Read about my journey into exploring and choosing an online Professional Learning Community (PLC).
Exploring a Context of Professional Practice, Professional Learning Communities and Platforms: ReflectionsSelecting a Professional Learning Community
As I began my exploration for Module 4 by searching for appropriate online professional learning communities, I was coincidentally attending a math conference. I was fully engaged and inspired by the sessions that I was attending which were focused around instilling the joy in math again through math routines, sense-making tasks, mathematical discourse, and collaborative mathematical opportunities. “Perfect!” I thought – I will gear my professional learning community search to a math group so I can continue this big work and connect with like-minded peers. My context as an elementary teacher of a multi-age classroom and my recent move to a new school has sparked my interest in being more intentional about inquiry, problem-based learning, and facilitating meaningful tasks.
I first re-visited accounts that I already follow on my personal Twitter account. I followed all of the featured speakers whose sessions I attended, which recommended other math-related accounts. One thing I noticed was how Twitter felt less like a collaborative platform. Tweets by math communities felt like snippets of bigger ideas, and what was shared was primarily re-tweets or resources to be used “as you will”.
Blitz states that the “ultimate goal [of a PLC] is to raise student achievement by adapting teaching and classroom practices based on learning and interchanges during PLC meetings” (Blitz, 2013, p. 1). I certainly use the resources that come up on my Twitter feed to improve student learning, and through personal reflection, attempt to alter my own lessons and activities based on my interpretation of the resource. Blitz (2013) confirms that online environments actually do promote this type of interaction within online PLC communities which provide timely access to resources and knowledge.
However, I connect PLCs more with the social aspect of communicating with colleagues and reflecting on student output collaboratively. Blitz (2013) found that the longevity of an online PLC relied heavily on the social aspect that it provided members since it created a sense of “community” – a word carefully chosen to describe PLCs. In addition to the importance of a social component to PLCs, Watson (2014, p. p.19) quotes Stoll et al. (2006, p. 229) who defines a PLC as “a group of people sharing and critically interrogating their practice in an ongoing, reflective, collaborative, inclusive, learning-oriented, growth-promoting way”. This suggests that an online PLC may require more “space” to really examine student work, critique instructional practice and monitor progress collaboratively than Twitter could provide me.
This reflection of platforms prompted my next step in my exploration stage. I searched for these same groups on Facebook. This platform seemed to garner more continuous participation by group members. It seemed more authentically collaborative and supportive since members actually discussed member’s questions, problems of practice, comments or resources. This was the sense of community and social factor I found Twitter to be lacking.
Selecting a Professional Learning Community
My Context of Professional Practice & Relation to Curriculum Learnings…
Through learning about various curriculum philosophies, conceptions and designs throughout PME 810, I have critically reflected on my own practice. Now familiar with the various designs of curriculum and resonating particularly with a learner-centred design, a professional interest of mine is to explore learner-centred planning, instructional and assessment approaches across the core subjects.
I am particularly interested in reflecting on the curriculum designs when planning, instructing and evaluating math. Math is a subject which I believe has been slower to evolve using a learner-centred curricular design, particularly in middle to older grades. From my experience, math seemed to lend itself well to the academic rationalism conception where students cultivate intellect by studying information within a discipline (a unit in math) (Sowell, 2005). It is typically planned, instructed and assessed using a subject-centred design in which pre-tests and standards/outcomes guide planning and instruction and summative tests assess those standards.
Math is an area of my teaching practice which I am working towards enhancing through professional learning opportunities. I hope to access and engage in conversation about meaningful math routines, tasks and learner-centred design and approaches to encompass a broad range of math understandings and help the learner take the stage. I have experienced my own role as a teacher change when instructing math versus other subjects. Instead of guiding my learners, I feel pressured to ensure I explicitly instruct the topic, like the teacher's role in essentialism philosophy, which students then acquire the information from my lesson. I hope to shift my mathematical instruction and philosophy to more regularly be progressive, so students acquire knowledge from projects and interdisciplinary activities. When revising my planning and instruction, my assessment practice will also certainly require adjustment since the three aspects of teaching are inherently intertwined. This is another area I hope to seek advice and expertise from the online PLC.
Realizing the context I wished to explore with a PLC, I now had to narrow down my PLC choices from the many Facebook groups that exist around teaching math. Of course, I wanted my PLC to be relevant geographically, by grade, and subject and general topic. I also want the PLC to lend itself well to questions/discussion relating the focus to curriculum design in order to satisfy the course requirement. On top of this, I considered the key characteristics of effective professional learning communities by Bolam et al. (2005) as cited in Watson (2014). Despite awaiting access, I tried to confirm these groups met as many key characteristics to ensure a positive online PLC experience.
This mind map outlines these 5 characteristics and how they related to my search for a math PLC:
With all of this in mind, the professional learning communities on Facebook that I chose to request access to include:
Build Math Minds
Math Minded Teachers
Jo Boaler’s How to Learn Math
Low-Floor High-Ceiling Mathematics
Alberta Teachers – Resource and Idea Sharing
…. May Pose Initial Challenges that Require Navigating….
When (if) access is granted, I hope to explore the page including the members, quantity of participation, quality of the posts, resources and ideas shared, and accessibility (to contribute myself!). From here, I will then have a better idea which online PLC best aligns with my context of practice and assignment.
Since many of the groups are “private” and monitored closely by administration. I had to request access to all groups. I don’t foresee acceptance to these groups being an issue since the entry questions are geared towards teachers and simply request a reason for group interest.
I anticipate posting to be a challenge since all posts are reviewed and must be “approved” by the group’s administration. All Facebook groups have “rules” and a couple groups do state not to post links to personal websites (i.e. a blog). This is only to be done as a response to someone’s else’s comment in the chance that it supports their question or resource. I will have to keep this in mind when finalizing my decision of an online community so to satisfy the assignment requirements, but still select a group that is of professional significance to me. Framing my post to meaningfully connect to the PLC’s focus and my acquired curricular learnings will be important.
… But It Will Provide a Space for Professional Contributions...
By joining this community, I hope it pushes my thinking and provokes self-reflection of my instructional practice, assessment methods, and sparks planning ideas (i.e. lessons and projects). I hope to contribute through supportive comments which may include resources, and also pose questions that I may have myself in order to seek advice, encourage discussion critical thinking on educational philosophies or resources.
… Contribute to my Growth as a Professional…
As Blitz (2013) states, online professional communities are beneficial for teachers to share and access resources in a timely manner without the hassle of physically meeting. I am a part of a PLC at school with collective goals, so accessing an additional PLC online can support me with more individual professional goals, collect grade-specific resources that I could share with my school PLC or simply use in my own classroom contributing to student learning and instructional growth. Sometimes I feel like I can get wrapped up in my school’s philosophy and goals and simply don’t have time to reach out to colleagues to widen my professional circle of learning. An online professional learning community will allow me the flexibility to engage on my own time, without the feeling of having to prepare a presentation which is common during my experience engaging in face-to-face PLCs.
… And Serve as a Place for me to Provide Leadership Opportunities.
Online PLCs offer all members leadership opportunities. Simply engaging in communication with members, sharing resources, critiquing problems of practice, and offering ideas/ new ways of thinking require one to be vulnerable and brave. Online communities can offer mentoring opportunities of newer teachers (Blitz, 2013). Contributing to online PLCs and communicating with colleagues in general with mutual respect and openness are skills important for all leaders to practice and foster. In my school-based role as a learning leader, online professional learning communities allow me the flexibility to access a plethora of internal resources that I can share out with my school colleagues or even frame professional learning days around.
References
Blitz, C. L. (2013). Can Online Learning Communities Achieve the Goals of Traditional Professional Learning Communities? What the Literature Says. Regional Educational Laboratory Mid-Atlantic.
Sowell, E. J. (2005). Curriculum: A integrative introduction (3rd ed., pp. 37-51). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Watson, C. (2014, February). Effective Professional Learning Communities? The Possibilities for Teachers as Agents of Change in Schools. British Educational Research, 40(1), 18-29.
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