Читать книгу Student Learning Communities - Нэнси Фрей - Страница 6

The idea of collective learning—of leveraging collective wisdom to promote the growth of the group as a group and as individuals—is not new to teachers. It's perhaps most familiar as the aim of professional learning communities (PLCs), educator networks that emerged as a response to the often-isolated nature of classroom teaching. We recognized there was an urgent problem with "business as usual" in schools: closed classroom doors that left many practitioners teaching inside of a bubble … each of us left to our own devices to design, develop, and implement instruction and interpret assessment results. Why would teachers, as professionals, not want to pool our collective expertise and work collaboratively to advance our skills and improve our students' learning?

The PLC approach also acknowledges, and is guided by, another reality: teachers are not sitting around with an abundance of spare time. We need assurance that the hours devoted to interacting with peers are worthwhile—that they are an investment that will yield tangible benefits for ourselves, our colleagues, and our students.

Accordingly, successful PLCs, like all successful collaborative learning arrangements, are guided by a collective agreement to pursue useful goals in an organized way. This helps avoid the problem of "collaboration for the sake of collaboration" and keeps the work focused. In other words, just because there's a round table doesn't make the people sitting there a learning community. Certain conditions must be present. Over the years, educators have learned that

 PLCs are a way to connect teachers with purpose and success—a way to acquire and hone skills and achieve meaningful and rewarding outcomes.

 PLCs activate collective skills and wisdom, and they are characterized by structures that allow teachers to help one another develop expertise and abilities.

What does it take to transform a group of individuals into a learning community? When Shirley Hord (2004) explored the conditions that facilitate collaborative learning in PLCs composed of teacher teams, she identified six critical factors:

1 Structural conditions that provide a framework for collaboration and the resources to engage in the collaborative work;

2 The fostering, nurturing, and sustaining of productive and professional relationships among members of the collaborative team;

3 The existence of shared values and purpose that motivate individual members to invest in the work of the collaborative team;

4 The intentional leveraging of the collective expertise;

5 All members working to enhance one another's individual efficacy and credibility; and

6 All members leveraging their individual strengths to share leadership responsibilities.

The six elements that make collaborative learning transformative for teams of teachers—the components that transform them from "a group of people working together" into "a learning community"—have the potential to do the same for groups of students.

Think of your own practice, your own students. As you strive to have them engage one another in their learning, you must ensure that they have the skills and dispositions to be successful. This requires you to approach collective learning through the natural progression of gradually releasing responsibility for the work to them. For example, if your learners are to foster shared agreements of success among members of their group, you must first model and engage them in the processes of goal setting, linking individual goals to group goals, and progress monitoring. If your learners are to leverage the support of their peers to amplify learning, you must first model and engage them in effective feedback. It's through this intentional design and implementation of collaborative learning that any teacher can set the stage for learners to engage in SLCs.

Consider what makes for a successful professional learning community—the combination of structures, objectives, priorities, and operations. As illustrated in Figure 1.1, there is considerable overlap between what a PLC needs to function well and the conditions that allow for the kind of deep collective classroom-based learning pursued in student learning communities. Just like a PLC, if an SLC is to thrive, it must engage in a cycle of inquiry. And as in a PLC, sustaining this cycle of inquiry requires SLC members to develop the skills and dispositions necessary to take an active role in their own learning process. For that, they need their teacher's guidance and support.