Teacher Professional Development In The Professional Learning Community: The Insights From American Practice

Enhancing teacher professional development has been the critical strategy of educational reform in many countries since 1980s. A historical glance back through the decades of teacher professional development research reveals three different disciplines. They are knowledge- skill orientation, practice-reflection orientation and ecological transform orientation. On the whole, the former two focus on individual aspects, while the last is a macro view to an eclectic understanding of the nature and approaches of teacher professional development from the perspective of culture, organization and system. The ecological transform orientation suggests that school should reconstruct organization and shape collaborative culture to improve teacher development.In the middle of 1990s, the strategy of establishing Professional Learning Community (PLC) in school had notable effect on American school reform and teacher development .We believed PLC a successful practice to ecological transform orientation. Through literature research, comparative method and case method, this article analyzed the relationship between PLC and ecological transform orientation from the perspective of history, theory basement, standards, constructing model, the teacher development approaches.There are several findings in this research: As learners, administrators and collaborators, teachers engage in collaborative probing, group learning, and classroom observing and so on- to get better interpersonal support, raise their self-efficiency, strengthen their identity to schools, promote the share and creation of professional knowledge and stimulate property awareness of their professional development. The collaborative and sharing atmosphere and the learning mechanism of PLC are also what ecological transform orientation advocated. Therefore, learning the practical experience from the PLC in America is valuable for the transform of school organization and the professional development of teacher in China. Schools have faced double challenges that resulted from the rapid changes of school and society in 21centery. The traditional school can't meet the requirement of school and teacher development. So schools turn into PLC will be an important strategy in future. Only according the nature of PLC and the real condition in Chinese school can we put forward the feasible and available strategies for the teacher professional development in China. According to this research, the following problems should be taken into consideration in establishing PLC. Firstly, it is necessary to transform school department management, encourage the school staff to participate in the establishment of their PLC. Secondly, it is necessary to investigate current situation of the school and determine problems to be solved. Thirdly, it is necessary to shape clear will and reinforce affinity to school. Besides, to form pluralistic teacher community, promote and sustain is also necessary.