Skip to main content

In Raising the bar and closing the gap (DuFour, 2010), what evidence of the effectiveness Professional Learning Communities ideas can be seen? If...

In Raising the Bar and Closing the Gap: Whatever it Takes, the authors argue that professional learning communities (PLCs) can be instrumental in a school's attempts to reach all of its students.  Evidence of this lies in the way leadership teams work with teachers and how time is managed in the course of a day.


DuFour and his team display different examples of evidence of PLC effectiveness in the desire to raise student achievement.  One such instance is seen in chapter three in the discussion of the "educational lottery."  When attempts to reach all of a school's students are not institutionally embedded,   school-wide success decreases.  The authors argue that a PLC is instrumental to student achievement. When initiatives are not widely embraced, then students are subject to the whims of individual teachers.  Some teachers might be practicing techniques and strategies that work. Others might not.  This makes students subject to an "educational lottery" approach, where if they luck into a successful setting, their needs are met.  DuFour and his team's work suggest that the PLC is a vital part in establishing that initiatives meant to help all students should be an ingrained part of the institutional framework in our schools.  When the PLC does this, all students have a greater chance of experiencing student achievement because the PLC is a school-wide approach to speak to all children.


PLC effectiveness is also seen in how time is used in the course of the day. For example, in chapter five, the story of Boones Mill school illustrates how PLCs can assist in creating space in the day to assist academically struggling students.  The PLC helped to establish a portion of a day when students received the intensive instruction they needed.  Teachers were able to offer support because time was created in the course of the day.  This was more advantageous than initiatives offered outside of the school day because it utilized the time that students were already in school.  In this setting, teachers were able to devise individualized approaches to help students.  The PLC was instrumental in utilizing what was already in place, in terms of time, to make a more meaningful experience for the students.


Another similar example of how the PLC helped to use time more effectively was evident in the creation of professional space for teachers.  In chapter 7, the narrative of Lakeridge Junior High School illustrates how a PLC can help support professional learning and articulation.  Teachers found that their weekly scheduled was altered so that they could have more time to communicate with one another.  The creation of this professional space helped to spawn student achievement because teachers could share ideas and had time during the week to embrace authentic collaboration.  Just as with the students at Boones Mill, utilizing time during the school day in a more effective manner illustrated the effectiveness of PLCs in increasing student achievement.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more