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STEM Teachers and Teaching in the Digital Era pp 65–89Cite as

Professional Learning Communities of Science Teachers: Theoretical and Practical Perspectives

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Abstract

Programs of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) are gradually becoming significant frameworks for enhancing teachers’ professional development and for elevating students’ performances and motivation. This study discusses theoretical and practical perspectives manifested in the design and enactment of innovative middle-school science and high-school physics PLCs: ‘Research-Practice Partnerships (RPPs)’, ‘Scholarship of Teaching and Practitioner Research’, and ‘Boundary Crossing’. The PLCs were carried out as a collaboration between academic teams at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and practitioners, and involved sharing and collaborative analysis of teachers’ practice and students’ learning. Exemplary case studies, carried out in the middle school science and physics high school PLCs, demonstrate main characteristics of these PLCs. The study on the processes and outcomes of the PLCs indicates that teachers became more attentive to students’ conceptual understandings and needs. Teachers enriched their pedagogical content knowledge, their content knowledge, and their reflective stances towards their practice. A top-down approach, which characterized the initial interactions in the PLCs, has been gradually transformed into interactions and collaborative learning, leading to a ‘change in roles’, which involved a more symmetric sharing of responsibilities between the participants. These interactions within the PLCs created an evolving ‘network model’ of knowledge transmission.

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Acknowledgement

We are grateful to the teacher-leaders of the PLCs who collaborated with us in designing and implementing the programs. The willingness to sincerely share with us their experience and insights were keystones of this effort. Special thanks to Hana Berger, Smadar Levy and Esty Magen, from the Physics team and to Miri Oren, Yifat Harrari and Marcel Frailich from the STEM team at the Weizmann Institute of Science.

We thank the Trump foundation for promoting and stimulating the PLCs’ initiatives described in this chapter. We also thank Zvi Aricha and Aviva Breiner, national superintendents in the Ministry of Education (MOE), for the on-going support, and Miri Gottlieb and Tali Berglas-Shapiro from the MOE for their role in the national regulation of PLCs.

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Author notes

  1. Bat-Sheva Eylon, Zahava Scherz and Esther Bagno have equally contributed to this chapter.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Science Teaching, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

    Bat-Sheva Eylon, Zahava Scherz & Esther Bagno

Authors
  1. Bat-Sheva Eylon
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  2. Zahava Scherz
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  3. Esther Bagno
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Correspondence to Bat-Sheva Eylon .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Seymour Fox School of Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

    Yifat Ben-David Kolikant

  2. Faculty of Education, University of Windsor, Windsor, ON, Canada

    Dragana Martinovic

  3. Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Marina Milner-Bolotin

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Eylon, BS., Scherz, Z., Bagno, E. (2020). Professional Learning Communities of Science Teachers: Theoretical and Practical Perspectives. In: Ben-David Kolikant, Y., Martinovic, D., Milner-Bolotin, M. (eds) STEM Teachers and Teaching in the Digital Era. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29396-3_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29396-3_5

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