Professional Learning Communities: Teachers, Knowledge, and Knowing

This article explores how knowledge can be built and shared in teachers' learning communities. The author creates two portraits of learning communities in action and contrasts them. Because teachers need to be knowledgeable in ever-changing contexts, ongoing professional learning simply must be part-and-parcel of their work. But how teacher learning is conceived and practiced constructs the relationship between teachers and knowledge. Should teachers be passive recipients of others' expertise? Should they be researchers, scholars, theorizers? The author suggests teacher learning communities offer the opportunity to recapture a Deweyan approach to teacher professionalism, one that involves systematic observations and analyses of classrooms and student work and ongoing collegial dialogue. At the heart of the author's argument is a vision of teachers not only as users of pedagogical knowledge, but also as creators, disseminators, and preservers of it.