The Basics of Professional Learning Communities

Link: "What Is a Professional Learning Community?" By Richard Dufour

A good way to utilize the concept of Professional Learning Communities is to understand Professional Learning Communities themselves. Therefore the article, "What is a Professional Learning Community" by Richard Dufour, functions more than adequately to provide this necessary information by summarizing the idea and goals of PLCs into three "big ideas." The first idea summarizes the goal of ensuring student learning and growth, the second goes over the goal of ensuring an appropriate learning and collaborative class culture, and the third idea states the PLC's base their effectiveness upon their subsequent results. While the article itself is slightly dated, being published in 2004, its style of a general overview of PLCs rather than an in-depth focus on the subject works well as an introductory article on the subject matter. To an educator in need of a quick reference for PLCs, Richard Dufour's article works as a well made overview to use. 

Source: Dufour, R. (2016). What Is a Professional Learning Community? TALIS School Leadership for Learning, 61, 121-144. doi:10.1787/9789264258341-9-en