Teachers' Professional Learning Communities in China

A Mixed-Method Study on Shanghai Primary Schools

Jia Zhang

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781032260235
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000582284
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The book investigates how Chinese professional learning communities (PLCs) shape the professional practice of teachers and their psychological well-being.

Adopting a mixed research approach, the author explores the influence of PLCs on teachers' self-efficacy, commitment and job satisfaction in a number of schools in Shanghai, China. The study contributes to our understanding of PLC outcomes from the Chinese perspective, enriches our knowledge of how PLCs promote teachers' psychological well-being, and also sheds light on how the practices of PLCs can be influenced by various institutional and socio-cultural forces.

The book will be of interest to academics and students studying professional learning communities, teacher professional learning and professional development, school effectiveness and school improvement, and Chinese schooling.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781003286141-1

Research background

Developing professional learning communities has become an effective strategy for school educational reform

In the past decades, education systems around the world have entered a period of continuous change to address the demands for more competitive citizens in the context of knowledge economy, information society and globalization (Darling-Hammond, 2009; Pang, 2006). As Hargreaves and Fullan (2009) pointed out, “Education is entirely about change – about drawing things out of people and creating the generations of future” (p. 5). However, it is not easy to conduct school educational reform, which requires an evolutionary, complex and challenging process (Fullan, 1993). In practice, educational reform is “easy to propose, hard to implement, and extraordinarily difficult to sustain” (Hargreaves & Fink, 2006, p. 1). Therefore, how to enhance school educators’ capacity for learning and reform has become a key area of interest among educational practitioners and researchers around the globe (Hallinger, 2010; Short, Greer, & Melvin, 1994; Sofo, Fitzgerald, & Jawas, 2012).

A growing number of studies have shown that establishing collaborative cultures in schools is essential for successful educational reform (Hemmings, 2012; Kirk & MacDonald, 2001; Pyhalto, Soini, & Pietarinena, 2011; Waldron & Mcleskey, 2010). The core characteristics of collaborative cultures include: (1) foster diversity while trust-building; (2) provoke anxiety and contain it; (3) engage in knowledge creation; (4) combine connectedness with open-endedness; and (5) fuse the spiritual (moral purpose), political (power) and intellectual (ideas and best practices) (Fullan, 1999). In such a culture, all professionals become agents of educational change, and they share a common discourse, goals and meaning (Schneider, 2008). Thus schools can be improved through teachers’ collective engagement in the acquisition of new knowledge and abilities (Elmore, 2004), especially when it requires significant and profound change, because networks are more effective than hierarchy (Reeves, 2009).

In this context, developing professional learning communities (PLCs) in schools is found to hold promise for effective educational reforms (Harris, 2010; Pyhalto et al., 2011; Thornburg & Mungai, 2011). The core idea of PLCs is that they enable groups of educators to collectively interrogate and improve their practice through shared vision, collaborative reflection and mutual learning with the purpose of promoting student learning (Hord, 1997; Stoll, Bolam, McMahon, Wallace, & Thomas, 2006). Thus, the concept of PLCs is increasingly linked to educational reform (Bullough, 2007), and establishing PLCs has become an important strategy to promote school reform in many countries such as the USA, Australia, and Singapore (Allen, 2013; Hairon & Dimmock, 2012).

The outcomes of professional learning communities in Chinese context have been under-researched

Since Hord’s seminal research in 1997, the concept of PLCs has received considerable attention in the educational field. There are three main themes of research: First is the basic characteristics of PLCs. Existing research has proposed various conceptual models of PLCs to understand their characteristics based on various contexts (Hord, 1997; Louis, Marks & Kruse, 1996; Stoll et al., 2006; Wong, 2010a). Empirical studies were also conducted to validate these models (Bolam, McMahon, Stoll, Thomas, & Wallace, 2005; Hipp & Huffman, 2010; Huffman & Hipp, 2003; Wells & Feun, 2007; Zhang & Pang, 2016). Second, previous research has devoted attention to how to build and sustain effective PLCs (DuFour, 2003; Schechter, 2010; Wald & Cassleberry, 1999). Various stages have been identified for the development of PLCs (McLaughlin & Talbert, 2006; Louis & Kruse, 1995), and the challenges and barriers to the practice of PLCs in specific stages have also been discussed (Giles & Hargreaves, 2006; Hord & Sommers, 2008; Talbert, 2010). Third, some studies have focused on the outcomes of PLCs on teachers and students, and have found that teachers who have participated in PLCs report improved professional learning (Bullough, 2007; Levine & Marcus, 2010), increased teaching effectiveness (Andrews & Lewis, 2002; Vescio, Ross, & Adams, 2008) and a reduced sense of isolation (Dalgarno & Colgan, 2007). Students’ academic achievement can also be significantly enhanced when PLCs are well-developed in schools (Goddard, Goddard, & Tschannen-Moran, 2007, Lomos, Hofman, & Bosker, 2011).

Studies in the field of PLCs have been growing in the past decades, however, significant research gaps exist in the literature. First of all, there is no universal definition of a PLC, and the meaning of this term is often generalized (Lomos et al., 2011; Stoll et al., 2006). As DuFour (2004) pointed out, “The term has been used so ubiquitously that it is in danger of losing all meaning” (p. 6). Therefore, more empirical studies are needed to operationalize this concept and to explore and validate its core characteristics in various contexts.

Furthermore, the positive role that PLCs play in teacher work is often taken for granted by researchers in different contexts, but with insufficient empirical evidence to support the claim (Vescio et al., 2008; Zheng, Yin, & Li, 2019). Meanwhile, inconsistencies have been detected in the effects of PLCs on teaching practices and student learning (Lomos et al., 2011; Vescio et al., 2008). For instance, Huberman (1993) claimed that strong school communities probably impeded teachers’ independent artisanship by taking up their time and limiting their professional judgment. In contrast, Talbert and McLaughlin’s (2002) study suggested that strong collaborative teacher communities could engender artisanship in teaching, as teachers could engage in dialogues and collaboration around student learning, share and invent repertoires of effective teaching practice, and increase commitment to improving practice. Therefore, more empirical research is needed regarding the consequences of PLCs on teachers.

In addition, there have been few (if any) studies investigating how PLCs shape teachers’ professional practice and development, and how teachers work and learn together during PLC activities (Horn & Little, 2010; Pella, 2011). Investigating this topic is important and can enhance our understanding of how effective t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Foreword
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The concept of professional learning communities and its effects on teachers
• 3 Understanding professional learning communities in Chinese context
• 4 Testing a conceptual model to understand the characteristics and development of professional learning communities in China
• 5 The relationship of professional learning communities with teachers’ self-efficacy, commitment and job satisfaction
• 6 How professional learning communities affect teachers’ self-efficacy, commitment and job satisfaction in Chinese schools
• 7 Barriers to the development of professional learning communities in Chinese schools
• 8 Concluding remarks
• Index