Professional Learning Communities and Collective Teacher Efficacy
Unless you're an educator who's been on a deserted island, you've probably been included in some sort of "research-based" school improvement plan. If you're lucky, you and your colleagues were included in the decision making process for how to implement that plan. Maybe you were even asked for input before it was decided. Many aren't so lucky. You've surely heard of John Hattie's research. His rankings of influences and their "effect sizes" allegedly provide teachers a list of strategies ordered by how effective they are for producing student growth. An effect size of 0.4 is said to represent a year's worth of learning growth. Strategies with an effect size greater than 0.4 suggest the strategy produces more than a year's growth. Effect sizes less than 0.4 indicate the strategy does not produce a full year's growth over the course of a year. The larger the effect size, the more effective that strategy is for producing academic...