those factorsthat hindered teachers’ implementation of reform-based practices about which they weredeveloping expertise. The source of most of these emanated from outside the PLC. One suchissue was the fact that so many of the students project participants taught had large gaps intheir subject matter knowledge. Participants eventually concluded that one of the reasonswas that few teachers in their buildings taught science. Another factor that contributedto this state of affairs was that teachers were being held increasingly accountable fortheir students’ mastery of grade-appropriate literacy and mathematical skills but not forscientific understanding. Therefore, while the PLC participants had formed a communitywith a passion for science teaching, the context in which they practiced influenced theirability to enact their goals of reform-based science teaching.

Element 3: Confidence in Content Knowledge, Pedagogical Knowledge,and Practices

. . . the best overall contribution to me is that it (the project) gave me a new level ofconfidence to teach science well, to understand the standards, to wade through the trivial,focus on solid science concepts and teach it well. The evidence is in my students’ test scores.My students are doing well . . . they understand science. (Kyle interview, 4/16/2008)

One of the main foci of the project was to support teachers in strengthening theirdisciplinary knowledge of core scientific theories, concepts, and models, and scientificways of generating, representing, and validating knowledge. It was envisaged that if teachersacquired subject matter knowledge, and if they received the appropriate kind and levels ofsupport, their confidence and interest in making content and guided inquiry central to theirpractice would increase. While this is similar to the dimension of human capital identifiedby Spillane et al. (2001a), we believe that content and instructional knowledge and theconfidence, which develops as a result of the strengthening of both, are more inclusiveand revealing of teacher learning and we therefore identified these as a third key elementsupporting productive PLCs.

Not only did the PLC participants developed confidence in their knowledge and teachingpractices, they also came to share instructional practices more regularly with their PLCcolleagues. For example, in one PLC meeting, Jack showed his colleagues three demon-strations he was trying with his students concerning glacial erosion. In one of these, Jackhad filled a tub halfway with dry sand. He had a marked rule attached to its sides. Thetub was tilted at an angle of about 45◦. About a gallon of ice was placed at the upper sidein the tub. Students would record the distance moved by the small stone they had placedinside the tub. Students observed the ice moving with their small stones. Students observedand recorded their observations. As a class students would then discuss their observationsand how these observations represented what may happen in the real world. In sharingthis demonstration, Jack was able to solicit feedback about how to improve his practice,receive validation for the alignment of his activity with project goals and as an example ofreform-based practice more generally, and provide his colleagues with a resource for theirown teaching.

All teachers interviewed remarked a significant increase in their confidence in subjectmatter knowledge and PCK and attributed this increased confidence to their PLC participa-tion. They also felt that they were making a difference in students’ achievement as a result oftheir participation, both in terms of their observations of students on a day-to-day basis and,like Kyle, on their perceptions of the improvement of their students’ performance on largerscale assessments. While we were not able to measure the impact of teacher participation

Science Education


TABLE 4Kyle’s Fifth-Grade Students’ and Average District A Test Scores

Test CycleLevel/Students

Number District Kyle’s School

Winter 2003 Level 1 and 2 (%) 69 80Number tested (n) 1,233 30

Winter 2004 Level 1 and 2 (%) 66 92Number tested 1,158 37

Fall 2005 Level 1 and 2 (%) 63 77Number tested 1,074 31

Fall 2006 Level 1 and 2 (%) 72 92 (100% for girls)Number tested 1,000 53

Fall 2007 Level 1 and 2 (%) 73 94 (100% for girls)Number tested 1,008 35

Source: State of Michigan Department of Education Web site (www.michigan.gov/mde).Levels 1 and 2 represent the percentage of students who met or exceeded standards set bythe state.

in PLCs on student achievement for every participant, we were able to follow up on Kyle’sclaims by examining statewide science achievement test scores to determine how Kyle’sstudents performed relative to the district average. These data can be seen in Table 4.

It is clear that students at Kyle’s school were performing above the district’s average inscience. We chose to extract test scores from Kyle’s school for several reasons. At the timethis study was carried out, first-grade and fourth-grade students (some of whom attendedPLC1 and 4) did not take statewide science examinations. The students’ first scienceexamination when they are in elementary school is when they are in fifth grade. Also, sinceKyle taught both fourth- and fifth-grade science, changes in his practice would presumablyhave more impact on fifth-grade students’ science performance. Also, of the teachers inthis study, it was only Kyle who specifically attributed his students’ increased achievementto his PLC4 and PLC5 membership from which he claimed to have gained knowledge ofcontent and of how to facilitate students’ science learning. While we cannot make causalattributions, it is interesting and important to note that Kyle’s claims are supported byachievement in test data; we have found a similar pattern for several of the middle-schoolteachers participating in the project as well (Richmond & Birmingham, 2009).

During the interview, Amy pointed out that she had changed her ways of teaching as aresult of her participation in the first-grade PLC. She added that the university professorwho was the group’s facilitator made a difference in helping their group acquire criticalknowledge for teaching. She said, “I am not sure what we would do without him. We do nothave that content knowledge . . . I now know inquiry methods of teaching” (Amy interview,4/29/2008). All participants acknowledged that their practice had improved. Ashley claimedthat she had become a better science teacher than she was before participating in the projectand that she continued to improve year after year, arguing that she had seen her students’science learning improve as a result.

Fishman et al. (2003) alluded to the importance of student performance as an importantfactor influencing teacher knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes. These investigators argued thatas they teach, teachers intuitively look to their students for feedback that could be affectivein nature, such as “. . . my students seem to enjoy the activity . . .,” or “. . . my students wereall engaged in the activity” (p. 646). These kinds of comments were often made by teachers

Science Education


during PLC meetings. For Kyle to have his students perform above district average was amotivating factor; it made him feel that his PLC membership was making a positive impacton his students’ achievement. Such feedback reinforced the belief held by PLC participantsthat they were having an impact on student learning.

Contrary to claims noted earlier that students from low-income families need to masterlanguage arts before they receive science instruction, all the project teachers interviewedfirmly believed that all students could learn science and that mastery of language readingskills need not to be a prerequisite for such learning. This conviction was clearly evidentin both the interview and in the context of regular PLC meetings. Unlike many of theiradministrators who, according to project teachers, put significant pressure on teachers toteach reading apart from science to help their students develop appropriate reading skills,PLC participants discussed their conviction and their strategies for addressing the challengeof teaching reading by teaching science and the resistance they got from administratorswhen they argued for enacting such strategies. As a result of this push-back, teachersresorted to “sneaking in science” (their phrase) during time scheduled for reading andwriting. (We will say more about this in our discussion of Element 4.) Thus, teachers inthese PLCs were confident in their pedagogical and content knowledge such that they feltthey could help all students learn science. Kyle’s comment illustrates the impact of theproject on teacher confidence:

I enjoy teaching science; if I was not in the project, then my knowledge would be lacking.The project gave me confidence and knowledge. Not very many teachers in the district tookadvantage and avail themselves with the project. (Interview, 4/16/2008)

Element 4: Accountability

At this school we are not teaching science this school year. It’s the 5th graders doing sciencebecause they are being tested. We were told to concentrate on language arts and math . . . .(Miss P, 9/21/2006 PLC4 meeting)

There were two dimensions of accountability. One was the extent to which the participantswere accountable to their peers. The other was the impact of district and state accountabilitymeasures on science teaching and what transpired within the PLCs. Participants wereaccountable to their colleagues in the group in several ways. First, they had to reportback on their progress on enacting the focus curriculum unit. As a result, they had someresponsibility of teaching science even when their colleagues in the same building werenot putting much emphasis on science. The other layer of accountability involved policyand their school administrations expectations. We argue that PLC participants developedways of amalgamating the two accountability layers with a goal of improving the teachingand learning of science in the district. PLC participants created hybrid spaces that enabledthem to achieve their group goals and at the same time meeting the demands of their schooldistrict.

Spillane et al. (2001a) argued that district-level policies serve to hold schools, particularlythose in urban districts, accountable for mathematics and language arts and this in turn hasan impact on science instruction. It was evident from our data as well; district accountabilitymeasures exerted pressure on teachers to focus more on mathematics and reading and notgive any appreciable attention to science teaching and learning. However, teachers who werespending time with their colleagues in PLCs expressed the view on numerous occasions thatdespite these constraints, they felt it was their obligation to help their students understand

Science Education


science. This finding supports the argument that teachers who are active PLC participantsoften feel responsible for being change-makers (Stein et al., 1999). As Kyle stated,

. . . they (the district) are stressing literacy and math at expense of social studies and science.Two years ago they told us not to teach science until MEAP is over, but I continue teachingscience in literacy with science-related materials. I will teach science, no matter what. (Kyleinterview, 4/16/2008)

Interestingly, these teachers could not be drawn into a comparison of their perceivedobligation to teach science before joining the project with their present one. Instead theychose to compare their emphasis on teaching science with the practice of their colleagueswho were not project participants. Many, like Kyle, pointed out that

non-project teachers do not teach science . . . . some teachers are comfortable but some arenot comfortable in teaching science. As a result, such teachers use the excuse of ReadingFirst; the school is considered to be a “reading first” (school), and (they) focus on readingand then do not teach science . . . (Kyle interview, 4/16/2008)

In their interviews, all teachers alluded to the fact that their non-PLC colleagues werenot taking science instruction as seriously as they did and did not appear to have the samegoals for their students’ learning, including students’ ability to make use of their scientificknowledge in authentic situations (e.g., to engage in scientific inquiry). This issue alsocame up during several PLC meetings in both groups across the year and is also reflectedin a PLC-based discussion following a survey created by PLC1 teachers and distributedacross the district to all those teaching first grade.

Facilitator: So, by and large, we didn’t get much of a response.Sarah (another participant): Honestly, I didn’t think that we would.

Facilitator: You didn’t think we would?Sarah: NoAshley: A lot of people do not take science teaching seriously.Teacher S: NoAmy: There are people who don’t teach science.Sarah: Teaching science is not something that is tested and so people aren’t

serious about it.Ashley: But it (science) helps how students think!Amy: If the District had tested first grade like they were going to, I bet our

response would have been greater. (PLC1 meeting, 1/17/2007)

All of the teachers interviewed attributed the pattern they observed of a lack of commit-ment to science teaching among nonproject colleagues to one or more of the following:

• The “Reading First” policy in the district; for failing schools in particular, this policymeant that teachers were expected to focus more on reading skills than on thedevelopment of other kinds of skills or understanding.

• External pressures to teach not only reading but mathematics to improve studentscores on district and state achievement tests in these two areas.

• The lack of preparation teachers have in the sciences; most did not major in sciencein college and did not pursue PD opportunities to help them strengthen their scientificunderstanding and knowledge of and for teaching.

Science Education


The key rationale of establishing teacher professional communities is that it providesopportunities for teacher learning resulting in improved teacher practice (Grossman et al.,2001; Little, 2002b; Lachance & Confrey, 2003; Stein et al., 1999). However, even the bestsuch opportunities operate against a complicated backdrop of expectations and pressuressuch that teachers’ daily work is influenced by many, often competing demands, which canhave an impact on their intended or desired practice. For the PLC participants to exert animpact on student learning and achievement, they needed to work in environments wherescience and their own expertise were valued commodities.

Element 5: Sustainability

I am thinking about the possibility of continuing. (We need) another type of grant to comeand help us continue. (Jack interview, 3/18/2008)

In our view, sustainability is the outcome of both physical and social capital. Not onlyis it dependent upon a certain level of material resources, but it is also dependent uponparticular group dynamics—not only acutely but over time. For example, it depends in partupon how participants view themselves as active members of a learning community. In ouranalysis, we identified several factors that appeared to jeopardize PLC sustainability andthe “scaling-up” of such reform efforts. We discuss each of these below.

Dependence Upon External Facilitation Stein et al. (1999) have argued that collabora-tion with external experts outside the teachers’ circle is important for teacher growth. Allthe teachers interviewed in our study indicated that they benefited from the PLC facilitationprocess. As Amy said,

[Our facilitator] helps us to stay focused. We rely on him to keep on track; he teaches us alot of things in our meetings. I do not know of any one thing we are going to do withouthim! He gave us skills to look critically at curriculum materials . . . (Interview, 4/29/2008)

Amy was not alone in voicing this concern. All participants interviewed indicated that itwould be difficult for them to continue with the PLC meetings without outside facilitation.They felt that they had learned much but did not feel skillful or (in the case of several)empowered enough to bear significant responsibility for keeping the work moving forwardproductively. Thus, while external facilitation may in part be responsible for productiveteacher work, participants’ reliance on external experts as facilitators of learning commu-nities may have a negative impact on the community’s sustainability. Of course, it may bethe case that, had the project continued for several more years, participants would havereached a point where they felt they could work more independently. Certainly, other stud-ies have described the importance of the staging of particular experiences and the degreeof sustained engagement for long-lasting change (e.g., Garet, Porter, Desimone, Birman,& Yoon, 2001). We return to this dilemma below.

Singleton PLC Membership Both of the PLCs in this study were composed of teachersfrom different schools in the district. Thus, while the collaborative work done within theconfines of PLC meeting time were productive and valued, participants rarely had theopportunity to continue this work and find mutual and immediate support or collegialfeedback where they spent most of their working lives—namely, at their school site. Thishad the effect of putting enormous pressure on the PLC meeting time as the primary workframe with little possibility for distribution of the “collaboration in community” modelback at the school site. While there has been debate about the relative effectiveness of

Science Education


site-based vs. cross-school collaborative inquiry (see, e.g., Lee & Williams, 2006; Slavit,Holmlund-Nelson, & Kennedy 2009), it is clear that the presence of like-minded colleaguesand the opportunity for substantial collaboration around issues of teaching and learning ona regular basis are critical for change to occur (Hargreaves & Goodson, 2006). And in theseincreasingly outcome-driven times in which human and material resources are shrinking,such school-based opportunities are even more critical.

Voluntary Participation Somewhat surprisingly, in both PLC meetings and interviews,teachers in our study wondered whether, had project participation been mandatory, theremight have been even greater impact. This stance might have been the result of a desire onparticipants’ part to have colleagues in their building who were familiar with and motivatedby the project’s goals and therefore could serve as real colleagues, both in the PLCs andin their everyday work in school. As it was, the PLC participants felt accountable to bechange-makers, but worked each day in buildings with peers who did not share that sameset of goals. Teacher professional communities are much more likely to be supported ifthe culture of learning is widespread in the school and the district (Stein et al., 1999). Theoverall goal of improving students’ understanding of science thus goes beyond the effortsof individual teachers. If these same colleagues are not teaching science, then teachers whohave been a part of such work and who feel this strong commitment are still faced withchildren who have lacked exposure to deep and meaningful science instruction and scienceexperiences, which makes them ill-equipped for what they are expected to learn at theirparticular grade level. Faced with children who are less than well prepared, the pressureto “get kids up to speed” can result in reversion to remedial rather than reform-basedinstruction. In addition, in interviews, SLIs, and PLC meetings, project teachers voicedfrustration about passing the children with whom they had worked all year to the nextteacher whom they knew would not be building upon what they had helped these childrenachieve.

The voluntary nature of participation in the project may also mean that participants werenot representative of the district’s teaching staff. Amy, Kyle, and Ashley acknowledgedthat their weaknesses in subject matter knowledge and pedagogy were what prompted themto take advantage of the learning opportunities provided by the project. Individuals pas-sionate about their own learning and relatively self-reflective about their own knowledgeare most likely to be attracted though in many cases those who need such opportuni-ties are least likely to be part of PLCs (Cho, Richmond, & Anderson, 2007; Grossmanet al., 2001; Jang & Richmond, 2006). How to offer PD opportunities that have appeal andvalue to a diverse population of teachers is an issue with which PD providers have longstruggled. While there are excellent guidelines for the general design of such programs (see,e.g., Loucks-Horsley et al., 2003), they do not always fit the conditions that exist in urbandistricts, where teachers are pulled in multiple ways by increasingly numerous expecta-tions and accountability measures and have dwindling resources with which to address thechallenges they face, which includes the increasingly diverse students with whose learningthey are charged.

IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

In our study, we have identified five elements necessary for the creation and maintenanceof productive teacher learning communities. Our findings extend Spillane et al.’s (2001a)categories of resources for distributed leadership by identifying additional elements thatmust be present to support reform-based science teaching.

Science Education


We have shown that teachers identify and value collegiality as crucial for their ownprofessional growth. Participants felt that they learned more about teacher practice fromtheir PLC peers than from discussions with nonproject colleagues. However, the impactof district policies on teachers’ ability to engage in reform-based teaching is a cause forconcern. For example, pacing guides had been written several years earlier by district-leveladministrators to (a) increase the likelihood that elementary teachers would teach sciencedaily, (b) keep parents informed of the topics that guided their children’s science educationat each grade level, and (c) make transitions easier for students who moved from one schoolin the district to another. In some ways, these guides did make it easier for teachers towork together across schools. However, the district did not have a policy to ensure thatstudents actually received the science instruction relevant for each grade level, did nothave PD programs in place to help teachers use these documents as guidelines rather thancookbooks for their science instruction, and did not have policies in place that would holdschools accountable for teaching science as prescribed by these guides. This made it difficultfor project teachers, frustrated by the gaps between the kind of reform-based teaching thatrepresented project goals and what was described in their pacing guides. In addition, theyfelt ill-advised about what to do with the increasing number of students who were belowgrade level in their science knowledge, whose backgrounds may not include some elementspreviously used as building blocks for science instruction, and whose primary language wasnot English, among other challenges. Project participants also felt frustration and worrywhen, at the end of a school year in which they engaged increasingly in reform-basedpractices, the students they had felt made large gains in their understanding might bemoving on to teachers who would either teach very little science or teach it in a way thatwould not provide opportunities for continued growth.

Heightened district attention on numeracy and literacy skill development were also hav-ing negative repercussions for science teaching and learning; contributing to this worry wasthe stance taken by so many administrators that science should not be used as a context forthe teaching of such skills. Project participants felt responsible for and enthusiastic aboutteaching science and felt that it offered a context that could help students see connectionsacross content areas and to their own lives. Despite such competing pressures and restric-tive policies, most of the project teachers developed strategies for including substantialscience instruction in their classrooms, often as they taught their students reading andwriting.

Such findings reflect the conundrum that Grossman et al. (2001) observed—that PDmay have an impact on teachers who then find themselves trying to enact reform-basedpractices in an unchanged workplace. However, the teachers in this study and in the largerproject were quite purposeful in their planning in this regard, many taking substantialsatisfaction that they were being successful despite expectations of their superiors. Thiswork stands in sharp contrast to what we sometimes observed in the early years of theproject. When issues or strategies arose, which presented challenges to participant beliefsor practices, it was not uncommon for tensions to arise between the group facilitator andteacher participants, which sometimes was revealed in “push-back” or resistance. This isreminiscent of observations made by Gutierrez and her colleagues (Gutierrez, Rymes, &Larson, 1995), who identified counterscripts constructed by students as a strategy for notcomplying with their teacher’s expectations (scripts) for participation. We are currentlyinvestigating how scripts and counterscripts might be constructed by teachers and thoseorchestrating PD, as well as those aspects of community that influence such moves, toexamine possibilities for the creation of third spaces, which would allow for authentic andproductive professional interactions.

Science Education


An important outcome of PLC participation was participants’ sense accountability for or-chestrating change (see, e.g., Stein et al., 1999). The PLC participants valued reform-basedteaching and vowed that they would never return to their “old ways” of science instruction.Not only did membership in a PLC encourage participants to engage in “ambitious peda-gogy” (Windschitl, Thompson, & Braaten, 2008) characteristic of reform-based teachingpractice within their classrooms, but participants also became activists for instructionalreform in their district. Project participants were much more likely to become leaders intheir school and in the district. Significantly, while formal resources and structures asso-ciated with the project were being removed, most of the teachers in this study (as wellas other project participants) found other ways to use what they had learned to make animpact on science teaching and learning in their district and beyond. For example, sev-eral chose to serve on the district’s ESSC, which was charged with such important tasksas textbook adoption, district assessment development, and district-level PD. In addition,at the time of this writing, the ESSC had selected a group, composed largely of projectteachers across the different grade levels, to conduct a comprehensive review of severaltextbooks and curriculum resources. As a result of this analysis and of a compelling anddetailed case made, not only to the curriculum coordinators but also to the board of educa-tion, the district recently agreed to adopt a set of resources aligned with national and statebenchmarks. A number of teachers also were selected to lead regional grade-level workinggroups to align area district curriculum to the newly released state grade-level benchmarks,and many of the units designed in the PLCs were adopted by the larger group. Numerousproject teachers also have been called upon by their building principals to mentor newteachers and to serve on other district-level committees. And many project teachers areserving as mentors for students in our university’s teacher preparation program and fornew teachers in our university’s induction support program in partnership with the schooldistrict. Thus, the project has empowered many of its participants to use the knowledgeand practices they have garnered through their participation in the project in increasinglypowerful ways that can make a difference for an ever-larger group of teachers and theirstudents.

Teachers work within challenging contexts that influence their classroom practice andtheir goals of improving students’ achievement. There is substantial research that showsa positive impact of collegiality on teacher practice (Grossman et al., 2001; Little, 2002a;Lachance & Confrey, 2003; Stein et al., 1999). We argue that the most effective professionallearning communities should include teachers who work within the same building as wellas those from different buildings. If community is a key ingredient in improving teacherinstructional practices and student achievement, then mechanisms that encourage and sup-port PLC membership should be carefully designed and facilitated. Working with districtadministrators to support and recognize teachers for participating in such communities iscritical. In an effort to help project participants to continue to develop professionally, wehave involved several participants as mentors for teacher candidates from our institutionand to have these beginning teachers involved in PLC meetings and other project activ-ities as part of their work in schools; this effort has served to help participants continuetheir own professional growth and to develop additional leadership skills and provides aunique opportunity for developing teachers to see “from the inside” the power of continuingengagement in PD.

Professional communities survive beyond external funding in environments where theculture of teacher learning is supported and spread throughout the multiple contexts dis-cussed above. The power of teachers working together in different contexts has been

Science Education


documented repeatedly. The question is not whether teacher PLCs are important, but ratherhow to build, support, and maintain such communities in complex and challenging settings.

The authors would like to thank Han Han Thi, who conducted some of the teacher interviews,Christina Schwarz and Brad Rakerd for their feedback on an earlier draft of this paper, and the twoanonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

REFERENCES

Ackerman, R., & Mackenzie, S. V. (2006). Uncovering teacher leadership. Educational Leadership, 63(8), 66 – 70.Anderman, E. M., & Young, A. J. (1994). Motivation and strategy use in science: Individual differences and

classroom effects. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 31(8), 811 – 831.Ball, D. L., & Cohen, D. K. (1999). Developing practice, developing practitioners: Toward a practice-based theory

of professional education. In L. Darling-Hammond and G. Sykes (Eds.), Teaching as the learning profession(pp. 3 – 31). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Bell, B., & Gilbert, J. (1996). Teacher development: A model from science education. London: Falmer Press.Borko, H. (2004). Professional development and teacher learning: Mapping the terrain. Educational Researcher,

33(8), 3 – 15.Brophy, J. (1999). Toward a model of the value aspects of motivation in education: Developing appreciation for

particular learning domains and activities. Educational Psychology, 34(2), 75 – 85.Caleon, I., & Subramaniam, R. (2007). Augmenting learning in an out-of-school context: The cognitive and

affective impact of two cryogenics-based enrichment programs on upper primary students. Research in ScienceEducation, 37(3), 333 – 351.

Cho, I-Y., Richmond, G., & Anderson, C. W. (2007). Ecology of science inquiry classroom: Little scientists talk.Paper presented at annual conference of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL.

Darling-Hammond, L. Bullmaster, M. L., & Cobb, V. L. (1995). Rethinking teacher leadership through professionaldevelopment schools. The Elementary School Journal, 96(1), 87 – 106.

Fishman, B. J., Marx, R. W., Best, S., & Tal, R. T. (2003). Linking teacher and student learning to improveprofessional development in systemic reform. Teaching and Teacher Education, 19(6), 643 – 658.

Frohmann, B. (1994). Discourse analysis as a research method in library and information science. Library andInformation Science Research, 16, 119 – 138.

Garet, M. S., Porter, A. C., Desimone, L., Birman, B. F., & Yoon, K. S. (2001). What makes professionaldevelopment effective? Results from a national sample of teachers. American Educational Research Journal,38(4), 915 – 945.

Geier, R., Blumenfeld, P. C., Marx, R. W., Krajcik, J. S., Fishman, B., Soloway, E., & Clay-Chambers, J. (2008).Standardized test outcomes for students engaged in inquiry-based curricular in the context of urban reform.Journal of Research in Science teaching, 45(8), 922 – 939.

Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research.Chicago: Aldine.

Grossman, P., Wineburg, S., & Woolworth, S. (2001). Toward a theory of teacher community. Teachers CollegeRecord, 103(6), 942 – 1012.

Gutierrez, K., Rymes, B., & Larson, J. (1995). Script, counterscript, and underlife in the classroom: James Brownvs. Brown v Board of Education. Harvard Educational Review, 65(3). 445 – 471.

Hargreaves, A., & Goodson, I. (2006). Educational change over time? The sustainability and nonsustainability ofthree decades of secondary school change and continuity. Educational Administration Quarterly, 42(3), 3 – 41.

Harris, A. (2003). Teacher leadership as distributed leadership: Heresy, fantasy, or possibility? School Leadershipand Management, 23(3), 313 – 324.

Hewson, P. (2007). Teacher professional development in science.. In S. K. Abell & N. G. Lederman (Eds),Handbook of research on science education (pp. 1179 – 1203). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Jang, S., & Richmond, G. (2006). The influences of inquiry-based professional learning community on scienceteachers’ scientific understanding, beliefs, and teaching practice. Paper presented at annual conference of theNational Association of Research in Science Teaching, San Francisco, CA.

Lachance, A., & Confrey, J. (2003). Interconnecting content and community: A qualitative study of secondarymathematics teachers. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 6, 107 – 137.

Lankford, H., Loeb, S., & Wyckoff, J. (2002). Teacher sorting and the plight of urban schools: A descriptiveanalysis. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 24(1), 37 – 62.

Science Education


Lee, H.-S., & Butler, S. (2003). Making authentic science accessible to students. International Journal of ScienceEducation, 25(8), 923 – 948.

Lee, J. C-K., & Williams, M. (Eds.), (2006). School improvement: International perspectives. New York: Nova.Lemke, J. L. (2006). Towards critical multimedia literacy: Technology, research, and politics. In M. McKenna,

D. Reinking, L. Labbo, & R. Kieffer (eds.), International handbook of literacy and technology (vol. 2,pp. 3 – 14). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Little, J. W. (2002a). Locating learning in teachers’ communities of practice: Opening up problems of analysis inrecords of everyday work. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18, 917 – 946.

Little, J. W. (2002b). Professional community and the problem of high school reform. International Journal ofEducational Research, 37, 693 – 714.

Loftus, S., New, W., Sobol, F., Stevens, E., Kilpatrick, D., Caritj, W., & Borders, D. (2001). Urban school district:Review of Title I and at-risk programs. Washington, DC: The McKenzie Group.

Loucks-Horsley, S., Love, N., Stiles, K. E., Mundry, S., & Hewson, P. W. (2003). Designing professionaldevelopment for teachers of science and mathematics (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Nair, S. (2003). The gender and science digital library: Affecting student achievement in science. KnowledgeQuest, 31(3), 28 – 30.

Osborne, J. (2003). Attitudes towards science: A review of the literature and its implications. International Journalof Science Education, 25(9), 1049 – 1079.

Richmond, G. (1998). Scientific apprenticeship and the role of public schools: General education of a better kind.Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 35(6), 583 – 587.

Richmond, G., & Birmingham, D. (2009, April). Professional learning communities, teacher change, and studentachievement. Paper presented at the annual conference of the National Association for Research in ScienceTeaching, Garden Grove, CA.

Shulman, L. S. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review,57(1), 1 – 22.

Slavit, D., Holmlund Nelson, T., & Kennedy, A. (Eds.), (2009). Perspectives on supported collaborative teacherinquiry. New York: Routledge.

Spillane, J. P., Diamond, J. B., Walker, L. J., Halverson, R., & Jita, L. (2001a). Urban school leadership forelementary science instruction: Identifying and activating resources in an undervalued school subject. Journalof Research in Science Teaching, 38, 918 – 940.

Spillane, J. P., Halverson, R, & Diamond, J. B., (2001b). Investigating school leadership practice: A distributedperspective. Educational Researcher, 30(3), 23 – 26.

Stein, M. K., Smith, M. S., & Silver, E. A. (1999). The development of professional developers: Learning to assistteachers in new settings in new ways. Harvard Educational Review, 69(3), 237 – 269.

Stoll, L., Bolam, R., McMahon, A., Walls, M., & Thomas, S. (2007). Professional learning communities: A reviewof the literature. Journal of Educational Change, 7(4), 221 – 258.

van Driel, J., Beijaard, D., & Verloop, N. (2000). Professional development and reform in science education: Therole of teachers’ practical knowledge. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 38(2), 137 – 158.

Wilson, S. M., & Berne, J. (1999). Teacher learning and the acquisition of professional knowledge: An examinationof research on contemporary professional development. Review of Research in Education, 24, 173 – 209.

Windschitl, M., Thompson, J., & Braaten, M. (2008). Beyond the scientific method: Model-based inquiry as anew paradigm of preference for school science investigations. Science Education, 92(5), 941 – 967.

York-Barr, J., & Duke, K. (2004). What do we know about teacher leadership? Findings from two decades ofscholarship. Review of Educational Research, 74(3), 255 – 313.

Science Education

Identifying elements critical for functional and sustainable professional learning communities

Documents

Transcript of Identifying elements critical for functional and sustainable professional learning communities