Learning Communities for Teachers-CRESMET Research Finding What Works
 Test-and-Refine Cycle Yielding Insights into Learning Community Dynamics
Professional learning communities (PLCs) are a central feature of the model for teacher professional development that CRESMET is developing and researching in the NSF-funded Project Pathways initiative.
In this five-year project, an interdisciplinary team of ASU faculty is working with high school math and science teachers in five school districts in the Phoenix metropolitan region. The project is entering Year 4. The researchers work with school-based cohorts of teachers, with each cohort including both math teachers and science teachers.
The key elements of the Pathways professional development model are---
- Graduate courses that engage teachers in rigorous explorations that lead to their learning mathematics and science concepts that are necessary for providing coherent, rigorous and meaningful instruction to students
- School-based PLCs in which teachers investigate student thinking and work in teams to design, video tape, study, and refine lessons to promote powerful mathematical and scientific thinking and deep understanding of key ideas for continued STEM course taking.
Pathways-Developed Graduate Courses
 Each cohort of teachers in Project Pathways completes a four course sequence as a group. The concept of function, foundational for success in STEM disciplines, is a connecting theme in the four courses. The teachers are engaged in a coherent set of modules that promote rigorous investiations of patterns of change in real phenomena. These explorations are scaffolded so that teachers emerge with deep conceptions of ideas of rate of change, covariation, and function. The investigations promote interdisciplinary connections as the teachers learn to use these mathematical ideas when carrying out investigations in biology, geology, chemistry, physics and engineering.
Teachers receive graduate credit for taking these four Pathways-developed courses---
- Functions and Modeling
- Connecting Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics
- Connecting Biology, Geology and Mathematics
- Engineering Capstone
Companion Professional Learning Communities
In making PLCs a central feature of the professional development model being tested in Pathways, Carlson and her team were guided by signposts from earlier research suggesting that teachers themselves—collaborating in supported, long-term study-and-practice groups—can become their own best mentors for professional development. Since the 1990s, reformers have tested PLCs in various formats, driven by various goals.
- Some trial PLCs have had teachers focus on “records of practice,” such as student work and videos of classrooms during lessons (Ball & Bass, 2002).
- Others have adopted a practice from Japan’s schools known as “lesson study.” In lesson study, a group of teachers plan an actual lesson. One teacher teaches the lesson to a class of students, while researchers assist the group in observing the lesson and gathering data. Together, the group then analyzes the data and uses it to improve the lesson before trying it again (Lewis & Tsuchida, 1998; Lewis, 2002).
But not all PLCs are equally effective. The Pathways team defines an effective professional learning community as one in which—
- Teachers gain conceptual knowledge about the content they teach and pedagogical knowledge and skills for teaching it
- Teachers experience rigorus mathematical and scientific reasoning abilities and come to value the promotion of these abilities in their students (e.g., persisting in finding solutions to novel problems)
- Teachers are engaged in reflections, lesson development and lesson study that allow them to recognize and support the emergence of mathematical problem solving and scientific thinking that lead to observable and quantifiable improvements in student learning
 In terms of structure, the Pathways PLCs are collections of math and science teachers from the same school with one teacher designated as the facilitator. For each meeting, the Pathways faculty develops an agenda that the teacher-facilitator manages.
But the research question for Pathways is to determine precisely what attributes and processes make for an effective PLC that meets the goals of teachers gaining knowledge that changes their practice and improves their students’ learning.
What are the attributes of a high-functioning PLC? What makes one better than another?
The researchers wanted to avoid allowing the PLCs to dwindle into unfocused gripe sessions or coffee klatches where the teachers simply traded worksheets and talked about school politics.
Over the course of working with three successive cohorts of teachers, the Pathways research group has learned that the following attributes and processes enable teachers to conduct a meaningful interaction focused on significant matters of content and teaching practice.
1. “Speaking with Meaning” and Other Rules of Engagement
The Pathways faculty encourages teachers in the PLCs to follow four “rules of engagement” in every meeting—
- Speaking with meaning
- Displaying intellectual integrity
- Insisting on sense-making
- Respecting the learning processes of colleagues
To speak with meaning (in the context of mathematics) is to
- Speak of the mathematical concepts at work in a problem situation, rather than mechanically manipulating the symbols in an equation without pointing out the underlying ideas
- Base conjectures on logic
- Give explanations using the quantities involved
To display intellectual integrity is to admit when one does not understand an explanation and to keep pushing for clarity until one honestly does understand.
To insist on sense-making means to keep one’s mind actively engaged in trying to grasp the logic of a problem or a problem solution.
To respect the learning processes of colleagues is to give other people time to puzzle through a problem or a solution until they honestly understand, rather than short-circuiting their learning by supplying them with answers or “showing them how to do it.”
2. Facilitator Qualities Are Key
In examining videos of the PLCs (painstakingly coded by the project’s graduate students), the team documented that the quality of a facilitator tremendously affected the quality of a group’s discourse.
Especially in early rounds of the project, when the teacher-facilitators received less training from the faculty than they now do, researchers found that the facilitators differed markedly in their—
- Knowledge of the mathematical concepts being explored in the Pathways courses
- Level of inquisitiveness about their PLC colleagues’ thinking
- Willingness or ability to inquire deeply into their own teaching and examine it critically
- Commitment to the goals of the PLC
- Ability or willingness to demand that their PLC colleagues speak with meaning
In PLCs led by less effective facilitators, for example, the research video clips show—
- Teachers speaking in partial phrases, so that their meaning is not explicit
- Teachers amiably agreeing with one another without insisting on getting a clear explanation of whatever ideas are on the table
- Facilitators asking few questions and failing to push their colleagues to reveal their thinking and to engage in powerful reasoning.
In sessions led by more effective facilitators toward the end of a semester when the PLC has improved the level of their discourse, the video clips reveal—
- A group that has developed the habit of speaking with meaning with minimal prompting from the facilitator
- Facilitators quickly recognizing when a teacher gives an incomplete explanation and pressing for elaboration
- Facilitators asking follow-up questions to prompt a contrast between the problem at hand and other types of problems
3. Decentering
A facilitator’s ability to “decenter” seems to be fundamentally important to the ability to lead an effective PLC interaction, just as a teacher’s decentering is critical to supporting a student’s learning.
The Pathways research team uses the term “decentering” in the Piagetian sense of the ability 1) to let go the assumption that others see the world (or a mathematics problem) just as we do; and 2) to form a model of another person’s thinking, to adopt a perspective not one’s own.
Only when a facilitator can “see” what her colleagues are thinking can she know if they are speaking with meaning, or showing intellectual integrity, or following a novel but productive path in solving a mathematical problem.
Only when a teacher can “see” what his students are thinking can he know if they are feigning understanding, or struggling with a misconception, or on the threshold of grasping a fundamental idea.
The researchers are finding that facilitators exhibit roughly four levels of ascending degrees of the ability to decenter:
- Level 1: Facilitator does not listen to the other members of the PLC
- Level 2: Facilitator begins to ask questions and listen to other members of the PLC. Facilitator still believes that others think the same way he or she does
- Level 3: Facilitator begins to ask meaningful questions to better understand the thinking of other members of the PLC
- Level 4: Facilitator has formed a model of another member’s thinking and questions him or her to elicit specific responses or reveal errors in thinking
Next Steps in the Research
Having arrived at these insights into the attributes and processes that they believe strongly affect the quality of discussion and the level of impact in a PLC, in coming months the researchers will refine their process for selecting PLC facilitators.
They will improve the training of new facilitators by using what they have been learning to complete the beta design of a learning community observation protocol.
Finally, to close the circle on the ultimate goal of the project—to support teachers in enhancing their teaching so that students can learn more effectively—Carlson and her team will begin observing and coaching the PLC members as they deliver to their students the lessons they develop with their peers in their professional learning communities.
References
Ball, D., & Bass, H. (2002, April).Understanding teaching as a form of mathematical problem solving. Presentation made at the annual meeting of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Las Vegas, NV, April 22, 2002.
Carlson, M., Jacobs, S., Coe, E., Larsen, S., & Hsu, E. (2002). Applying covariational reasoning while modeling dynamic events: A framework and a study. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 33, 352–378.
Carlson, M. & Bloom, I., (2005). A multi-dimensional framework for describing and analyzing problem solving behavior. Educational Studies in Mathematics.
Lewis, C., & Tsuchida, I. (1998). A lesson is like a swiftly flowing river: Research lessons and the improvement of Japanese education. American Educator, Winter, 14-17 & 50-52.
Lewis, C. (2002). Lesson study: A handbook of teacher-led instructional change. Philadelphia: Research for Better Schools.
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