ABSTRACT
In this chapter we consider the relationship between teacher agency and professional learning communities (PLCs). We explore the range of teacher learning communities which have developed since the 1990s both in the USA and more specifically the UK. The chapter builds on Little’s (2003) call to examine teacher interaction across ‘a range of settings’ from formal professional development to that which occurs naturally in the workplace, extending this to incorporate established and emergent research about online teacher learning communities which may be considered to be additional and increasingly integral sites for research-informed teacher learning. In particular, we draw upon Philpott’s (2014) chapter on communities of practice (CoPs), further developed by Philpott and Oates (2016) and taken up again by Philpott and Poultney (2018).
Centrally we discuss the conundrum raised by Philpott and Oates (2016: 3) of whether PLCs are ‘an affordance for agency’ or if teacher agency is ‘a prerequisite for professional learning communities’. In this respect, an important element surrounds the function of PLCs as either ‘site[s] of struggle’ (Avis 2005: 219) or bounded, prescribed pedagogical spaces for system adaptation in response to dominant political and ideological discourses. Finally, we invite discussion on how PLCs hold, present and make judgements on the ‘truth’ of the knowledge (Nicoll and Fejes, 2011: 9), particularly whether more experienced colleagues have a greater agentic value in the representation, reproduction and creation of professional knowledge.
