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C225 Task 1: Annotated Bibliography Assessment Code: C225 Task 1 Annotated Bibliography Education Related Research Topic My research topic focuses on teaching teachers how to effectively utilize and attend their Professional Learning Community (PLC) meetings. Many teachers struggle with how to facilitate proper meetings which leads to unproductive and pointless meetings when there is an opportunity to learn and grow during these meetings. Search Process Initial Keywords ļ· Professional learning communities (PLC) ļ· Education ļ· Elementary ļ· Teacher ļ· School (elementary school) ļ· Primary grades ļ· Leadership Additional Keywords ļ· Professional development ļ· Professional growth Most Useful Keywords This search yielded many results when professional learning communities was used as a keyword, however there were far too many articles that were not always applicable to teachers, therefore adding elementary education and teacher were helpful in narrowing down the search to be more specific and geared towards professional learning communities in a school setting.
Variations such as elementary education, elementary teacher, and elementary school were also all helpful in narrowing down the articles. Annotated Bibliography Bouchamma, Y., April, D., & Basque, M. (2019). Principalsā Leadership Practices in Guiding Professional Learning Communities to Institutionalization. International Studies in Educational Administration (Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration & Management (CCEAM)) , 47 (1), 38ā60. This qualitative research article focused on principal leadership roles when it comes to conducting a PLC through conducting double method interviews. For the purpose of this research study, six female principals from Quebec elementary schools were tasked with institutionalizing PLCs in their respective settings. The principals were chosen from a co- development group within a larger research-action-training project on pedagogical supervision through PLCs. The six principals had their meetings five or six times a year over two years which included 37 volunteer school leaders. The characteristics of their PLCs were later analyzed and compared to the PLC growth stages that were previously identified by Huffman and Hipp (2003). The principals that participated in this study were interviewed individually, using the double method in which mediation is proposed to enable the interviewee to reflect on and articulate their experience and contextualize their actions. In this particular scenario, the interviewee engages in a dialogue with their ādoubleā to explain practices or give instructions to them. After conducting the interviews with all six principals, researchers found common themes amongst the principals for steps they must take to ensure they are properly conducting a PLC which are: acquire knowledge on PLCs, allocate the necessary human, financial, and temporal resources,
chose books for each Fountas & Pinnell levels O-R, they began to create unified lesson plans including emphasizing decoding, vocabulary development, comprehension strategies, and responding to standardized test question stems. The teachers felt it was important to pay close attention to text-based formative assessments rather than summative assessments because students are faced with many standardized tests each year. This research study found that effective PLCs focus on ensuring that students learn, a culture of collaboration, and results. One weakness of this research study is the lack of information on how students reacted to the study. One strength of this research study was the collaboration of reading teachers across a school district to create lessons together allows the teachers to work smarter not harder. Damjanovic, V., & Blank, J. (2018). Building a Professional Learning Community: Teachersā Documentation of and Reflections on Preschoolersā Work. Early Childhood Education Journal , 46 (5), 567ā575. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-017-0888- This article focuses on PLCs in a preschool setting and is based on the social constructionist inquiry paradigm using case study methodology. This PLC was pre- existing at a campus preschool affiliated with a College of Education. The preschool serves about 75 children ages 2-5 years old. While there were multiple PLCs taking place at this preschool, the researchers chose a PLC group of 3 teachers who were eager to participate in the study. Teachers had to meet the following criteria: they met weekly for group learning in a PLC, they taught in one of the 2-5 years old classrooms at the preschool, they participated in ongoing professional development at the preschool, and they were willing to share their project work and documentations as part of this research. The researchers collected multiple data points from observations of PLC sessions,
interviews with participating teachers, and the classroom documentation teachers shared during the sessions. For the purpose of this research, nine ninety-minute PLC sessions were audio-recorded with three of the sessions being transcribed. Teachers in this research study thought previously about exploring as being a mode of learning for children, however this study was when they realized it could be a viable option for their own learning. This PLC research case study allowed the teachers to listen and reflect on each otherās ideas and determine greater comfort in with raising questions in a group setting. One weakness of this study is the PLC group itself as it has teachers of different age groups which does not allow for as much collaboration as teachers who have students of the same age. One strength of this research is the ability to hear what students who are older and younger are able to do for the purpose of differentiating. Daniel Carpenter, & Paul Munshower. (2019). Broadening borders to build better schools: Virtual professional learning communities. International Journal of Educational Management , 34 (2), 296ā314. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEM-09-2018- This article focuses on a phenomenological case study approach to research PLCs in rural areas. Qualitative data was gathered from multiple sources including surveys, interviews, and observations. While this PLC was held virtually, the researchers found that the teams were able to still build strong relationships comparable to face-to-face- PLC meetings. While this was a virtual PLC, meaning it could be held anywhere, the researchers chose to focus on teachers in rural schools which made it lack generalizability by gaining insight from teachers in other settings, therefore qualifying that as a weakness. One strength of the study was using multiple qualitative data sources in order to gain valuable
mine while beginning their data analysis process. Overall, the researchers found that PLCs enhanced learning for both teachers and students. Teachers displayed an increased knowledge of effective practice and applied more evidence-based approaches in their instruction. One weakness of the study was the lack of participants, with a school population of over 1300 students, the number of participants is small compared to how many most likely work at the school. One strength of this study was the course of study, which was two years, this allows for researchers to better notice trends and improvements. Mintzes, J. J., Marcum, B., Messerschmidt-Yates, C., & Mark, A. (2013). Enhancing Self- Efficacy in Elementary Science Teaching With Professional Learning Communities. Journal of Science Teacher Education , 24 (7), 1201ā1218. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10972-012-9320- This article focuses on a study that used mixed methods and a non-equivalent control group for their study on enhancing self-efficacy in elementary science teaching with PLCs. The participants in this research study were 116 elementary school teachers from two school districts in the Sacramento, California area. Grand Valley Unified School District (GVUSD) was the experimental group which consisted of K-5 teachers. Meanwhile, the participants at Mountain View Joint Unified School District (MVJSD) were randomly chosen and are the comparison group. In order to collect data and information from participants, researchers used the TSI instrument which was administered online on two separate occasions. In addition to the TSI instrument, clinical interviews were conducted one year after the completion of the project. The results showed significant differences among the groups which actually favored teachers in the
comparison group. The researchers believe the significant shift in outcome expectancy can be attributed to the PLCs. The elementary teachers that participated in this research grew substantially in their self-efficacy in science teaching as a result of participating in a PLC. Creating a control and experimental group is a strength of this study because of its ability to compare two similar groups while completing a study. The most important weakness in this study was composition of teacher and student populations since the teachers were all experienced and there was a large proportion of English Language Learning (ELL) students. Owen, S. (2014). Teacher professional learning communities: Going beyond contrived collegiality toward challenging debate and collegial learning and professional growth. Australian Journal of Adult Learning , 54 (2), 54ā77. This research article uses a case study approach to explore the experiences of various teachers and teams involved in PLCs within significantly innovative schools in one Australian state. The researchers used school documentation, interviews, and focus groups to obtain data. This particular PLC study focused on multiple schools, grades, and subjects which allows researchers to gather data to make generalizations. Teachers benefited from the PLC by changing their teaching practices as a result of learning from others during the PLC processes. In the PLC teams that were observed, the leadership aspect is seemingly strong in regard to teacher empowerment. Leadership provided a higher degree of support and funding for professional learning because of PLC involvement. While all of the teams are operating as PLCs, each school is filled with teams that are on their own level of maturity when it comes to conducting PLCs. One weakness of this study was that researchers did not have all PLCs try one specific tactic
Song, K.-O., & Choi, J. (2017). Structural Analysis of Factors That Influence Professional Learning Communities in Korean Elementary Schools. International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education , 10 (1), 1ā9. This quantitative study found in an electronic journal, focuses on South Korean Elementary Schools. This article focused on two research questions when conducting their studies which were: How do PLCs in Korea affect schoolsā effectiveness and what are the school factors that affect PLCs in Korea?. The researchers had 400 questionnaires to 40 elementary schools in South Korea which produced 375 valid questionnaires for use in data analysis for the study. There were a variety of participants including males, females, public school teachers, private school teachers, teachers with bachelorās and teachers with masterās all with a variety of years of experience. This study found that the impacts of PLCs in elementary schools stay consistent in South Korea as it does with other countries that have been studied. The study found that direct effects of teacher autonomy, principalās leadership, time support, information support, and supportive relationships on PLCs were all statistically significant. One weakness of this study is the fact that it is the only known PLC study in South Korea which leads to the possibility of weak results because of the lack of generalization that is able to be made when the country has a much larger population than was originally tested. One strength of the study is that the researchers chose teachers from a variety of backgrounds in order to represent the population as best as they could. Thoma, J., Hutchison, A., Johnson, D., Johnson, K., & Stromer, E. (2017). Planning for Technology Integration in a Professional Learning Community. Reading Teacher , 71 (2), 167ā175. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.
The purpose of this action research study was to explain how teachers worked within a professional learning community to use the Technology Integration Planning Cycle (TIPC) model to integrate technology into literacy instruction. The participants in this study were all teaching in a team for the first year at the beginning of this study. The researchers had the participants go through the TIPC for integrating technology while also receiving support from the research grand that allowed for professional development during after school sessions. The researchers found that integrating technology into literacy instruction is important since technology is used for everyday communication and the many skills required to use technology. The TIPC includes seven critical elements: identifying an instructional goal, determining instructional approaches, determining the digital tools that best suit the instructional approaches, deciding whether the digital tools contribute to instruction, examining potential constraints of the digital tools including a plan for potential problems, delivering instruction, and reflecting on the entire process. The researchers found that using the TIPC helped teachers to set instructional goals and change their thinking and actions. A weakness of this research study was the small and highly specific PLC which was three teachers who have access to 1:1 technology which may not be as applicable or needed at schools that lack in technology. A strength of this research study was using the TIPC because it was able to focus the teacherās attention on one step at a time as they went through the cycle until complete. Research Problem The problem for this study is the lack of proper Professional Learning Community techniques used in the school setting which inhibits teachers from conducting productive PLCs.
which leads researchers to believe that additional studies should be conducted. Furthermore, since many of the research articles highlighted during this literature search are highly specific as to the topics, subjects, or populations, conducting additional research will ensure that PLC research findings are able to be generalized throughout populations.
