Student Learning Community Development Paper

In the 21 century, educators are faced with many issues affecting student learning and they have to implement new approaches to help students meet their needs and succeed in the classroom. For this reason, teachers must implement effective teaching strategies to engage students in their learning as well as develop new forms of teaching and strategies to meet the needs of a diverse, continually changing student population (McLaughlin & Talbert, 2006). In order to improve student learning, teachers need to make commitments to work as a team and discuss issues and concerns affecting students’ learning; therefore, creating a learning community in school will help resolve many issues and concerns affecting students’ learning. Creating a learning …show more content…
It is being beneficial because understanding how teacher learning communities differ from typical school communities provides me with different way approaches on how to create a learning community in the school. Teacher learning communities stand out for their strong commitment to serving all of their students well, innovation in subject instruction to improve student learning, and success in obtaining school and district resources and support for their collaborative work (McLaughlin & Talbert (2006). Understanding the three stages of learning community development that are labeled as novice, intermediate, and advanced stages gave me a sense on what needs to be done in the school to create an effective learning community. In the novice stage, for example, the first step in the inquiry process is for teachers to collect baseline data throughout the school. Once the school collects data and use the data in a meaningful way, the school creates systems to manage data and began to understand the value of inquiry for improving practice (McLaughlin & Talbert (2006). In this stage, the teacher communities develop different research skills, including constructing research questions, problem statements, and strategies for analysis. In the intermediate stage, teachers develop technical skills, and comfort in using data for inquiry, …show more content…
One reason is that when data of assessments is gathered and discovered, some teachers use it to get grades and that is not the purpose of assessing students. An established teacher learning community makes the school accountable for student learning, rather than locating accountability exclusively in an external mechanism, such as the high-stakes testing systems used in many areas (McLaughlin & Talbert (2006). The purpose of assessing students is for them to learn from their mistakes and teachers have to provide different meaningful resources on how they can better their weaknesses. Another, reason that my school would fall on novice stage is that our teacher community is not being exposed to work collaboratively and work in social settings with other colleagues and work as a team. Most of the teachers in my school work in isolation. According to Ackerman and Mackenzie (2007), social theory of learning rests on three processes that are learning, meaning, and identity and they occur, side by side in communities of practice in which social practices are espoused and enacted. The possible questions that I might ask my “school-base team” about the current status of the school are the following: Why do 9thth-grade students have a big percentage failing? Why do 11th grade students not passing the English exam for graduation? These questions are basically to understand