A school as a professional learning community (PLC) is characterised by intensive forms of collaboration among staff sharing values and vision, taking collective responsibility for student learning, engaging in reflective professional inquiry and trusting, respecting, and supporting each other (Stoll et al., 2006a). PLCs not only promote individual and group learning (Bolam et al., 2005; Stoll et al., 2006b), but also students’ school performance (Lomos et al., 2011; Lee & Louis, 2019). The goal of the present study is to gain more insights into the sustainable development of schools as PLCs, which we define as an ongoing process in which PLC characteristics are continuously supported, stimulated, and warranted in school, while pursuing strong educational quality.

Schools purposefully deploy strategies to support their development as PLC (c.f. Hargreaves & O’Connor, 2017; März et al., 2019; Schipper et al., 2019). Examples of strategies are providing teachers opportunities to collaborate and decide collectively on educational matters, stimulating distributed leadership, and developing a school vision. Schools are able to initiate this second-order change (i.e. changes at the level of the organization that require new knowledge, skills, values and norms; Hubers, 2020), but the sustainability of PLC strategies cannot be taken for granted (Hipp et al., 2008; Van den Boom-Muilenburg, 2021). Schools’ development as PLCs is a complex process, because it is not a simple one-off event of restructuring schools but a day-to-day process of reculturing schools (Lee & Louis, 2019; Hipp et al., 2008; Giles & Hargreaves, 2006), which requires connections between personal, interpersonal and collective learning (c.f. Hargreaves & O’Connor, 2017; Crossan et al., 1999). Moreover, research demonstrates an increasing concern that formalized collaborative initiatives in school may undermine teacher autonomy where they are disconnected from teacher-initiated learning (Vangrieken et al., 2015; Lee & Louis, 2019; Hargreaves & O’Conner, 2017).

This study focuses on how schools develop sustainably as PLCs. We do so by investigating the feedback and feed-forward processes in schools, which concern the collection of information about staff’s experiences to learn about the past and the exploration of needs and goal setting, respectively (Imants, 2002). Through these processes, new ideas and actions of individual school members transfer to groups and the school as a whole. Furthermore, through these processes, actions at the level of the school and groups can inform individual thinking and acting (Crossan et al., 1999). Our research approach differs from an approach that views sustainability as the end stadium in a process or as faithfully or loyally implementing an innovation that is promised to increase education quality (c.f. Hipp et al., 2008; Hubers et al., 2017; Van den Boom-Muilenburg, 2021). It is unlikely that in schools that develop sustainably as PLCs, concrete and specific initiatives will still look the same in five years’ time (Geijsel & Van Eck, 2011). There is a vast body of research on the characterization and support of PLCs. Insights into sustainable development of schools as PLCs are however scarce. This multiple case study centres around five Dutch secondary schools that were involved in previous research conducted between 2014 and 2017 (Authors, 2018; Authors, 2019; Authors, 2021), which offers a unique opportunity to map development over a long period of time.

The main question is: What strategies and processes characterize the sustainable development of the school as a professional learning community? The following sub questions will be answered:

1. What type of strategies do secondary schools apply to develop as a PLC?
2. What processes of feedback and feed-forward can be identified in the development of these strategies?
3. To what extent and how do these strategies continuously support, stimulate, and warrant PLC characteristics?

Sample A total of five schools agreed to participate in this research and data is collected since 2014. Procedure In the periods 2014-2017 and 2020-2021, quantitative and qualitative data sources were collected including 1) interviews, 2) documents, and 3) the Scan School as Professional Learning Community (SPLC). In Spring 2020, interviews with project leaders were conducted to explore the development of the PLC strategies. A year later, the project leaders completed a document with a detailed overview of the strategies, together with structural and cultural barriers and affordances that characterize their school. To gain in-depth understanding of the sustainable development of schools as PLCs, project leaders and school leaders (focus groups interview 1) and teachers (focus group interview 2) were invited to timeline interviews. The interviewers followed the critical-incident technique (Akinci & Sadler-Smith, 2019) to capture interviewees’ critical moments in their PLC experiences in school and therewith grasp potential mechanisms of sustainable development. The scan SPLC was completed by all school staff and consists of six clusters of PLC elements and seven clusters of conditions for the development of a professional learning culture in school. The scan consists of 66 items, each scored on a 5-point Likert type scale. The scale reliabilities are satisfying, and factor analysis confirmed construct validity (Authors, 2021). Analysis All qualitative and quantitative data were analysed within and between schools on 1) PLC strategies, 2) processes of feedback and feed-forward, and 3) the extent to which the PLC is continuously supported, stimulated, and warranted, and 4) contextual factors that directly or indirectly impacted the course of schools’ development as PLC. Data from the period 2014-2017 (i.e. data from interviews, school documents and scan SPLC) were consulted for framing and interpretation purposes.

The analyses show a variety in schools’ strategies. A preliminary categorization points to strategy focus (group or school), strategy leadership and facilitation (formalized or informal), and strategy collaborative structure (fixed or flexible). At one school, for example, all school staff (school focus) is each year invited to participate in professional learning teams (fixed structure), clustered around an overarching theme and facilitated with support of an internal coordination (formalized facilitation). Through in-depth analyses within schools, feedback and feed-forward processes are identified. Examples of feedback processes found in the data mainly concern ad-hoc and informal conversations and observations by individuals. School-wide inventories are scarce. Regarding feed-forward, the data show that new ideas are mostly developed by individuals or small teams and less often at the school level. The results suggest that feedback is complementary to feed-forward, but the latter is dominant. Traditionally, educational practice seems to undervalue feedback as a means to reflect on quality and utilise what has been learned (cf. Imants, 2002; Crossan et al., 1999). In general, the schools seem to vary in how successful they are in continuously supporting, stimulating, and warranting their development as PLC, with large differences between schools regarding collective responsibility for student learning and inclusive membership (i.e. all staff is valued, and the school is a school-wide community rather than consisting of smaller groups of staff). All schools referred to professional inquiry as challenging. In the paper presentation, the impact of contextual factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic will also be discussed.

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