Customer Reviews

Learning by Doing: A Handbook for Professional Learning Communities at Work (Book & CD-ROM)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Professional Learning Communities are the big buzz currently. Does your school district have professional learning communities? Have you wondered where to start? Have you wondered how your professional learning communities are doing? If you've wondered about any of those, then this is the book for you.

Learning by Doing is a great handbook for administrators and teachers to use as they implement professional learning communities in their school. This handbook gives an overview of the different components of the professional learning community process. As schools implement the professional learning community process this handbook is also a useful tool to assist in self reflection and evaluation.

As a school is developing professional learning communities, this handbook is a great resource to use through the process. It begins by giving advice on how to clarify the purpose of professional learning communities, how to build collaborative teams, and how to establish team norms. The collaborative foundation is essential to the success of the professional learning communities. The professional learning communities must collaborate in order to increase student achievement.

The handbook also shares information about how to collect data, how to use the data to improve results, and how to implement interventions in order to improve student achievement. These components help the professional learning community develop strategies to help each individual learner in their classroom. Schools must develop and support a pyramid of interventions in order to meet the students' needs.

This handbook includes many useful reproducible handouts and continuums which help analyze the progress of each professional learning community. The continuums are great conversation starters for the professional learning communities to use to evaluate their progress. This handbook can help your school improve the PLC process through self reflection and evaluation.

If you are looking for tools to help your Professional Learning Communities improve, this book is for you.

Excellent Book!! Extremely valuable resource for schools that are working toward a true Professional Learning Community. Easy to read and very practical.

This book will help me initiate a PLC in my country to have teachers work in collaboration in order to satisfy their students' needs. We will have a strong professional learning community that will involve the administration and the teaching staff to improve our system of education.

This book is a must read for any administrator or potential administrator that is looking for new ways to improve their schools. Very practical and flexible with many scenarios and worksheets that can help you to determine where your school is and how to get it where you want it to go.

Learning by Doing should be the consummate staff development guide for all schools. Creating a common language, the right language, about PLC's is what needs to happen to get all of the arrows going in the right direction in any educational environment on any initiative. I look forward to implementing it with my new school!

This is the best resource available for any school or district who is either implementing or interesting in implementing the Professional Learning Community at Work process. The real issues encountered by schools doing this work are addressed and practical advice on "next steps" is provided. It is a "must have"...

This is the book that I use most often in my work with educators. It serves as a "how to" book as well the ultimate "reproducible" resource for all things PLC.

This may be the worst book I have ever read. It is unbearably condescending and I cannot believe that anyone would attempt to lead a school using this as a model.

Very useful when working with groups beginning to implement the professional learning communities model.

Learning by Doing: A Handbook for Professional Learning Communities at Work (Second Edition)

by Richard Dufour, Rebecca Dufour, Robert Eaker, Thomas Many (2010)

The second edition of Learning by Doing: A Handbook for Professional Learning Communities at Work is a significant rewrite from the first edition of 2006. The first edition is 235 pages and the second is 281 pages. A number of the pages were rewritten and some were relocated. Chapter Eight "Implementing the PLC Process Districtwide" is new. Dufour et. al. have introduced "Implementation Stage" along the PLC continuum. This will be helpful to guide learning leaders as they implement an authentic PLC.

A welcome innovation found in this book is that the CD enclosed in the first edition is not included. Rather readers may go online to go.solution-tree.com/PLCbooks . In this way revisions and changes may be made without having to produce new CDs. In the not too distant future textbooks will not be required but rather resources for learners in our schools will be online, a twenty-first century reality.

The authors have used, with mixed effectiveness, Richard Elmore's (2006) concept of Reciprocal Accountability throughout this volume. Elmore states, "For every increment of performance I demand of you, I have an equal responsibility to provide you with the capacity to meet that expectation. Likewise, for every investment you make in my skill and knowledge, I have a reciprocal responsibility to demonstrate some new increment in performance (p. 93)." The employers of teachers are the first adopters of commercial PLCs. It is easy sometimes to overlook their responsibility to support teachers by developing teacher capacity to work as authentic professional learning communities. The authors may find the concept of intelligent accountability, articulated by Onora O'Neill in A Question of Trust (2002)A Question of Trust: The BBC Reith Lectures 2002 helpful in further challenging school leaders concerning accountability measures.

Although these authors write about Reciprocal Accountability, they demonstrate a weak grasp of the concept. For example, on page 128 they state, "Therefore, one of the most important elements of reciprocal accountability that districts and schools must address is establishing clear parameters and priorities that guide the work of teams toward the goal of student learning." Reciprocal accountability has to do with building capacity within the teaching staff after parameters and priorities are established.

At several places (particularly at page 252) Dufour et. al. refer to the work of Robert Evans, The Human Side of School Change: Reform, Resistance and the Real-Life Problems of Innovation (2001).The Human Side of School Change: Reform, Resistance, and the Real-Life Problems of Innovation (Jossey-Bass Education Series) They seem to miss the point Evans makes in his book. Proponents of commercial PLCs deal with resistance as a matter of cognition, of wringing out collective commitments and convincing teachers they should "make a difference." Evans argues, "...that the key factor in change is what it means to those who must implement it, and that its primary meanings encourage resistance; it provokes loss, challenges competence, creates confusion and causes conflict" (p. 21). The authors' suggestions on how to overcome resistance is simplistic.

The authors also give a challenge (31) to look for studies that refute or contradict their claims that teachers should work in new ways. Linda M. McNeil has written The Contradictions of School Reform (2000).Contradictions of School Reform: Educational Costs of Standardized Testing (Critical Social Thought) In it she studied the experiences of school reform in Texas as the state attempted to "bring up the bottom" by imposing accountability controls and standardization. Her research discovered that teachers were de-skilled, that there were curricular losses, and a serious erosion of authentic teaching and learning. McNeil's study gives teachers good reasons not to blindly accept top-down school reform.

This edition of Learning by Doing has been a welcome update as the authors continue their "evangelical" endeavors to help school district improve on both teacher learning and student learning through PLCs. I look forward to their next offering. In it I hope they will have a chapter titled "Implementing the PLC Process Statewide."


Dr. John Merks
Teacher
Riverview High School
Riverview
New Brunswick
Canada