Session Information
01 SES 04 C, Professional Learning Communities
Paper Session
Contribution
Growing evidence suggests the value of developing professional learning communities to ensure educational improvement, with a solid literature developing the ideas of "professional learning communities” (Bolam et al. 2005; Stoll et al. 2006). Educational policy guidelines in the Spanish context assume and promote this school model as the most relevant for encouraging teacher reprofessionalization and educational improvement. It is understood that if schools are to meet the needs of students and achieve educational success, then, in parallel, they must provide opportunities for teachers to learn together how to do it better. But do these conditions exist in today's schools? Moreover, Spanish managers themselves have assumed, in their "Spanish Framework for Good Management" (FEAE/FEDADI/FEDEIP, 2017), that one of the competencies of the "pedagogical leadership" dimension is "Promoting and leading a professional learning community”. All of this signals a point of confluence between current pedagogical knowledge, educational policy, and the professional positioning of school principals' associations regarding the necessary shift towards advanced PCL models. It is therefore interesting to investigate the extent to which Andalusian schools adopt this proposal.
The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of the extent to which the Andalusian schools, with diverse realities and at different stages of development, meet the basic dimensions to act as a professional learning community (PLC). Such elements include having a clear-shared goal and being capable of acting systemically in line with a joint community project with leadership, organizational, and professional conditions compatible with the learning of all and among all to increase social and professional capital with differential effects on the education of their students.
To detect the strengths and weaknesses of Andalusian schools as professional learning communities, the instrument used proposes items that respond to a set of questions: Do teachers have shared objectives for school improvement? Are there opportunities to learn from others through open dialogue? Do teachers have opportunities to observe and encourage their colleagues in analyzing classroom practices? Are ideas and suggestions for improving student learning shared informally among colleagues? Finally, are there opportunities at the individual and group levels to apply teaching practices and share results?
We also aimed to analyze whether the central dimensions of the research instrument varied according to the following sociodemographic variables: type and size of educational center, position held or professional function of the informant sample, and gender.
Method
To gather evidence and obtain an overview of the degree of development of the Andalusian school, the study adopted a descriptive and interpretative non-experimental research design. Population and sample The target population of our study was those public schools of preschool and Primary Education and Secondary Education Institutes that participated in the "Program for Quality and Improvement of School Performance" since these schools had a philosophy in line with the joint work for the improvement of student outcomes. Of the 287 schools that constitute the population, 38 schools were selected, which was the recommended number for forming a representative sample with a 95% confidence level according to Tagliacarne's formula. Cases were selected using the simple random sampling method. Instrument, data collection and analysis process The PLCA-R questionnaire was used in its cross-cultural adaptation, validated for the Spanish context (Domingo et al., 2020): "Cuestionario de Evaluación de la Comunidad de Aprendizaje Profesional Revisado" [Professional Learning Community Assessment-Revised, PLCA-R] Once the sample had been selected, each of these schools was contacted, and both the intentions of the study and the requirements to obtain the desired information were explained. For this purpose, both official communication channels were used (on the recommendation of the Education Inspectorate of each school zone) involving personal communication between researchers and directors. The SPSS program was used for data analysis, including reliability, basic descriptive, and inferential analyses. Regarding the reliability analysis, it should be noted that construct validity was confirmed by factor analysis since the KMO index (.973) was calculated, and Bartlett's test of Sphericity indicated that the model is significant (0.000). Furthermore, the Varimax rotation analysis revealed that the six factors (which correspond to the dimensions of the questionnaire) explained 64.486% of the variance of the study results. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was applied to evaluate the normality of a data set. Since the differences were significant (.000), the normal distribution of the curve was not accepted, and, therefore, parametric tests could not be used. Therefore, the non-parametric Mann-Whitney U or Kruskal-Wallis tests were used. These tests were used to compare the differences between each of the six dimensions of the questionnaire according to sociodemographic variables, highlighting any significant relationships
Expected Outcomes
On balance, we can conclude that while Andalusian schools are progressing in this aspect they are still far from being prepared to learn collectively. From this, a central issue emerges. It is necessary to increase the level of collective responsibility for the learning of all students. For this, progress must be made both in promoting the qualities to make this possible and in increasing the number of schools on the path to becoming extended communities of professional practice with true intermediate leadership capable of capturing and mobilizing more social and professional capital around collective educational projects "with meaning" for all. Hence, it is important to train school principals as educational leaders (Moreno & López-Yáñez, 2022), promoting a move towards a new professional identity and a framework for school management that emphasizes leadership (Bolívar, 2020). This involves building on the momentum already gained by the necessary post-pandemic school reform (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2020) and reimagining the future we want (UNESCO, 2021). To this end, and in line with the proposals of Hargreaves and O’Connor (2020) will be particularly important to promote spaces, events, and tasks that make this possible, along with communities of critical reflection (schools that transform) that gradually increase their relational trust, distributed leadership, interactive professionalism, and collective internal capacities for the improvement of learning for all and among all. As highlighted by Hairon et al. (2017) in a future research agenda, next to the PLC construct, contexts matter, differentiated at two levels - within and outside school. Some of this school culture has undergone relevant changes due to the pandemic, showing the need for a greater culture of collaboration within each school, but also between schools and the local community, configuring extended learning networks (Bolívar et al., 2022).
References
The results of this publication are part of three research projects: 1) "Communities of professional practice and learning improvement: intermediate leadership, networks, and interrelationships. Schools in complex contexts" (Ref.: PID2020-117020GB-I00), funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ and ERDF "A way of doing Europe"; and 2) "Communities of professional practice and learning improvement" (Ref.: P20_00311), funded by the Andalusian Plan for Research, Development, and Innovation (PAIDI 2020). Bolam, R, et al. (2005). Creating and Sustaining Effective Professional Learning Communities, DfES Research Report RR637, University of Bristol, Bristol. Bolívar, A. (2020). Otra gobernanza para dinamizar la organización de los centros. [Other governance to make the organisation of the centres more dynamic] En Fernández Enguita, M. (Coord.). La Organización Escolar. Repensando la caja negra para poder salir de ella [School Organisation. Rethinking the black box in order to get out of it] (pp. 37-47). Madrid: ANELE-REDE. Bolívar, A.; Muñoz, G.; Weinstein, J. & Domingo, J. (Coords.) (2022). Liderazgo educativo en tiempos de crisis: aprendizajes para la escuela post-covid. [Educational leadership in times of crisis: learnings for the post-covid school] Universidad de Granada. Granada. Domingo, J., Bolívar-Ruano, R., Rodríguez-Fernández, S., & Bolívar, A. (2020). Professional Learning Community Assessment-Revised (PLCA-R): translation and validation in the Spanish context. Learning Environments Research (LERI), Vol. 23 No 3, pp. 347-367. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10984-020-09306-1 FEAE/FEDADI/FEDEIP (2017). Marco Español para la Buena Dirección. [Spanish Framework for Good Governance]. http://educalab.es/documents/10180/38496/MEDB+digital/4ea4b5d9-6a99-468c-a387-46affa4b6c50 Hairon, S. et al. (2017). A Research Agenda for Professional Learning Communities: moving forward. Professional Development in Education, Vol. 43 No 1, pp. 72-86. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19415257.2015.1055861 Hargreaves, A., & Fullan, M. (2020). Professional capital after the pandemic: revisiting and revising classic understandings of teachers' work. Journal of Professional Capital and Community, Vol. 5 No 3/4, pp. 327-336. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/JPCC-06-2020-0039 Hargreaves, A., O’Connor, M.T. (2018). Collaborative professionalism: When teaching together means learning for all. Corwin, Thousand Oaks, CA. Moreno, M. S., & López-Yáñez, J. (2022). Formar directivos para la escuela real. Un enfoque basado en el análisis de la práctica en grupos [Training leaders for the real school. An approach based on the analysis of group practice]. Ciencia y Educación, 6(1), 43-61. https://doi.org/10.22206/cyed.2022.v6i1.pp43-61 Stoll, L., Bolam, R., McMahon, A., Wallace, M. & Thomas, S. (2006). Professional learning communities: a review of the literature. Journal of Educational Change, Vol. 7, No 4 pp. 221-258. UNESCO (2021). Reimagining our futures together. A new social contract for education. Report from the International Commission on the Futures of Education. UNESCO.
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