Developing a Professional Learning Culture

Commitment to growth and development

Key ideas:
Effective leaders, teachers and learning support assistants are lifelong learners
Involvement in a professional learning culture is a commitment to develop professionally and
personally
Everyone as lifelong learners
A professional learning culture is one in which everyone, as educators, is committed to
personal growth and development as professionals. It grows out of a deep professional desire
to continue to develop knowledge and practice and to maximise opportunities for learning.
Such a culture is central to effective, high quality teaching. It means that, as educators, we see
ourselves, and are seen by others, as lifelong learners both of the subjects and cultures we
teach and of teaching itself.
As education is a changing eld, we need to continue to keep up to date with new
developments. Moreover, our professional drive is to continue to deepen and broaden our
knowledge of our chosen eld through ongoing learning throughout our careers and beyond.
Creating a culture of professional learning
Key ideas:
A professional learning culture involves developing a deep and ongoing awareness
of the practices and processes of teaching and learning
A professional learning culture is an ongoing process of learning from, and reecting
on, a personal and professional stance, including understandings, ideas and
experiences
Learning cultures can be considered in a range of ways, including the following:
A learning culture has often been considered in terms of the environment and experiences
created by teachers for pupils. A learning culture is one in which experiences are structured in
such a way that students have opportunities to investigate, explore and take risks in
developing new ideas and insights.
A professional learning culture has often been thought of as something that is a feature of
schools and of school leadership. In this sense a professional learning culture is the promotion
of professional learning as a normal and valuable part of teachers work and the collaborative
development process and goals for professional learning. In addition, the culture supports,
resources and rewards professional learning (Crowther, Kaagan, Ferguson & Hann, 2002).
While both of these views have elements of a professional learning culture they present the
learning culture as something that is (or ought to be) created to support the learning of others.
This, however, misses a crucial point about the nature of cultures, which is that they are
something in which people participate not something which is done to them. Teachers create a
culture of professional learning through their own actions.
Contexts of a professional learning culture
Key ideas:
The focus of a learning culture is on learning in diverse contexts: teacher learning,
student learning, community learning
Professional learning happens in a range of different ways
A professional learning culture is one which engages with learning in many different contexts.
It is not simply the pupils learning or an individual teachers learning, but rather it is a

commitment to learning as a valued activity in its own right. Creating a culture of learning for
pupils is an important part of this work, as is having a supportive environment in which to
develop as a professional, however nothing can create a professional learning culture if this is
not found in the practice of teachers themselves and their disposition to developing their
professional learning.
A professional learning culture involves more than regular participation in organised training
activities, some of which are short, one-off sessions. It requires active engagement with ideas
and issues and critical reection of knowledge and practice. In engaging this way, teachers
take an active responsibility to understand, develop and experiment with aspects of their
professional work. Teachers are in this sense observers and analysers of what is occurring in
their schools, classrooms and communities and not just planners and deliverers of a
curriculum.
Effective teaching is informed by personal knowledge, trial and
error, reection on practice, and conversations with colleagues.
To be a teacher means to observe students and study classroom
interactions, to explore a variety of effective ways of teaching,
and to build conceptual frameworks that can guide ones work.
(Fischer, 2001:29)

Observing and analysing add a critical dimension to teaching practice which seeks to
continually experiment with and develop what happens in the process of teaching and learning
in order to expand the opportunities for both teacher and learners. This in turn involves the
development of an inquiry stance. In discussing the idea of an inquiry (investigative) stance
Crichton notes:
Teaching necessarily involves being alert to what is going on in
the classroom, noticing developments and changes, attending
to emergent needs, comparing achievements at one point in
time with what has happened before and what might happen
after, reecting on teaching practice and assessment, evaluating
activities and plans, developing and drawing on curriculums,
and the host of other activities that contribute to effective
teaching practice. Of course these activities do not happen
in isolation; they inform each other through the lesson, the
day, the week, and over the longer term, acknowledging the
perspectives and changing needs of students, teachers and
members of the broader school community.
(Crichton, 2007:8)
An investigative stance is not something which teachers add to their practice. It is rather a way
of doing what teachers regularly do in more systematic ways (Liddicoat & Jansen, 1998).
In particular, an inquiry stance involves:
an orientation to noticing, documenting, and making sense of the actions of teachers
and learners
an ongoing interest in using information about the classroom to develop language
teaching and learning practice.
This means more than keeping up-to-date with curriculum initiatives and planning units of
work. Most teachers devote time to thinking about and developing their curriculum and many
professional learning activities are focused on developing better understandings of curriculum
documents. These activities focus on the intended curriculum (what is going to be taught).

Less attention is often paid to important aspects of teaching work such as the implemented
curriculum (what teachers actually teach) and to the attained curriculum (what students learn)
(Marzano, 2003). Similarly, less attention is devoted to the processes of teaching, learning,
assessment and evaluation or to questioning ones understanding of the basic constructs of
the discipline, such as language, culture, learning and the intercultural.
As part of a culture of professional learning, teachers need an ongoing engagement with
questions such as the following.
What are my goals and values as a teacher of young learners?
What do I want each pupil to learn?
How do I understand the constructs that I am teaching and how is this reected in what I
teach?
How will I develop experiences and activities which promote this learning?
How will I know when each pupil has learned it?
How will I respond when a pupil experiences difculty in learning?
Collaborating for a professional learning culture
Key idea:
A professional learning culture is based on dialogue with others, including pupils,
peers, mentors and professional networks
While a professional learning culture is characterised by the engagement of individual teachers
in an ongoing process of learning, it does not mean that teachers learn in isolation from others.
A culture is a shared enterprise and professional learning is at its most effective when it is
done collaboratively. This means that a professional learning culture requires a communal
dimension in which professional learning is both a formal and an informal process of sharing
expertise and experiences as a professional learning community.
A professional learning community involves teachers working collaboratively together to
identify and work with the issues and challenges raised by teaching and learning in individual
or shared contexts. Such collaboration involves dialogue about issues and problems related to
teaching and learning and to pupils progress. Teachers can often work in isolation from other
teachers in other local schools, and in some cases in isolation from other teachers in their own
school. For this reason, professional learning communities are vital. A professional learning
community means developing a collaborative approach to, and mutual support for, personal
learning by providing opportunities to learn that (involve) collaboration, dialogue, reection,
inquiry and leadership (Lambert, 1998:xi).
For teachers, networks are therefore an important part of the professional learning culture.
Such networks can be constructed in various ways, connecting:
teachers within a school community across disciplines
teachers of the same year groups
teachers of specific curriculum areas
teachers at different key stages of schooling
teachers at the same key stages schooling.
Each such network allows for different possibilities of dialogue and collaboration. Networks
within a school facilitate dialogue and exchange about specic groups of learners and the ways
in which teaching and learning happen at other times and in other subjects giving a deeper
understanding of pupils experiences of schooling. Subject specic networks contribute to
professional learning which is focused on the particularities of individual curriculum areas.
Such networks are often made up of teachers at different levels of schooling and facilitate
exchange about what happens at different stages in a learners progression through curriculum
learning. Networks among teachers at the same level of schooling support teachers in working
with the cognitive, social and developmental issues which are relevant to their area of work.
Such networks typically include teachers from different

subject areas and enrich the possible perspectives that teachers of any particular curriculum
area bring to their reection and investigation. A rich professional learning culture would allow
opportunities for interactions with various different congurations of teachers. Learning
communities can be developed using communication technologies that can include teachers
who are unable to attend face-to-face sessions, often isolated from others teaching in their
subject area.
A professional learning culture is not, however, simply a set of networks of teachers. It is
fundamentally a dialogue about curriculum, teaching, learning and assessment which occurs
among all educators who professionally contribute to developing understanding and reection.
A professional learning culture may include a mentoring relationship between a beginning
teacher and a more experienced teacher. In this case, the relationship is not a simple masterapprentice relationship, as learning in such contexts is a two-way process in which the
knowledge and experiences of the less experienced teacher provide possibilities for learning
for the more experienced teacher as well. A professional learning culture also involves
dialogue with pupils a process of coming to understand their perspectives on, and
experiences of, education to develop an understanding of their needs, expectations and
interests and of what it is that they bring to their classroom learning.
In developing a professional learning culture it is important to have a clear sense of ones own
learning needs and national professional standards. These standards are designed to describe
accomplished teachers and professional cultures. They reect an ideal to which teachers
should aspire. Teachers can work with them to understand and to develop their own
professional stance and practices. These standards are intended to benet teachers at all
levels of schooling as signposts for ongoing professional learning and as a resource for
evaluating their own knowledge and practice as they reect on their work as
teachers (Liddicoat, 2006).
Working with professional standards enables all of us, as educators, to consider our own
practice and professional capabilities in a critical way. Using such a document can help target
professional learning, identify personal learning goals and develop personalised learning plans.
The standards can be accompanied by agreed reection questions which can be designed for
teachers to use in considering how each standard applies to their own professional context and
to identify areas for future learning.
Questions for reection
1 How could you increase the opportunities for involvement in a learning community
either within or outside your school?
2 What issues do you or your colleagues face in their professional practice which an
investigative stance could help them understand and change?
3 How do you involve parents and members of the school community in developing and
monitoring a learning culture?
4 How do you ensure professional standards for teaching contribute to an understanding of
professional learning needs?