Learning Cycles: A Powerful Tool for Teacher-to-Teacher Professional Learning. CenterView

Abstract

This latest installment in a series on teacher leadership describes how a learning cycle framework can provide a useful structure to support teacher leaders as they plan and facilitate powerful teacher-led professional learning. Teacher leaders have the potential to use learning cycles to strengthen teacher professional learning, making it more purposeful, reflective, and relevant to how teachers learn. Compared to traditional "sit-and-get" professional development, which has very little teacher engagement, teacher-to-teacher professional learning structured as a learning cycle offers teachers meaningful opportunities to engage deeply in learning that is grounded in their actual practice. Since 2013, hundreds of teacher leaders have been participating in the Teacher Practice Networks (TPN) initiative designed to advance instruction aligned to state standards through teacher leadership. Through annual data collected across the TPN, including surveys of teacher leaders and the teachers they lead, The Center for the Future of Teaching & Learning at WestEd has found that teacher leaders are better prepared to lead when armed with tools or a structure, such as a learning cycle, to guide how they lead professional learning for their peers. Two sidebars present the learning cycle in action.