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University of Wyoming

Professional Learning Communities offer new framework for field experiences

   Response to evolving school district needs and national demands for accountability have led the University of Wyoming College of Education to revise the process and the expectations for field-based experiences required of all teacher education students.

   Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), which provide concentrated field placement sites for UW teacher education candidates, are designed to offer focused, integrated opportunities to ensure quality content and pedagogy experiences. Simultaneously, PLCs are also designed to offer shared professional development opportunities for mentor teachers and their colleagues in PLC districts. The “community” represents pre-service teacher education candidates, P-12 students, P-12 faculty, university faculty, and administrative liaisons and connections within the school districts and UW College of Education.

   Four Wyoming sites established pilot efforts in 2003-04: Albany County School District 1 in Laramie, Laramie County School District 1 in Cheyenne, Sheridan County School District 2 in Sheridan, and Fremont County School Districts 14 and 25 in Ethete and Riverton (the Wind River Indian Reservation). These initial sites grew out of historical partnerships with school districts in the state (the Wyoming School-University Partnership), volunteers for this initiative, many UW grant-funded explorations, and support from the Wyoming Department of Education.

   Participants spent the 2003-04 academic year finalizing memoranda of understandings with each site, getting acquainted with new administrators in some of the districts, establishing site-based PLC management teams, establishing goals for the PLC, and implementing start-up shared professional development activities.

   “The College of Education is comfortable with the fact that we made good progress toward those goals, and that we did it very quickly,” Kay Persichitte, director of teacher education, says. “The evaluation feedback that we got was very supportive of having made strong, positive movement in establishing better relationships within all of the PLC districts, with having demonstrated a commitment on the part of our full-time faculty to be active partners in those PLCs.”

   While the level and quality of relationship development in the last year accomplished the college’s goal in that area, maintaining those relationships is an ongoing process and focus of commitment.

   “We’re never ‘there,’” Persichitte says of site team relationships. “They’ll always be under some level of revision and need for nurturing.”

   A driving force in adopting the PLC model calls for increased accountability and College of Education faculty involvement in field experiences for student teachers.

   “We’re held responsible for ensuring that every one of our graduates has the content preparation and the pedagogy preparation to meet state and national standards,” Persichitte says. “We must be able to document that every one of our teacher education graduates knows their subject area, and they know how to teach it.”

   Conversations leading to the new approach and the regional sites began nearly two years ago and involved a variety of voices and perspectives from the education community in Wyoming.  Most important to the long-term success of the PLCs will be close collaboration between the College of Education and PLC districts. While these relationships have existed for decades, the nature of the relationships is changing to require much deeper collaboration among all members of the learning community.

   “We’ve had great relationships with all of these districts,” Persichitte says, “but this is different, and it will require changes in process, in how decisions are made, when decisions are made. It will require changes in the roles of some personnel as well. That is a challenge for all the PLC participants.”

   Monitoring field experience quality and mentoring improvements in pedagogy for preservice teachers has been a great challenge for the Laramie-based faculty when candidates are hundreds of miles dispersed. Another concern is the ability of the UW faculty to work closely with the mentor teachers in relationships that benefit the preservice teacher, the inservice teacher, children in the classrooms, and the UW faculty in grounding their work in school settings.

   The PLC framework provides a structure for education faculty to have increased contact with students in field experiences and to become much more directly connected to contemporary practice and issues in our public schools. Learning communities also change the districts’ role in preparing the next generation of teachers.

   “They will be partners in the preparation of the pre-service students that are in their classrooms,” Persichitte says of mentor teachers and district administrators. “Teacher education today requires strong partnerships with schools. Mentor teachers will have opportunity to impact the quality of the graduate of UW, as our partners. They will have an opportunity to increase and expand their own professional development around issues related to P-12 education and teacher preparation. We hope there is benefit to the district and we know there will be benefit to our preservice teachers and the preparation of new educators for Wyoming.”

   The University of Wyoming has opportunities and challenges that other teacher education institutions do not face.

   “Because we are the only institution in the state, every district has needs and expectations -- and history -- associated with their relationship with the UW College of Education,” she says. “No other teacher preparation institution in the nation has that kind of expectation. With the PLCs, the UW College of Education is making a serious effort to meet broad needs and maintain our focus on ‘Developing Competent and Democratic Professionals’.”