The Need for Learning Communities Part 1

A lot of my reading and writing this past semester was on learning communities (LC). This umbrella term has really been taxed over the years as education has sought its silver bullet: professional learning communities (PLCs), community learning teams (CLTs), critical friend groups (CFGs), and the list goes on. For this reason, I really appreciated the work of Hargreaves and Fullan (2012), who really broke down what makes professional development happen. Professional Capital (also the title of their book) comprises smaller subsets of equally important capital that teachers must work to foster and grow. Good administration should also be fit for this task. Professional capital comprises social capital, human capital, and decisional capital (Hargreavs & Fullan, 2012). I would argue that LCs are also made of this same stuff. Throw in trust, the authors write, and professional conversations, and you have an effective LC. 

I would like to unpack some of their ideas here, precisely the notion of trust and just what professional conversations are. One way to develop trust is through the use of protocols. Another is through community norms. What happens when you have utilized both methods only to find out that the teachers you are working with are not interested in developing? Or maybe they are just trying to survive the year and do not feel like "this is the year" to be pushing students or themselves. I know that not every book can do all things but there are certain assumptions made based around trust that create gaps in this book. I'm starting fresh this year with an entirely new team. in my LC. When departments and schools are constantly in flux, it is challenging to create that the trust that is so essential.

Maybe, and if I'm vulnerable, I feel like this is something I need to work on. Developing trust in my LC is one of the places I fell short of. I was able to build trust with some members last year, but not others. Trust is not something that is a bar or threshold. It isn't permanent, and it's not the same for all members at all times. Trust is very fluid inside of LCs. Developing trust is the foundation of any relationship - especially ones that are under pressure. Going into next year I want to be more conscious of developing trust with everyone I am working with.

The other area Hargreaves and Fullan (2012) claim to be essential in developing healthy LCs is professional conversations. This term sounds simple enough, but the authors do some complex work here, claiming that professional conversations in LCs must tackle difficult conversations that "adults" and "professionals" have. These are not light conversations that avoid complex topics or areas of concern. The elephant is dealt with. This might be analyzing student work, discussing policies, or offering professional development with new strategies and ideas. So how does all this fit together, and how can it ultimately benefit our students? Well, let's go back to the types of capital the authors proposed.

Human capital is a great place to start, this is who is on your team. It's not about having perfect teachers, or even the best teachers. A point that Hargreaves and Fullan (2012) make is that we often want to cut the bottom 20% instead of seeking to develop these teachers. This business model of constantly churning through the "low performers" is damaging to the profession. Also, this idea of not utilizing the talents of the top 20% can have a negative impact as well. Their point is to use LCs to develop everyone on the team. This is where social capital comes in.

Social capital has a lot to do with trust, protocols and those professional conversations. In LCs, this is an area we often do not spend time developing, or even learning how to develop. None of my professional development experiences have ever focused on social capital. All of my development opportunities for LCs have been about what to fill the time with, and not how to build relationships. 

Decisional capital is the third area they discuss for the components that make professional capital. This capital is focusing on teacher agency. LCs have the potential and capacity to be great forces for teacher agency in schools and communities, but it really comes down to how teachers choose to use the agency they have been given: do teachers exercise their choices to develop more agency? Do they push where they can into spaces so their students can have more of what they need? Are they even aware of what their students need so they can make better decisions? Without intentionality, the answer to these questions is no.

Hargreaves and Fullan set the stage for what a LC should be made of, and how to build and leverage professional capital. However I would argue that this is an empty framework. Missing from the conversation is the who and the why. Who are the students we are fighting for and why is it important. Again, a book cannot do everything. I would argue that a danger is teachers thinking that simply having a good LC is enough - that we do not need to work to build justice and equity in our schools, or to connect the dots to see how this framework for LCs is a powerful tool in creating and growing equity. LCs should have goals and norms that support building a classroom environment that seeks to do the least harm and violence towards our students of color. I've started to read We Want to Do More than Surivive by Dr. Betinna Love. I am going to start to unpack this text in my next post, as well as harken back to my thoughts with Palmer and teaching with integrity. I feel that this work of building equity can and should be done as part of our LCs.