By Tom Many, EdD
Fundamentals are the basic, simplest, most important elements, ideas or principles of what we are trying to accomplish. While it might seem like an oversimplification of the work we do to improve schools, it’s true; fundamentals are fundamental. Whatever we’re trying to accomplish, we must master the fundamentals to succeed.
The good news is schools have identified the fundamentals. There has never been a clearer consensus or greater agreement on what schools must do to positively impact student learning. The importance of a guaranteed and viable curriculum, common formative assessments, and systematic pyramids of intervention are not up for debate. Neither is the idea teachers should work together interdependently on collaborative teams. These are the fundamentals of high achieving schools.
“Respect the building blocks, master the fundamentals, and the potential is unlimited.”- P.J. Ladd
In the early stages of becoming a Professional Learning Community, many teachers can name the fundamental elements of the PLC process. They know there are three Big Ideas and four Critical Questions but often confuse or conflate the meaning and application of each element with other initiatives. As teams progress, teachers begin to identify the individual behaviors or activities associated with each of the fundamental elements, recognize what must be done, and describe how the work is accomplished. When teacher teams fully transition into a PLC, they incorporate the fundamentals into their daily routines and are able to apply them when working with new students, new materials, and new situations. For these teams, the fundamentals have become habits of professional practice.
As an example of this progression, consider a Focus on Learning (the biggest of the Big Ideas). A Focus on Learning consists of four Critical Questions teachers must respond to on a regular basis. (What do we want students to know and be able to do? How do we know they have learned it? What do we do if they do or do not learn what is expected?) In the early stages, most teachers can recite the four questions and may even be able to define the meaning of each, but principals should not assume because teachers ‘know’ the fundamentals of the PLC process that they can ‘do’ what it takes to be successful. This condition (knowing but not doing what aligns with best practice) is what Pfeffer and Sutton describe as the knowing-doing gap.
Articulating the Critical Questions is a good start, but it’s not enough. Teams begin to close the knowing-doing gap when teachers respond to the four questions and engage in a specific set of individual tasks or behaviors associated with each question. For example, when responding to Question 1—What do we want students to know and be able to do?—teams must first identify the most essential standards, then unwrap the standards to determine which targets are the most important, and finally, turn their attention to developing the necessary success criteria, learning progressions or ‘I Can’ statements.
A similar set of individual tasks is associated with Question 2—How do we know the students have learned? When responding to Question 2, teacher teams identify the learning targets students absolutely must know and be able to do, determine the level of rigor or cognitive demand for which each target will be assessed, select the most appropriate type of question or task to measure that target at the agreed upon level of rigor, and finally, create a test plan to ensure the validity and reliability of the assessment. The way teams respond to Questions 3 and 4—What do we do when students have or have not learned—can be broken into a similar set of tasks.
When fundamentals become a regular and routine part of a teacher’s practice they become habits of practice. The first stage of the process is to articulate a set of fundamental elements. In the next stage, teachers identify the specific tasks or behaviors associated with each fundamental. The final stage occurs when teachers develop regular routines and practice them until the fundamentals become habits of their professional practice.
“Faithfulness to the fundamentals is something that becomes second nature to a professional.”- Kageyama Toshiro
As in any athletic, artistic or commercial endeavor, the PLC process can be broken down into a set of fundamentals that can be taught and improved upon with practice. If you find you or your staff struggling with some aspect of the PLC process, go back to the fundamentals.
In a PLC, we argue there are productive habits and unproductive habits. Are there situations where teams develop bad habits? Of course; it is not uncommon for teams to fall into a rut and adopt inefficient and/or ineffective routines that become habits harmful to teaching and learning but very often the reason teams develop bad habits is precisely because they had little or no coaching along the way. Without effective feedback, teams never know whether they are developing productive or unproductive habits. Teams may not even know what productive habits are or how to create positive and healthy habits of practice. The responsibility of anyone in a coaching role is to help teams of teachers master the fundamentals by identifying the essential elements, developing routines, and creating habits of practice.
So, why is it that some schools are more successful than others when it comes to implementing the Professional Learning Communities process? It’s all about the fundamentals.
Dr. Tom Many is an author and consultant. His career in education spans more than 30 years.
TEPSA News, November/December 2018, Vol 75, No 6
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