Revisiting professional learning communities through a cultural–ecological lens: a narrative review of challenges in primary education contexts

Professional learning communities (PLCs) are widely promoted as a key architecture for teacher professional development (TPD), yet their implementation in primary education remains uneven across systems. This narrative review synthesises 39 empirical studies published between 2010 and 2024 to examine the structural, cultural, and professional factors that constrain PLC enactment. The narrative approach was chosen because it supports a context-sensitive and theoretically informed synthesis of diverse international literature. Drawing on Culture and Organisation Theory and the Ecological Theory of Teacher Agency, the review adopts a cultural–ecological lens to explain how authority relations, institutional routines and teachers’ lived experiences shape collaborative practice. This lens clarifies why similar PLC designs generate divergent outcomes across Asian and Western contexts. Across the studies, hierarchical norms, routinised leadership and restricted autonomy often reduced collaboration to compliance-oriented activity rather than inquiry-focused learning. Accordingly, the review reconceptualises PLC challenges as culturally embedded ecologies that condition teachers’ capacity for agency. This perspective contributes to a more contextually grounded understanding of PLC implementation and highlights the need for TPD policies and leadership practices that cultivate trust, professional discretion, and organisational affordances for sustained collaborative learning.