[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"detail-sidebar-cat-1-en-105":3,"doc-seo-243393-105":53,"doc-detail-243393-en":126},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",[7,14,19,24,29,34,39,44,49],{"id":8,"doc_module":9,"doc_module_name":10,"category_name":11,"show_sort_weight":12,"slug":13},11,1,"Template","Presentations",90,"presentations",{"id":15,"doc_module":9,"doc_module_name":10,"category_name":16,"show_sort_weight":17,"slug":18},12,"Resumes",80,"resumes",{"id":20,"doc_module":9,"doc_module_name":10,"category_name":21,"show_sort_weight":22,"slug":23},14,"Invoices",70,"invoices",{"id":25,"doc_module":9,"doc_module_name":10,"category_name":26,"show_sort_weight":27,"slug":28},15,"Posters",60,"posters",{"id":30,"doc_module":9,"doc_module_name":10,"category_name":31,"show_sort_weight":32,"slug":33},16,"Social Media",50,"social-media",{"id":35,"doc_module":9,"doc_module_name":10,"category_name":36,"show_sort_weight":37,"slug":38},17,"Forms",40,"forms",{"id":40,"doc_module":9,"doc_module_name":10,"category_name":41,"show_sort_weight":42,"slug":43},18,"Letters",30,"letters",{"id":45,"doc_module":9,"doc_module_name":10,"category_name":46,"show_sort_weight":47,"slug":48},21,"Paper Templates",5,"papers-templates",{"id":50,"doc_module":9,"doc_module_name":10,"category_name":51,"show_sort_weight":4,"slug":52},158,"General","general-158",{"code":4,"msg":54,"data":55},"ok",{"site_id":56,"language":57,"slug":58,"title":59,"keywords":60,"description":61,"schema_data":62,"social_meta":119,"head_meta":121,"extra_data":123,"updated_unix":125},105,"en","professional-learning-communities-at-the-crossroads-how-systems-hinder-or-engender-change","Professional Learning Communities at the Crossroads - How Systems Hinder or Engender Change","","Professional learning communities (PLCs) have become a major focus of educational policy, with schools and districts investing in structures that encourage teacher collaboration to improve student learning. Yet PLC scale-up efforts often fail when initiatives become compliance exercises or when administrators impose changes that alienate teachers. Drawing on a decade of research in Stanford’s CRC, the chapter analyzes why system conditions alone cannot shift professional culture and outlines principles to sustain PLCs by addressing change processes and common pitfalls.",{"@graph":63,"@context":118},[64,80,101],{"@type":65,"itemListElement":66},"BreadcrumbList",[67,71,74,77],{"item":68,"name":69,"@type":70,"position":9},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":72,"name":10,"@type":70,"position":73},"https://docshare.wps.com/template/",2,{"item":75,"name":51,"@type":70,"position":76},"https://docshare.wps.com/template/general/",3,{"item":78,"name":59,"@type":70,"position":79},"https://docshare.wps.com/template/professional-learning-communities-at-the-crossroads-how-systems-hinder-or-engender-change/243393/",4,{"url":78,"name":59,"@type":81,"image":82,"author":87,"headline":59,"publisher":90,"fileFormat":93,"inLanguage":57,"description":61,"dateModified":94,"datePublished":95,"encodingFormat":93,"isAccessibleForFree":96,"interactionStatistic":97},"DigitalDocument",{"url":83,"@type":84,"width":85,"height":86},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/professional-learning-communities-at-the-crossroads-how-systems-hinder-or-engender-change/243393.png","ImageObject",442,249,{"name":88,"@type":89},"Fez","Person",{"url":68,"name":91,"@type":92},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-09-24","2026-09-12",true,{"@type":98,"interactionType":99,"userInteractionCount":9},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":100},"ViewAction",{"@type":102,"mainEntity":103},"FAQPage",[104,110,114],{"name":105,"@type":106,"acceptedAnswer":107},"Why do some PLC scale-up efforts backfire in schools?","Question",{"text":108,"@type":109},"Many initiatives turn into compliance with mandates instead of supporting genuine assessment of student performance and collaborative improvement. This often happens when leaders do not understand the deep principles that anchor PLC work or impose changes that alienate teachers.","Answer",{"name":111,"@type":106,"acceptedAnswer":112},"What does the chapter argue are insufficient system conditions for changing professional culture?",{"text":113,"@type":109},"The chapter states that supportive conditions—such as comprehensive education plans, integrated learning resources, robust data systems, extended collaboration time, and PLC-committed leaders—are not sufficient on their own to change professional culture and teachers’ work lives.",{"name":115,"@type":106,"acceptedAnswer":116},"How does the chapter structure its discussion of PLC development and responses?",{"text":117,"@type":109},"It first explains core PLC principles and how they challenge typical school culture, then describes two paradigmatic approaches to PLC development and typical participant responses, and finally draws lessons from district experience and identifies obstacles to success.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":78,"og:type":120,"og:title":59,"og:site_name":91,"og:description":61},"article",{"robots":122,"canonical":78},"index,follow",{"doc_id":124,"site_id":56},243393,1790248188,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":127},{"doc_id":124,"user_id":128,"nickname":88,"user_avatar":129,"doc_module":9,"category_id":50,"category_name":51,"doc_title":59,"doc_description":61,"doc_content":130,"file_id":131,"file_url":132,"file_type":133,"file_size":134,"view_count":79,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":9,"is_downloadable":9,"audit_status":9,"page_count":35,"language":135,"language_code":57,"site_id":56,"html_lang":57,"table_of_contents":136,"faqs":137,"seo_title":138,"seo_description":61,"update_tm":139,"read_time":140},2336478940794,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_9964176cb1d06d4a9deccf72a44ae3dc","Professional Learning Communities at the Crossroads: How Systems Hinder or Engender Change1  \nJoan E. Talbert  \nStanford University  \nEducation systems across the United States and in other nations are trying to create professional learning communities (PLCs) as a core part of teachers’work:  \nProfessional learning communities (PLCs) are, at this time, undoubtedly in the ascendant in educational policy and practice. Efforts to convert schools into PLCs (the abbreviation, like a nickname, itself being an indicator of increasing acceptance); are spreading rapidly throughout the English-speaking world.  \nDrawing on emerging evidence that professional learning communities have a systematic and positive effect on student learning outcomes (Louis and Marks, 1998 ; McLaughlin and Talbert, 2001; Anderson and Togneri, 2003; Bodam et al., 2005), schools and systems are investing considerable energy in developing themselves as professional learning communities (Hargreaves, 2007:181) .  \nIn this chapter I present a sobering assessment of the challenges facing the PLC movement. We are beginning to see that enthusiastic efforts to “scale up” PLCs often backfire. Rather than assessing student performance and collaborating to improve teaching and learning, many teacher groups formed through mandates simply comply with the letter of the law and fail to realize improved student achievement. This is because school administrators and leaders of change either fail to understand the deep principles that anchor PLC work or try to create them in ways that alienate teachers. I end the chapter by suggesting six principles for changing a school system in ways that will stimulate and sustain PLCs as described in the literature.  \nMy observations stem from ten years of research in the Center for Research on the Context of Teaching (CRC) at Stanford University. 2 Scholars at CRC have been  \n1 Chapter to appear in Fullan, M., Hargreaves, A. and Lieberman, A. (Eds.) . Second International Handbook of Educational Change. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer press.  \n2 The Stanford University Center for Research on the Context of Teaching (CRC) has documented the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative’s work with several districts (2001-06), the University of California Santa Cruz New Teacher Center’s work with Ravenswood City School District (2005-ongoing); the University of Pittsburgh Institute for Learning’s work with the Austin Independent School District) (2006-ongoing), the New Visions for Public Schools and Baruch College partnership work with schools in several regions of NYC (2006-ongoing) . Collaborators on these projects include: Jane David of the Bay Area Research Group (Ravenswood and Austin project), Amy Gerstein of Gerstein and Associates (Ravenswood project), and Nell Scharff of Baruch College (the NYC project) . We also draw upon three years of research in a mid-western district involved in a national “learning system” initiative, on which Cynthia Coburn of University of California at Berkeley collaborated, and upon case studies of Long Beach Unified School District written by a researchers in Harvard University’s Public Education Leadership Program (Austin, Grossman, Schwartz, and Suesse, 2006a, b; Honan, Schwartz, and Seusse, 2004 ) .  \nstudying initiatives to create teacher PLCs in schools and to change school districts into learning organizations. All are struggling to get it right – to achieve the vision of teachers’collaborating to continually improve student achievement. Even when administrators and their initiative partners are well versed in the literature on PLCs and have a good handle on system conditions that support and sustain them (Kruse and Louise 2007; McLaughlin and Talbert 2006), they lack guidance on ways of changing the professional culture of a system. We find that system conditions that support the work of PLCs – such as a comprehensive education plan, integrated learning resources, local knowledge resources, robust data a","cbCaidpaxLILmObA","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaidpaxLILmObA","pdf",223425,"English","# Professional learning communities at the crossroads\n## PLCs and the promise of change\n## Challenges in scaling up PLC initiatives\n## Why teachers respond negatively to PLC efforts\n## Principles for PLCs and school culture change","[{\"question\":\"Why do some PLC scale-up efforts backfire in schools?\",\"answer\":\"Many initiatives turn into compliance with mandates instead of supporting genuine assessment of student performance and collaborative improvement. This often happens when leaders do not understand the deep principles that anchor PLC work or impose changes that alienate teachers.\"},{\"question\":\"What does the chapter argue are insufficient system conditions for changing professional culture?\",\"answer\":\"The chapter states that supportive conditions—such as comprehensive education plans, integrated learning resources, robust data systems, extended collaboration time, and PLC-committed leaders—are not sufficient on their own to change professional culture and teachers’ work lives.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the chapter structure its discussion of PLC development and responses?\",\"answer\":\"It first explains core PLC principles and how they challenge typical school culture, then describes two paradigmatic approaches to PLC development and typical participant responses, and finally draws lessons from district experience and identifies obstacles to success.\"}]","Professional Learning Communities at the Crossroads - How Systems Hinder or Engender Change | PDF",1789203573,6]