The Findings Group, LLC

As we begin preparations for summer professional learning, some may be considering using professional learning communities (PLCs).  Woodland recently published a rubric in the American Journal of Evaluation to evaluate PLCs.  It builds off previous PLC rubrics and incorporates improvement science.  This is particularly timely for those considering research-practitioner partnerships (see this solicitation from NSF).  Researchers are often university faculty who may not know the extent to which PLCs are used in public education, and this provides them with both a framework for understanding these potentially robust communities along with an approach to measuring them.  For practitioners, typically K-12 school leaders and teachers, it provides a strategy to return sleepy, mostly complacent PLCs to their intended use – to foster critical and sometimes tense dialogue around student success.  Here is an overview of the rubric (tcar-form).