Communities Of Practice Empower Teachers To Tackle Thorny Problems

FOCUS

Communities of practice empower teachers to tackle thorny problems

By Thomas R. Feller Jr., Elizabeth Myers and Ashley Smith

Categories: Collaboration, Learning communities, Learning systems/planning

February 2022

One of the most effective forms of professional learning happens when teachers conduct collaborative inquiry in their own classrooms around difficult and challenging topics — even topics that are potentially divisive. We’ve seen this powerful process at work in our district in Pitt County, North Carolina, where teachers became collaborative researchers and addressed instructional problems of practice in their own classrooms. They developed and used skills to better understand diverse perspectives, analyzed data to efficiently examine possible causes, and engaged in a collaborative cycle of inquiry to investigate and address the underlying issues. We found that this process leads to positive changes, even in areas that are complex and sometimes conflictual. Problems of practice are, by definition, persistent and not easy to solve, and many

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