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5440
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Philosophy
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Apr 3, 2024
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6
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Reflecting on Teaching and PLCs
Anonymous Submission
University of the People
EDUC 5440: Assessment and Evaluation
Dr. Adam Jardina
December 29th, 2022
Reflecting on Teaching and PLCs
2
Introduction
DuFour (2004) said that students go to school not just to be taught but to learn. With that
philosophy in mind it becomes important to not only consider what is being taught to students
but to ensure that practices are in place to measure what students are learning and how they are
able to express that learning. While there are multiple avenues to measuring student growth and
attainment, one of the most important practices for teachers is to ensure that they are reflecting
on what they are teaching and how students are engaging in the lessons. While reflecting on their
own practice is essential, working with fellow colleagues in a PLC can increase learning
outcomes for students. This paper looks at the practice of teacher reflection and reflects on this
author’s unique experience with PLCs.
Value of Reflecting on Teaching Practice
Working at an IB school, teachers spend a great deal of time talking about reflection.
Intentionally, there are places within an IB unit plan that require teacher reflection, not only at
the cumulation of the unit a teacher is working on, but throughout the learning process. However,
if you talk to a lot of teachers about their teaching practice, finding those that make time for
quality reflection can be a struggle. With all the required work teachers are expected to do today,
the process of reflection often gets pushed to the bottom of the to-do list to be looked at again
tomorrow. This is a missed opportunity for teachers that directly impacts student learning.
Earl & Katz (2006) spend a great deal of time outlining the importance of student
reflection in their text about assessment, focusing on building in self-reflection into assessment
to challenge student’s thinking, know what their next steps should be, or what understanding
needs to be adjusted in order to show mastery over a concept. This idea is exactly the same for
teachers. If a teacher wants to ensure that the units they are creating for students are quality and
Reflecting on Teaching and PLCs
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will provide the best opportunities for students to learn, they need to spend ample time before,
during, and after a unit to reflect on all parts of a lesson. A teacher should not wait until a
summative assessment to know if students are understanding a lesson, this should be taking place
at multiple points during a unit and with several different aims or goals in mind (DuFour, 2004).
For example, if a teacher is completing a fiction unit of study that includes literature
focusing on the theme of culture and heritage, with sub-focuses of strengthening writing and
understanding of skills like author’s purpose, tone, and detail through word choice, multiple
instances of teacher reflection will need to take place. First off, teachers should be planning with
the end in mind, and because of this they will need to reflect on what went well last time they
completed this unit, what needed to be changed, and what can they change this year that will
make the unit even better (Earl & Katz, 2006)? Teachers should then reflect on the students they
have in front of them - considering the goals they have for this unit, who will struggle, who will
be a leader, and who may need extra support? Throughout the unit, teachers must continue to
reflect, looking at formative data from writing examples, bell ringers, and anecdotal notes from
discussions. Reflecting on this data and using it appropriately will allow teachers to shift any
future lessons as needed to help students understand and can help teachers provide specific
feedback to students that will improve their writing or understanding prior to having to show
mastery on an assessment that is summative in nature (Marshall, 2018). Teachers must then
continue their reflection at the end of the summative unit so that they know how to improve
learning for their students the next time around. In order to put student learning first, teachers
must have honest conversations about themselves and where they were lacking throughout the
teaching process.
Involvement in my School’s PLC
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Reflecting on Teaching and PLCs
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I have the fortunate privilege this year to be the co-chair of a PLC at our school, and I am
hoping that we can use this to enact change and improve the quality of our teaching and
reflection practices at our school. After meeting a few times and discussing strategies, we excited
that we wanted to as a PLC send out surveys to all teachers who taught a particular subject and
then invite all of those teachers to come and meet with the PLC with the hopes of having an
honest discussion about curriculum implementation and after discussions and looking at data the
PLC would be able to make recommendations to help improve practice and reflection in the
classroom. The goal of the PLC is to create a place where teachers across grade levels can begin
to look at what student learning, engagement, and success looks like at the 8th grade, and move
backwards with a particular goal in mind.
Although we are in the beginning stages of this process, it is easy to see the fear that
teachers feel around this idea. Having your colleagues look closely at your work can be
intimidating, and we have been out of the practice for so long at this point that returning to it is
something causing a lot of teachers at our school anxiety. However, I plan to use this course and
the resources and advice from these studies to drive home the idea that this is not something we
should be afraid of but that instead we should embrace the practice and the opportunities we have
to learn from our colleagues. Utilizing the expertise, ideas, experiences and even the failures of
other teachers can create unique opportunities for teachers to improve their practice in a way that
helps students learn (Marshall, 2018).
While this particular PLC has not directly impacted my teaching practice as of yet, I have
also been on other PLCs during my teaching career, mostly with other leader teachers. During
these PLCs there was a lot of talk about ways we thought our colleagues could strengthen their
teaching practices, mission statements were written and one pages were created for teachers to
Reflecting on Teaching and PLCs
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utilize online resources provided by teachers, but little was done to create strategic reflection of
those materials, mission statements or ideas to know if they were successful for our students or if
they were simply ideas with little to back them up. Just like reflection is not occurring enough in
our classroom, it is also not occurring enough in our PLCs.
Conclusion
Perhaps my biggest take away from this assignment is the importance of creating a
specific culture within a school to ensure success for students and teachers. If time was set up for
teachers to reflect with their PLCs and action steps were given to ensure that reflection is also
happening with colleagues in planning and on our own after lessons, we might see higher student
achievement.
Reflecting on Teaching and PLCs
6
References
DuFour, R. (2004). What is a" professional learning community"?.
Educational Leadership
,
61
(8), 6-11
.
http://www.allthingsplc.info/files/uploads/DuFourWhatIsAProfessionalLearningCo
mmunity.pdf
Earl, L., & Katz, S. (2006).
Rethinking classroom assessment with purpose in mind: Assessment
for learning, assessment as learning, assessment of learning
. Manitoba Education,
Citizenship and Youth. https://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/assess/wncp/full_doc.pdf
Marshall, K. (2018). In praise of assessment (done right). Marshallmemo.
https://marshallmemo.com/articles/Assessment%20March%202018.pd
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