Assessing Your Professional Learning Community
A growing body of research shows that schools that operate as professional learning communities (PLCs) can transform themselves into dynamic centers of learning—for both educators and students. In high-performing PLCs, teachers and administrators work together to seek, share, and apply learning on an ongoing basis, leading to improved classroom instruction, student achievement, and school performance.

High-performing PLCs share six dimensions:
1. Shared and Supportive Leadership
2. Shared Values and Vision
3. Collective Learning and Application
4. Shared Personal Practice
5. Supportive Conditions-Relationships
6. Supportive Conditions-Structures

How does my PLC measure up?
To help administrators rate their school as a PLC on these dimensions, Dianne F. Olivier, Kristine Kiefer Hipp, and Jane Bumpers Huffman have developed the Professional Learning Communities Assessment-Revised (PLCA-R) questionnaire and reporting tool. SEDL is providing access to the online version of the PLCA-R that measures staff perceptions of school and classroom practices related to the six dimensions listed above. Respondents use a 4-point scale to indicate the degree to which they agree or disagree with statements about various practices. With the new online version of the tool, administrators can quickly customize and deploy the questionnaire and generate reports and graphs of the results for various populations.

By pinpointing their PLC’s strengths and weaknesses, administrators can better target their efforts and take their PLC to the next level.

More information:
PLC Overview
PLC Assessment-Revised Tool
PLC Books
PLC Briefs