About 10 years ago, education researchers were studying Professional Learning Communities as an approach to improving schools and districts. In fact, there is even a site devoted to PLCs and their presence in education.
Several years ago Richard DuFour, a superintendent from Illinois who had great success leading PLCs in his district, began writing and speaking about the work he had done. Through his speaking and publications, he gives other educators ideas and insights into how to develop Professional Learning Communities through which teachers, principals, administrators and others in the district connect with each other and work collaboratively to improve their practice. It's a simple idea, but one that challenges the norms of schools and districts and the ways in which they are organized.
Teachers have often had a "planning period" in their day, but rarely one that was designed for them to use in order to work with a team of colleagues on the improvement of their teaching and their students' learning. For most, it was a roughly 40-minute time in the day to get some planning done individually.
One angle that would be interesting to study in my research would be the presence of some of the characteristics of Professional Learning Communities in the online communities through which teachers connect.
