by Revel Arroway

Created on: July 22, 2010

The professional learning community: learning about learning, thinking about thinking

A professional learning community is made up of teachers, administrators, students and the community at-large, all with the main focus of ensuring that students learn the information and skills that will make them useful and contributing members of the community they are and will become a part of. This focus on learning is illustrated through the continued formation of teachers, the encouragement of students to understand their thinking processes and the sharing of responsibility for teaching and learning among all of the members of the community. 

Teacher formation

In a professional learning community, teachers are encouraged and led to collaborate through learning about learning. The traditional focus of teaching as being a knowledgeable informant dictating information to a group of students is shifted to teachers studying and learning about the actual ways in which their students accumulate and cognitively apply the information shared in the class.

Through teamwork and sharing among teachers on a cross-disciplinary level, teachers begin to accumulate information on the creation of learning supportive classroom environments as well as classroom management . Experienced teachers sharing their ideas and techniques with recent university graduates are rewarded by those graduates sharing the latest information they have freshly learned at university. Teachers work together to understand just how their students learn the information being shared and apply this understanding to developing activities that encourage student thinking into the curriculum.

Teachers plan together and observe one another. Review sessions are designed for teachers to be able to discuss and debate the successes and failures of different techniques. The teacher ceases to be an isolated participant, only focusing on the subject matter that they know best and expands their experience through sharing with other members of the entire faculty. This makes the faculty a working-together team with the shared objective of helping students not only to learn but also to apply that learning. 

Metacognition

Metacognition is being able to think about the thinking process. It is being aware of thought and being able to analyze and evaluate the thought. In traditional schooling, where facts are given, memorized or learned, then tested upon, the actual thinking process involved is often given a back

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>