Course overview
This course will develop informed and critical understandings of policy, theory and practice related to leading professional learning communities. Students will examine the contested debates around professional learning communities: critiques of School or Site Effectiveness/School or Site Improvement, various versions of 'learning community', contemporary ideas about professional learning communities (PLCs). Students will examine theories of Organisational change: global reforms; national policy rationales, site level change models. Students will examine approaches to professional learning that take seriously the demand to develop new educational practices (e.g. action research, practitioner inquiry). Students will research 'educational' leadership in their own contexts, developing their own case study.
Course learning outcomes
- Critically analyse the contested nature of professional learning communities in education literature
- Examine international case studies to ascertain how contemporary policy affects leading professional learning communities
- Develop a case for, and problematise, professional learning communities in their own workplace
- Examine various approaches to conducting professional learning (eg action research, practitioner inquiry, action learning)
- Engage with readings that take up alterative conceptual frameworks (eg. School Effectiveness, collegium, communities of practice) for leadership in professional learning communities