Attributes of Professional Learning Communities that Support Meaningful Discourse About Learning and Teaching
The effectiveness of a PLC facilitator in promoting meaningful discourse among her/his PLC members relied heavily on the facilitator's ability to decenter when communicating with other members of her/his PLC. Facilitators who had more connected understanding of the content under discussion were better able to understand the meanings being conveyed and thus pose more meaningful questions to move the PLC discussions to productive levels. Desirable PLC facilitator behaviors were acquired by 3 of our 4 PLC facilitators with direct coaching from the PLC coach appearing to contribute most to the positive shifts that we observed. The one PLC facilitator who showed little improvement in her ability to facilitate meaningful discourse did not appear to value the goals of our project. As one example she expressed that she believed mathematics was about getting answers to specific problems and she saw no value in examining multiple solution approaches that students constructed.
