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Challenges in Sustaining Professional Learning Communities Focused on Equity

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Title: Challenges in Sustaining Professional Learning Communities Focused on Equity
Language: English
Authors: Joonkil Ahn (ORCID 0000-0001-5285-3599), Osly J. Flores (ORCID 0000-0003-1517-4081), Anjalé D. Welton, Donald G. Hackmann
Source: Journal of Educational Change. 2025 26(1):57-87.
Availability: Springer. Available from: Springer Nature. One New York Plaza, Suite 4600, New York, NY 10004. Tel: 800-777-4643; Tel: 212-460-1500; Fax: 212-460-1700; e-mail: customerservice@springernature.com; Web site: https://link.springer.com/
Peer Reviewed: Y
Page Count: 31
Publication Date: 2025
Document Type: Journal Articles
Reports - Research
Education Level: Junior High Schools
Middle Schools
Secondary Education
Descriptors: Educational Change, Cooperative Learning, Communities of Practice, Teaching Methods, Instructional Improvement, Middle School Teachers, Equal Education, Race, English Learners, Instructional Leadership, Barriers, School Culture, Teacher Administrator Relationship, Inclusion, Special Needs Students, Educational Practices, Teacher Characteristics
DOI: 10.1007/s10833-024-09511-2
ISSN: 1389-2843
1573-1812
Abstract: Despite the benefits of improving teaching and learning that research evidences, professional learning communities (PLCs) can be challenging to sustain for a sufficient period of time to become deeply engrained within the school's culture and accepted by teachers as organizational norms. As PLCs strive to achieve a system-level reform and promote educators' reflective dialogues and shared experiences, they have strong potential to achieve positive changes in teacher perspectives and teaching practices focused on equity. Despite this potential, only a small number of studies have explored the potential of PLCs being used as vehicles to advance equity, and challenges educators can experience in translating PLCs' collaborative culture into advancing equity are under-researched. Therefore, employing Hord's (1997) attributes of PLCs as our conceptual framework, we conducted this study to understand how a middle school in the U.S. Midwest sustained its PLC to be deeply permeated in and accepted by the staff as a prevailing organizational culture. This study also aims to identify equity-related challenges educators experienced in the process. Data analysis identified school leaders' support for staff sense-making of the PLC and the promotion of security and vulnerability as the essential mindset for shared practice and innovation. We also found that issues around educational equity relevant to educator race, English Learners, and inclusive practices for students with special needs were limited and indeed need further development. Implications for school leadership practice and future research are provided in the discussion.
Abstractor: As Provided
Entry Date: 2025
Accession Number: EJ1460754
Database: ERIC
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  Value: <anid>AN0183109782;9m301mar.25;2025Feb20.01:15;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0183109782-1">Challenges in sustaining professional learning communities focused on equity </title> <p>Despite the benefits of improving teaching and learning that research evidences, professional learning communities (PLCs) can be challenging to sustain for a sufficient period of time to become deeply engrained within the school's culture and accepted by teachers as organizational norms. As PLCs strive to achieve a system-level reform and promote educators' reflective dialogues and shared experiences, they have strong potential to achieve positive changes in teacher perspectives and teaching practices focused on equity. Despite this potential, only a small number of studies have explored the potential of PLCs being used as vehicles to advance equity, and challenges educators can experience in translating PLCs' collaborative culture into advancing equity are under-researched. Therefore, employing Hord's (1997) attributes of PLCs as our conceptual framework, we conducted this study to understand how a middle school in the U.S. Midwest sustained its PLC to be deeply permeated in and accepted by the staff as a prevailing organizational culture. This study also aims to identify equity-related challenges educators experienced in the process. Data analysis identified school leaders' support for staff sense-making of the PLC and the promotion of security and vulnerability as the essential mindset for shared practice and innovation. We also found that issues around educational equity relevant to educator race, English Learners, and inclusive practices for students with special needs were limited and indeed need further development. Implications for school leadership practice and future research are provided in the discussion.</p> <p>Keywords: Equity; Professional learning community; Organizational learning; Organizational support; Education Curriculum and Pedagogy Specialist Studies In Education</p> <p>Copyright comment Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.</p> <p>Researchers and policymakers have promoted professional learning communities (PLCs) as venues in which educators can grow as professionals by engaging in collaborative lesson planning, observing colleagues' classrooms, and participating in reflective conversations on teaching and learning practices (Ahn, [<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref1">1</reflink>]; DuFour et al., [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref2">21</reflink>]; Louis & Marks, [<reflink idref="bib47" id="ref3">47</reflink>]; Vescio et al., [<reflink idref="bib71" id="ref4">71</reflink>]). Within the current U.S. policy context, funded through federal reform initiatives and accountability mechanisms, such as the Every Student Succeeds Act ([<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref5">22</reflink>]), state policymakers often prescribe that educational leaders implement collaborative structures within schools (Buttram & Farley-Ripple, [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref6">8</reflink>]). However, high-functioning PLCs can be challenging to sustain for a sufficient period due to two areas: teacher and leadership. We operationalize high-functioning PLCs as groups of educators who accept their meetings as safe places, in which they are willing to share failures, celebrate success, and learn from each other to improve instructional practices (Hord, [<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref7">36</reflink>]; McLaughlin & Talbert, [<reflink idref="bib48" id="ref8">48</reflink>]). Regarding teachers, it is challenging for schools to be high-functioning PLCs if teachers do not accept the school's PLC culture and organizational norms (Giles & Hargreaves, [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref9">27</reflink>]). Critically, teachers may perceive the PLC initiative as a mandate for additional (and unnecessary) meetings (DuFour et al., [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref10">21</reflink>]) or even a waste of time, rather than as a venue for meaningful dialogue and professional growth. Also, a lack of understanding of PLC principles by teacher leaders (Boone, [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref11">6</reflink>]), teachers' reluctance to learn from colleagues (Chua et al., [<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref12">13</reflink>]), and teacher perceptions of autonomy prevalent in the teaching profession (Smylie, [<reflink idref="bib62" id="ref13">62</reflink>]) have been reported as educator internal barriers to PLC development.</p> <p>Meanwhile, sustaining highly functioning PLCs can be especially problematic when school leaders rely mostly on bureaucratic measures (McLaughlin & Talbert, [<reflink idref="bib48" id="ref14">48</reflink>]). Bureaucratic approaches to PLC development require teachers to comply with mandated policies but rarely achieve the goal of forming a collaborative school culture (Talbert, [<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref15">66</reflink>]). These approaches often rely on maintaining existing lines of authority rather than developing relational trust among faculty, paying insufficient attention to the learning needs of teacher leaders, and ignoring the social nature of PLC implementation (Talbert, [<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref16">66</reflink>]). Centralized accountability systems that promote rapid increases in student test scores (Schaap, [<reflink idref="bib57" id="ref17">57</reflink>]), a lack of secured time for collaboration (DeMatthews, [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref18">17</reflink>]), school leaders' disengagement from PLC development (Sims & Penny, [<reflink idref="bib61" id="ref19">61</reflink>]), and teacher and administrator turnover (Stoll et al., [<reflink idref="bib64" id="ref20">64</reflink>]) have also been suggested as additional contextual and leadership barriers to PLC maturation over time. As such, although school officials may claim that they <emph>do</emph> PLCs, these scheduled activities can degenerate into tedious meetings for checking off tasks, instead of offering venues for collective inquiry dedicated to the improvement of student learning, encouraging teachers to share tools to implement innovative instructional strategies (Rodman, [<reflink idref="bib56" id="ref21">56</reflink>]).</p> <p>In all, barriers to sustaining PLCs are multilayered as they concern not only individuals (e.g., teachers desiring autonomy in their classrooms) but also leadership levels (e.g., bureaucratic leadership approach or accountability focused on test scores). Despite the complex nature of examining barriers to PLC development, relatively little is known about how school leaders can navigate and overcome these multi-layered barriers to sustain high-functioning PLCs (DeMatthews, [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref22">17</reflink>]) that teachers accept as an organizational norm, or "how we do things around here" (Bolman & Deal, [<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref23">5</reflink>], p. 236). Additionally, although a few studies (e.g., Louie, [<reflink idref="bib46" id="ref24">46</reflink>]; Tan & Thorius, [<reflink idref="bib67" id="ref25">67</reflink>]) have explored the use of PLCs to advance equity, challenges educators can experience in translating PLCs' collaborative culture into advancing equity are also under-researched. To address these gaps, we explored how one middle school embedded their PLC into the school's organizational culture and what equity-related challenges educators experienced in this process. We addressed the following questions:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> What are key organizational support systems to sustain a high-functioning PLC?</item> <p></p> <item> What challenges exist in translating PLC towards advancing equity?</item> </ulist> <p>In the following chapters, we present a review of PLC literature, the conceptual framework we applied to analyze data, and the case study method we adopted. Findings include three main themes. Regarding the first research question, our first two themes suggest that support for staff sense-making of PLC has helped sustain the school's high-functioning PLC structure and the creation of a culture of security and vulnerability operated as essential mindsets for shared practice and innovation. Concerning the second research question, our data informed that our case study school's translation of the shared norm of collaboration into daily practices around equity remains an ongoing work in progress for its school leaders.</p> <hd id="AN0183109782-2">Literature review</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0183109782-3">Emergence of PLCs in education</hd> <p>The notion of PLC in education materialized from a collection of sources (Stoll et al., [<reflink idref="bib64" id="ref26">64</reflink>]), with one primary source being theory from the business sector in particular building from Peter Senge's ([<reflink idref="bib59" id="ref27">59</reflink>]) <emph>The Fifth Discipline</emph>, focused on building a learning organization. In the field of education, since the pioneering works by Little ([<reflink idref="bib45" id="ref28">45</reflink>]), Louis and Marks ([<reflink idref="bib47" id="ref29">47</reflink>]), and Hord ([<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref30">36</reflink>]), research focusing on PLCs in schools began to increase during the 2000s from both practitioners (e.g., DuFour et al., [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref31">21</reflink>]) and researchers (e.g., Huffman et al., [<reflink idref="bib39" id="ref32">39</reflink>]). Since its early development in education, PLCs have come to be known as a system-level reform that improves teaching and learning based on a vital premise that the knowledge required to fulfill teachers' responsibilities is situated in educators' daily lives and can be best achieved through reflective dialogues and shared experiences (Buysse et al., [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref33">9</reflink>]).</p> <p>Since its emergence in educational practice and research, there has not been a universal definition of PLC. According to Harris and Jones ([<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref34">32</reflink>]), a PLC is "a group of connected and engaged professionals who are responsible for driving change and improvement within, between and across schools that will directly benefit learners" (p. 173). Despite the elusive nature of defining PLCs, there do exist critical characteristics identified by the literature as representing PLC concepts: shared vision toward student learning through reflective professional inquiry (Stoll et al., [<reflink idref="bib64" id="ref35">64</reflink>]), classroom observations (Bryk et al., [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref36">7</reflink>]), and innovation of instruction (McLaughlin & Talbert, [<reflink idref="bib48" id="ref37">48</reflink>]); respect and trust (Hord, [<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref38">36</reflink>]; Huffman et al., [<reflink idref="bib39" id="ref39">39</reflink>]; Harris & Jones); and shared leadership (Hord, [<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref40">36</reflink>]; Talbert, [<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref41">66</reflink>]). Overall, an essential purpose of PLC is the intended focus on student learning (DuFour, [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref42">21</reflink>]; Talbert, [<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref43">66</reflink>]; Vescio et al., [<reflink idref="bib71" id="ref44">71</reflink>]).</p> <hd id="AN0183109782-4">Benefits of and contributing factors to PLCs</hd> <p>Studies have suggested positive associations between teacher participation in PLCs and improved student outcomes and teaching practices (Goddard et al., [<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref45">28</reflink>]; Gwinn & Watts-Taffe, [<reflink idref="bib30" id="ref46">30</reflink>]). Even after student characteristics and school social context were controlled, teacher collaboration significantly predicted math and reading score differences between schools (Goddard et al., [<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref47">28</reflink>]). In their study of teachers in schools serving predominantly under-achieving African American students, Hollins et al. ([<reflink idref="bib34" id="ref48">34</reflink>]) found that teachers' professional collaboration was associated with improved learning of low-performing African American students, building more powerful instructional norms among teachers. Regarding PLC impacts on teaching, departmental leaders' promotion of PLCs positively predicted enhanced collective responsibility for student learning and increased reflective dialogues among teaching staff (Vanblaere & Devos, [<reflink idref="bib70" id="ref49">70</reflink>]). Specifically, the more teachers perceived their department heads were group- and development-oriented, the more frequently teachers engaged with reflective dialogues about teaching and student learning, which highlights department heads' leadership role in strengthening PLC characteristics.</p> <p>Meanwhile, principal leadership has a critical role in the successful adoption and sustainability of PLCs in schools. Stoll et al. ([<reflink idref="bib64" id="ref50">64</reflink>]) argue it "is difficult to see how a PLC could develop in a school without the active support of leadership at all levels. Leadership is therefore an important resource for PLCs" (p. 235). Shared leadership is one crucial leadership approach that supports PLC in schools (DeMatthews, [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref51">17</reflink>]; Owen, [<reflink idref="bib54" id="ref52">54</reflink>]; Vescio et al., [<reflink idref="bib71" id="ref53">71</reflink>]). In another study examining the principal's role in implementing PLC mandates, Buttram and Farley-Ripple ([<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref54">8</reflink>]) found that principal influence is dictated by how they interpret and understand state mandates on collaborative culture and their district vision for PLCs. Specifically, their findings offer that principals affect PLCs "by deciding who participates, when and how often, and what supports are available to assist teachers in making these changes in practice" (p. 214). Leadership has a crucial role in nurturing PLCs' notable objective of the enhancement of teacher collaboration.</p> <hd id="AN0183109782-5">Barriers to PLC development</hd> <p>Two concepts, operational and conceptual learning (Weinbaum et al., [<reflink idref="bib74" id="ref55">74</reflink>]), from organizational learning literature are instrumental in categorizing barriers embedded with creating, sustaining, and institutionalizing PLCs. Operational learning refers to the need for organizational members to become familiar with "the technical know-how and procedures" (Boone, [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref56">6</reflink>], p. 85) to effect organization-wide improvement. For effective PLC implementation, school leaders must secure time for meetings (Sims & Penny, [<reflink idref="bib61" id="ref57">61</reflink>]), provide meeting facilitators (Morrissey, [<reflink idref="bib52" id="ref58">52</reflink>]), and establish organizational routines such as peer observation (Hipp et al., [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref59">33</reflink>]). Teachers learn communication norms (e.g., providing feedback) and meeting protocols (e.g., student data sharing). Meanwhile, conceptual learning speaks to the idea that the <emph>why</emph> behind the technical procedures should be clearly understood by organizational members to translate that operational information into actions (Boone, [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref60">6</reflink>]). In PLC development, it is critical for educators to understand why PLCs are relevant to achieving the school's shared vision by seeing a clear alignment between PLC principles and their daily practice (Morrissey, [<reflink idref="bib52" id="ref61">52</reflink>]).</p> <p>In terms of operational learning, a narrowed focus on student achievement, a lack of organizational resources, and inappropriate leadership approaches can operate as barriers to PLC development (DeMatthews, [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref62">17</reflink>]; Schaap, 2019; Talbert, [<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref63">66</reflink>]). First, a centralized accountability system that pushes a quick increase in student test scores with limited attention to pedagogy and authentic student learning offers a barrier (Talbert, [<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref64">66</reflink>]). Through the examination of a "failed" PLC, Sims and Penny ([<reflink idref="bib61" id="ref65">61</reflink>]) identified too narrow focus on accountability mandates (i.e., increasing test scores) not allowing time for teachers to collaborate for adjusting instruction forced teachers to "look at our students as numbers" (p. 41), failing to provide venues for rich conversations around methods and content. When pressed, teachers focus more on compliance and check the boxes off to show mandated curriculum implementation fidelity instead of collectively pursuing ways to adjust instruction to enhance student learning. Second, a lack of organizational resources creates significant barriers to PLC development (Linder et al., [<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref66">44</reflink>]). Among others, secured time is one of the most critical factors in creating and sustaining high-functioning PLCs (Morrissey, [<reflink idref="bib52" id="ref67">52</reflink>]). A lack of leadership support for securing adequate time for collective learning may cause teacher meetings to degenerate into places for checking non-instructional responsibilities or even venting, suffocating teacher agency for mutual learning and collaborative inquiry (Sims & Penny). Third, school leaders' over-focus on procedural mandates of PLC poses additional barriers (Talbert, [<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref68">66</reflink>]). For example, mandating reports of PLC meetings for evidence of compliance and using progress monitoring followed by sanctions, are suggested as detrimental to long-term PLC development as it fails to acknowledge the social nature of staff learning, thus resulting in "ritual enactment of the PLC requirements" (Talbert, [<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref69">66</reflink>], p. 563).</p> <p>Concerning conceptual learning, it is important to note that the teaching profession has been characterized by autonomy (Little, [<reflink idref="bib45" id="ref70">45</reflink>]), and this tradition may pose barriers to PLC development (Talbert, [<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref71">66</reflink>]). When teachers perceive instruction and its improvement as private practice, they resist the idea of collaboration (Talbert, [<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref72">66</reflink>]). A critical challenge for school leaders is, then, to garner teacher buy-in about deprivatizing instruction and transform it into authentic collaborative inquiry. A lack of organizational guidance on core PLC principles and resulting lack of staff understanding of PLC tenets may cause discrepancies between what was intended (e.g., establishing collective learning as a norm) and what is being implemented (i.e., dutiful participation in PLC) (Boone, [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref73">6</reflink>]). Even after collective learning is established as a norm, frequent educator turnover hinders sustaining the established conceptual learning outcomes (i.e., collaborative norms) (Hipp et al., [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref74">33</reflink>]). Frequent educator attrition provides a barrier to sustaining the organizational norm of collaboration because it likely causes a loss of organizational memory of PLC principles and relationships among staff (Hipp et al., [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref75">33</reflink>]).</p> <p>In all, the lack of leadership support for promoting staff operational and conceptual learning is not unique to sustaining PLCs, but it is relevant because it affects teacher morale and practice, which in turn impedes PLC development. Insufficient leadership support creates the barriers by suffocating teacher agency and preventing rich conversations to improve instructions, which may lead to a dutiful participation in PLC, thus being detrimental to sustaining PLCs over an extended period of time.</p> <p>Critically, our literature review suggests, while barriers relevant to operational learning have been extensively documented, much less is known about staff conceptual learning relevant to PLC development and its long-term institutionalization. This literature gap is troublesome, as it is through staff conceptual learning (i.e., <emph>why</emph> PLC) that teachers <emph>accept</emph> PLCs as meaningful venues for professional growth instead of showing only ritual enactment. This study particularly examines organizational support for promoting staff conceptual learning of PLCs for its long-term institutionalization, while also exploring challenges in infusing collaborative norms into daily practice around equity.</p> <hd id="AN0183109782-6">Stages of PLC development</hd> <p>McLaughlin and Talbert ([<reflink idref="bib48" id="ref76">48</reflink>]) illustrate how typical PLCs transition into high-functioning learning communities by proposing three PLC development stages (novice, intermediate, advanced). There exist similar attempts to depict a developmental continuum of PLCs (e.g., Auslander et al., [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref77">2</reflink>]; Leclerc et al., [<reflink idref="bib41" id="ref78">41</reflink>]). Similar to McLaughlin and Talbert, these studies mostly conceptualized PLC development into three stages (e.g., initiation, implementation, integration; Leclerc et al., [<reflink idref="bib41" id="ref79">41</reflink>]) although the labels for each stage differ. Here we use McLaughlin and Talbert's ([<reflink idref="bib48" id="ref80">48</reflink>]) study to illustrate PLC developmental stages because it provides relatively more detailed descriptions of developmental characteristics of each stage and includes a larger number of schools and a longer period of observation of each school's PLC development trajectory than other studies do. Based on their multiple case studies of 10 schools that implemented PLCs, McLaughlin and Talbert identified that novice schools did not yet have leaders or shared leadership that promoted mutual trust and created collaborative norms and structures. As educators in these schools did not develop a shared vision that all students can achieve high-quality learning, teachers feared consequences when they failed to achieve the proposed learning goals and held deficit thinking of students, instead of identifying ways to improve teaching. Teachers in novice schools also did not possess the knowledge to use data to inform instructional improvement, and the schools did not provide support to create data management systems or develop teacher data use skills. Teachers in novice schools also had fears of being judged by others when they shared their classroom data, thus failing to share personal practices.</p> <p>Schools in the intermediate stage were characterized by emergent shared leadership to promote collaborative staff inquiry. Although schools in the intermediate stage began to develop a shared vision and shared languages about student learning, teachers struggled to fully understand the core tenets of PLC. Teacher conversations over connecting collaborative inquiry to student learning became more frequent in the intermediate schools; however, teachers still did not effectively connect their collaborative inquiry into instructional changes, thus failing to shift the overall school culture toward collaboration. Also, this stage had challenges with a lack of support for developing teacher capacity to use data to inform instructional change, and teachers often lost hope for collaboration meetings as venues for instructional improvements, thus failing to share personal practices in an ongoing manner.</p> <p>On the other hand, schools in the advanced (high-functioning) stage developed a sense of collective responsibility and shared leadership for improving student learning. Due to the shared vision that student outcomes are something to be addressed by the entire learning community, instead of individual teachers, teachers possessed shared languages about curriculum, instruction, and assessment for continuous instructional changes. Teachers in the advanced stage did not blame students for data but instead discussed strategies to connect curricular and instructional practices to student learning. Supports for teachers to use external resources (e.g., professional network, coaching resources) for targeted instructional improvement were prevalent in these high-functioning schools, and diverse organizational routines for staff collaboration were well established. Based on a clear understanding of data collection and analysis process, teachers comfortably discussed beliefs about difficult topics, such as race and equity, and took actions to improve the learning of students from diverse racial and linguistic backgrounds, as well as those with special needs.</p> <hd id="AN0183109782-7">Advancing equity in PLCs</hd> <p>In addition to barriers to creating and sustaining high-functioning PLCs, the literature also sheds light on challenges to leveraging PLCs to advance equity (Gannon-Slater et al., [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref81">25</reflink>]; Louie, [<reflink idref="bib46" id="ref82">46</reflink>]) although some authors studied benefits (e.g., Leonard & Woodland, [<reflink idref="bib42" id="ref83">42</reflink>]). Regarding benefits, studies report PLCs are instrumental in changing teacher perspectives and instructional practice related to advancing equity. Leonard and Woodland illustrate how a district's efforts to leverage PLC as a vehicle to redress school-based racism result in achieving positive changes in teacher perspectives, teaching practices focused on equity, and social-emotional student outcomes. Similarly, Goode et al.'s study ([<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref84">29</reflink>]) suggests that professional development (PD) programs concentrated on equity help teachers overcome isolation, benefit from peer-teacher learning, and develop instructional strategies inclusive of all learners.</p> <p>Despite PLCs' potential to advance equitable practices in school, the literature pays heavier attention to challenges related to establishing equity-oriented PLCs, such as PLC's lack of focus on equity-driven teacher reflections (Gannon-Slater et al., [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref85">25</reflink>]; Tan & Thorius, [<reflink idref="bib67" id="ref86">67</reflink>]; Thorius, [<reflink idref="bib67" id="ref87">67</reflink>]). For example, Tan and Thorius ([<reflink idref="bib67" id="ref88">67</reflink>]) illustrate an example of educators' identity tension, in which teachers with challenges in teaching and learning mathematics and hold deficit perspectives of students impeded discussions during PLC to implement equitable practice. Similarly, Bertrand and Marsh's ([<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref89">4</reflink>]) study provides examples of educators using deficit-laden perspectives during data discussions, where teachers frequently attributed outcomes to student characteristics, insinuating low expectations of English learners (ELs) and students with special needs. Gannon-Slater and colleagues' ([<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref90">25</reflink>]) study further suggests that none of the data teams across the two researched schools demonstrated an explicit focus on equity in their data discussion nor utilized student data to support the district's goal to advance equity, thus failing to connect the data discussions to instructional improvement. Challenging educators' deficit perspectives poses an additional layer of complexity and difficulty in creating an equity-focused data-use culture in PLC. Louie's ([<reflink idref="bib46" id="ref91">46</reflink>]) study further shows how challenging it can be for teachers to defy the dominant deficit-based perspectives even in equity-oriented PLCs. Although teachers face colleagues expressing deficit thinking of student math competence, participants often agreed or even empathized with the problematic perspectives to avoid disagreement, instead of directly discussing why those perspectives strengthen deficit-laden practices and opening doors to redress the problematic views. That is, teachers conceptualized avoiding disagreement as appropriate and normal, thus limiting the opportunity to leverage their PLCs to learn and redress the problematic nature of educators' deficit-oriented thinking of students (Louie, [<reflink idref="bib46" id="ref92">46</reflink>]).</p> <p>Regarding leadership strategies and organizational support to advance equity in PLCs, the literature indicates quick-fix training, such as stand-alone PDs, is not sufficient to achieve the goal (Leonard & Woodland, [<reflink idref="bib42" id="ref93">42</reflink>]), but requires systematic approaches to facilitate a "fundamental cultural shift" (Shand & Batts, [<reflink idref="bib60" id="ref94">60</reflink>], p. 136). Gannon-Slater et al. ([<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref95">25</reflink>]) foreground the cultural tensions embedded with advancing equity in PLCs and the importance of school leadership to establish a safe and trusting organizational culture. They suggest that despite the district's support and promotion of equity-focused data use, the principal and coaches struggled to establish a trusting, equity-focused school climate, where teachers could use data to inform instructional improvement, thus teachers failing to discuss and refine equity-focused data use practices within PLCs. School leaders who can create spaces for teachers to speak with an open mind and be resolute in holding equity conversations built on the sense of collective responsibility for students can create PLCs that advance equity (McLaughlin & Talber, [<reflink idref="bib48" id="ref96">48</reflink>]). The literature points to the complicated answer to advance equity in PLCs. This article deepens the understanding that equity needs to be at the center of a PLC culture. It is because even though a school may have high-functioning PLC practices, the response and commitment to diverse students and the interrogation of deficit thinking and pursuit of equity requires a continual and systemic equity lens.</p> <hd id="AN0183109782-8">Conceptual framework</hd> <p>​​We applied Hord's ([<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref97">36</reflink>]) attributes of PLCs as our conceptual framework to guide our data analysis. Through a comprehensive review of research, Hord identified five essential dimensions of typical PLCs: (<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref98">1</reflink>) supportive and shared leadership, (<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref99">2</reflink>) shared value and vision, (<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref100">3</reflink>) collective learning and application of learning, (<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref101">4</reflink>) supportive conditions, and (<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref102">5</reflink>) shared personal practice. First, schools structured as PLCs possess leaders who share leadership with informal leaders. These leaders do not believe in their "omnicompetence" (Hord, [<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref103">36</reflink>] p. 15) but rather acknowledge their own need for growth, work alongside teachers, and invite teachers to share leadership and decision making. Principals who embrace shared leadership seek to collaboratively investigate issues rather than prescribe solutions. Second, principals and teachers in schools with high-functioning PLCs have a shared vision that all students can achieve high-quality learning. Teachers and principals believe "failing students can be taught to achieve" (Talbert, [<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref104">66</reflink>], p. 563). Principals engage with their faculty to develop shared values and visions about student success, with these visions guiding their professional activities. This collective commitment to student learning prevents PLCs from deteriorating into routine business meetings and ensures that they function as a guiding feature of the school. Third, educators' collaborative actions are grounded in reflective dialogues that seek shared problem-solving related to student learning. This collaborative inquiry enables educators to overcome differences created by structural departments and disciplines, translating into shared practice and problem-solving.</p> <p>Fourth, supportive conditions denote the necessary structures for educators to function as a learning community, including physical arrangements and human capacities (Hord & Sommers, [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref105">37</reflink>]). Restructuring the school schedule to include a common time for collaboration is often reported as the overarching structural factor (DuFour et al., [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref106">21</reflink>]), followed by the physical proximity of educators and collaborative communication protocols. Human capacities include a willingness to learn and accept feedback from others, forming caring relationships among educators, and developing relational trust (Tschannen-Moran, [<reflink idref="bib68" id="ref107">68</reflink>]). Lastly, the shared personal practice involves reviewing teachers' instructional behaviors by colleagues, including observing peers' classrooms and engaging in reflective discussions for reciprocal learning (Hord, [<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref108">36</reflink>]). It is important to note that shared practice is not an evaluative process but is "a peers-helping-peers practice" (Hord, [<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref109">36</reflink>], p. 23) based on trusting relationships. Teachers feel safe in their reciprocal learning environments, sharing frustrations and celebrating their successes. Relevant to Hord's framework, findings explore how our case study school as PLC materialized typical PLC characteristics Hord's framework describes and what challenges remain.</p> <p>However, what is missing from Hord's ([<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref110">36</reflink>]) framework is how PLCs can be a vehicle for equity-oriented changes. For example, Hord does not use the term equity but promotes an understanding of the challenge in translating PLC through the dimension of advancing the shared vision that all students can learn requires "unswerving commitment" and "is consistently articulated and referenced for the staff's work" (p. 24). The keywords of commitment and consistency indicate that staff can fall short of this ideal and require steady reminders. Educators can no longer engage in school improvement practices that are neutral by ignoring the complex set of inequities that schools face that are indeed institutional and endemic. Thus, we argue that equity should not be an ad hoc dimension to Hord's framework but be the central and quintessential focus of how teachers and administrators structure and execute their PLCs. Simply adding equity as another dimension risks it being executed within a school's PLC structure in a piecemeal manner. If equity is central and connected to all dimensions of the PLC framework, then equity can be carried out systemically and systematically.</p> <p>Filling in the equity gap in Hord's framework, we use Carter Andrews and Richmond's ([<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref111">11</reflink>]) theoretical characteristics of equity-focused PLCs that entail two-prong features: (<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref112">1</reflink>) educators are critically self-reflective on their practice around the needs of marginalized students and (<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref113">2</reflink>) recognizing and utilizing student assets to improve their experience and learning. In short, Carter Andrews and Richmond ([<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref114">11</reflink>]) argue that "an equity focus in PLCs should enhance teacher collective efficacy while remaining student-centered" (p. 409). Thus, we re-orient Hord's framework so that the theory of change for PLCs explicitly centers on systemic equity. We define systemic equity as equitable perspectives, structures, systems, and practices that are systematically and strategically embedded throughout the organization (see Welton et al., [<reflink idref="bib76" id="ref115">76</reflink>]). Although individual actions toward redressing inequities are necessary for equity-focused changes throughout the organization to occur, systemic equity should be the focus of a school's PLC practice, where teachers develop collaborative values in students' cultural assets (Carter Andres & Richmond, [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref116">11</reflink>]). There are a few studies informative to school leaders' practice that explore how PLCs are used to enact equity change that is systemic, but much more is needed.</p> <hd id="AN0183109782-9">Methods</hd> <p>We utilized case study methods (Cresswell & Poth, [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref117">15</reflink>]) to explore the key organizational support systems that sustain a high-functioning PLC in a middle school located in the U.S. Midwest. We took a purposeful sampling approach by selecting a case that could further inform the understanding of how a school sustains and guides a strong collaborative culture for an extended period (Cresswell, [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref118">16</reflink>]). Three criteria were used to select the site: (<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref119">1</reflink>) the recommendation from a co-author, who is a university faculty member familiar with the school's PLC work; (<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref120">2</reflink>) Weddington Middle School (WMS) had received a national award as an exemplary PLC site; and (<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref121">3</reflink>) at the time of data collection, WMS had been using PLCs for 16 years. The school was previously highlighted by an external organization as an exemplary PLC with evidence on the school's PLC sustenance for the past 16 years. Situated in an affluent suburb, Weddington is one of seven schools in the Eastbrook School District and was constructed in the late 1990s to better serve the growing community. It serves around 650 students in grades 6–8, including 45% of students of color (Black: 2%, Hispanic: 13%, Asian: 26%, Multiracial: 4%), 10% low-income students, 8% with disabilities, and 3% ELs.</p> <p>Data collection took place across 16 months between May 2018 and August 2019. According to Baxter and Jack ([<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref122">3</reflink>]), a single case study approach of multiple data sources increases data credibility and helps to contribute to a greater understanding of the case. Thus, following a case study approach, three data collection methods—interviews, focus groups, and observations—were used to provide the case description and the three themes in our findings. To capture a holistic understanding of how different members within WMS interpreted the organizations' support of PLC (Research question 1), we specifically chose to get viewpoints from administrators, teachers, and coaches to see if PLC was a collective norm. In addition, the multiple data sources collected were used to capture how different members, based on their roles, within one school site demonstrated similarities and differences about the existing organizational support for sustaining PLC and how the school's claimed shared vision<emph>–</emph>all students can learn–is shared by everyone. Moreover, a closer examination of the school's organizational support toward a shared vision and educators' actual practices helped identify the theme of challenges in translating PLCs toward advancing equity (Research question 2).</p> <p>Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with the school principal, assistant principal, and five classroom teachers. Mr. Turner, the principal, had a combined 15 years of principal experience, having previously been an elementary principal in the district. Ms. Green was in her second year as assistant principal and had previously worked six years as a special education teacher in the district. The five content teachers, including social studies, science, health, special education, and Spanish/Literacy, were interviewed individually. The Spanish/Literacy teacher (Mr. Howard) played an additional role as the language development coach. The experience of the teachers working in the district ranged from three years to over 20 years. The individual interviews ranged from 30 to 50 min (Table 1).</p> <p>Table 1 Participants information</p> <p> <ephtml> <table frame="hsides" rules="groups"><thead><tr><th align="left"><p>Participants</p></th><th align="left"><p>Gender</p></th><th align="left"><p>Position</p></th><th align="left"><p>Experience at District/WMS</p></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td align="left"><p>Mr. Turner</p></td><td align="left"><p>Man</p></td><td align="left"><p>Principal</p></td><td align="left"><p>20/12</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>Ms. Green</p></td><td align="left"><p>Woman</p></td><td align="left"><p>Assistant Principal</p></td><td align="left"><p>8/2</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>Ms. Cooper</p></td><td align="left"><p>Woman</p></td><td align="left"><p>Social Studies Teacher</p></td><td align="left"><p>21/21</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>Ms. Gonzales</p></td><td align="left"><p>Woman</p></td><td align="left"><p>Science Teacher</p></td><td align="left"><p>6/5</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>Ms. Allen</p></td><td align="left"><p>Woman</p></td><td align="left"><p>Health Teacher</p></td><td align="left"><p>12/3</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>Ms. Anderson</p></td><td align="left"><p>Woman</p></td><td align="left"><p>Special Education Teacher</p></td><td align="left"><p>24/18</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>Mr. Howard</p></td><td align="left"><p>Man</p></td><td align="left"><p>Spanish/Literacy Teacher</p><p>Language Development Coach</p></td><td align="left"><p>7/3</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>Mr. Collins</p></td><td align="left"><p>Man</p></td><td align="left"><p>Literacy Coach</p></td><td align="left"><p>8/2</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>Ms. Moore</p></td><td align="left"><p>Woman</p></td><td align="left"><p>Literacy Coach</p></td><td align="left"><p>15/8</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>Ms. Baker</p></td><td align="left"><p>Woman</p></td><td align="left"><p>Science Coach</p></td><td align="left"><p>10/5</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>Ms. Griffin</p></td><td align="left"><p>Woman</p></td><td align="left"><p>Math Coach</p></td><td align="left"><p>4/4</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>Ms. Young</p></td><td align="left"><p>Woman</p></td><td align="left"><p>Language Development Coach</p></td><td align="left"><p>2/2</p></td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p> <emph>Note</emph> All participants' racial demographic is white</p> <p>A 40-minute focus group with six instructional coaches was conducted to induce careful and thoughtful standpoints of how people understand key points about their PLC experiences (Mertens, [<reflink idref="bib49" id="ref123">49</reflink>]). The coaches were literacy, math, Technology, Info Literature, and two language development coaches. The questions posed in the focus group centered around what organizational support existed for and what roles coaches played in sustaining the organizational norm of collaboration at WMS. Also, the first author conducted four site observations and collected field notes on a district-wide PD session, four teacher meetings, a leadership team meeting, a district-wide pre-semester PD, and six classroom instructions. Upon the completion of data collection, the first author sent the interview transcripts to all participants for member checks and received confirmation that their intended remarks had been correctly recorded. Names for the school and participants are all pseudonyms to protect personal identity.</p> <p>We present the following information to provide the context of the system support structure of the school. Each of the three grade levels contains two interdisciplinary teams encompassing math, science, social studies, and English Language Arts (ELA), resulting in six grade-level teams. In addition, WMS includes three content-area teams and one Problem Intervention Team (PIT) comprised of counselors, school psychologists, social workers, and special education teachers. Special education teachers belong to both PIT and grade-level teams, so they can collaborate with content-area teachers to better address the learning needs of students with special needs. The six grade-level team leaders, three content team leads, and the PIT lead constitute the 10 team leaders. The 10 leaders and two administrators constitute the WMS building leadership team. Selected by the principal from faculty who apply, team leads guide school improvement as liaisons between the administration and classroom teachers.</p> <p>For data analysis, we first individually read the transcripts and open-coded the data looking for important cultural characteristics of the case's PLC. We then came together and reviewed and established a coding agreement (Campbell et al., [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref124">10</reflink>]). Next, during our second process, we returned to the transcripts and separately conducted a focused coding scheme guided by Hord's ([<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref125">36</reflink>]) five PLC dimensions. In our meetings, we extensively discussed and debated adding, keeping, merging, and removing codes to eliminate discrepancies from our individual coding while creating an intercoder agreement codebook. In the second phase, we revised the codebook leaving only agreed-upon codes. The two coding phases resulted in 58 codes (e.g., equity issue, vulnerability, collective vision, support network, empowerment, supportive leadership), which were then grouped within the three findings. During our second coding process, we began grouping focused codes using axial coding to identify connections between them (Strauss & Corbin, [<reflink idref="bib65" id="ref126">65</reflink>]). Through axial coding, we were able to capture the features of our categories while looking for the relationships between critical organizational, cultural, and motivational factors for sustaining a high-functioning PLC, while also identifying challenges related to advance equity. Emergent themes were identified while converging all the data sources to understand the whole case (Baxter & Jack, [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref127">3</reflink>]); as a research team, we then reviewed these themes and our data to agree on common themes.</p> <hd id="AN0183109782-10">Findings</hd> <p>We identified two main themes that answered the first research question of what organizational support system has helped sustain the school's high-functioning PLC structure: (<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref128">1</reflink>) support for staff sense-making of PLC and (<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref129">2</reflink>) creation of a culture of security and vulnerability as the essential mindset for shared practice and innovation. The third theme, equity as a work in progress, responds to the second research question, the challenges that exist in translating PLC towards advancing equity. We present how the individual and focus group interviews capture the participants' lived experiences through their subjective points of view and school observations where researchers were able to witness PLCs converged to support the three findings further discussed below.</p> <hd id="AN0183109782-11">RQ1, subtheme (1): organizational support for WMS' staff sense-making of PLC</hd> <p>One theme that emerged across the participants was that leaders, broadly speaking, at WMS consistently promoted the sense-making process of new hires and existing staff about what PLC is and why the school implements it. Sense-making is a mental process individuals employ to construct meaning of uncertain events (Weick, [<reflink idref="bib73" id="ref130">73</reflink>]). In education settings, school leaders' and teachers' sense-making of reform initiatives is important to achieve the reform's goals as it affords stakeholders an essential understanding of what is occurring in the workplace related to the newly implemented reform (Gannon-Shilon & Schechter, [<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref131">24</reflink>]). It is necessary to note that the facilitation of organization-wide sense-making at WMS involved the concerted efforts of leaders at different levels. For example, the principal and the assistant principal at WMS utilized weekly staff meetings to refine existing staff members' ongoing sense-making of the collaborative school culture, ultimately contributing to the ongoing staff sense-making of PLC. Coaches worked closely with individual groups of teachers, assisting WMS' staff in the sense-making of how the PLC tenets are applied to daily practices. This theme provides evidence of the strategic roles that each of the leaders took on to facilitate the sense-making of PLC in WMS.</p> <p>In August of each year, the Eastbrook School District provides a one-week PD for newly hired teachers to introduce them to the core tenets of PLC. One coach shared,The first week of school before school actually starts, all of the new employees in the district go through one week of new teacher training. A PLC boot camp, where they go through the four critical questions[<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref132">1</reflink>], and the three big ideas[<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref133">2</reflink>] [of PLC]. The district administrators lead this throughout the week, where they [new teachers] are going through and learning all about our system and how everything we do operates under this PLC. That's where they [district and school administrators] first tell them this PLC is not one-time-a-week meeting. This is a very heavy introduction.</p> <p>Similarly, Ms. Cooper, a social studies teacher, mentioned the one-week PD as the support for new hires: "[A]ny new teachers coming in are immediately sort of...immediately they are Kagan's [cooperative learning] trained and standards-based reporting trained, and PLC trained." During a field observation of this PD in August 2019, the first author observed that 36 new teachers in the district were introduced to the four critical questions and three big ideas of PLCs by the district's Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning. During the PD, the Assistant Superintendent emphasized, "PLC is not scheduled meetings, but an ongoing process in which educators work collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students." Split into small groups, new teachers reflected on the key PLC tenets and discussed how school-wide collaboration could positively inform instruction to enhance student learning. Participant interviews and observation data showed the institutionalized pre-semester PD helped new hires begin to make sense that WMS' PLC went beyond scheduled meetings to provide a guiding principle for teaching and learning.</p> <p>In addition to the PD for new staff, WMS administrators utilized weekly staff meetings and team meetings as a venue to refine existing staff members' ongoing sense-making of the collaborative school culture. For example, while illustrating the importance of weekly team meetings as venues to facilitate staff sense-making of collaborative data sharing, Assistant Principal, Ms. Green shared,There's a little bit of, and I call it 'data blaming.' So, 'Oh, those students are in special-ed,' or 'This student is new, that's why he didn't do well.' Well, ok, but what are we going to do about it? How do we help? So, it's reframed quickly by one of the informal leaders or an administrator at the meeting.</p> <p>Here, we see the pre-semester PD and weekly meetings were utilized as organizational support to help facilitate new and existing staff members' initial and sustained sense-making of PLC tenets. For example, Ms. Green's quote above illustrates how deficit thinking of teachers is reframed by formal (i.e., administrators) and informal leaders (e.g., educators without formal leadership designations) during weekly team meetings. It highlights the importance of staff's ongoing sense-making in refining deficit-laden perspectives. By providing these professional development opportunities, the district and school administration elevated the idea that PLC did not simply refer to scheduled meetings but a guiding principle that drives educational practices and stakeholder interactions.</p> <p>Despite the PD support to help staff members make sense of the collaborative norm, PD sessions alone were not sufficient to sustain the norm. For example, although shared PLC tenets emphasized continued focus on student learning in meetings, teachers sometimes derailed from this focus. In an observation of the eighth-grade team meeting, teachers began to talk about an irrelevant topic (e.g., the Royal Wedding in England), and Ms. Anderson, a veteran ELA teacher, had to redirect the conversation back to their agenda. Meanwhile, in another observation of a team meeting with the agenda concerned with student learning consisting of arts, music, and Spanish teachers, staff conversation veered to complaining about the inequitable workload distribution between themselves and core subject teachers. Here, it is critical to note that sense-making is "an ongoing process" (Gannon-Shilon & Schechter, [<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref134">24</reflink>], p. 682) that leaders and staff members undergo while implementing reforms. In this vein, we identified three additional organizational supports WMS leaders provided to facilitate continuous staff sense-making of PLC: external training, coaching staff, and school-wide internal promotion.</p> <p>First, assistant principal Ms. Green mentioned the need for existing teachers to receive follow-up training at an external PLC-focused conference to refresh PLC tenets. Ms. Green shared,They [teachers] meet with their grade level team meeting one day, and the next day they're having a data meeting. I think sometimes that teachers would express it feels like another meeting, not because they don't appreciate the collaboration, but they lose sight of the 'why' behind it. And that's why it's so important to have them go back to the [external] PLC institutes and for us to do that professional development related to, 'Here's why we're doing what we're doing.' And then it's, 'Oh my goodness. I lost that for a minute, but now I'm back.'</p> <p>Here, WMS intentionally uses an external conference to support teachers' ongoing sense-making of collaboration as the guiding principle.</p> <p>Moreover, coaches played an important role. Ms. Cooper introduced coaches' role by saying, "[B]ringing in the coaches too to facilitate [the meetings]...that's been relatively new over the last five years to bring in coaches to really guide that keep those potential conversations from falling off track." Related, one coach also shared,[T]he district has a lot of different initiatives that connect to the PLC. I feel like our role is the role in the trenches right there. The district office serves that big picture making sure that we have all the support we need. And then at the building level, we [coaches] are working with individual groups of teachers and kind of meeting them where they are at to ensure that we're leading these initiatives with fidelity.</p> <p>The above quotes reveal how coaches work closely with teachers (i.e., "in the trenches") and facilitate ongoing staff sense-making by helping translate shared norms of collaboration into district initiatives and keep staff interactions focused on the proposed agenda in each meeting.</p> <p>The last organizational support interpreted and discussed by participants was their recognition of the importance of hiring and promotional practices at Weddington with some inferencing to an alignment with the district initiative. Although we did not have access to the district-level hiring practices, the participants' responses reveal a germane lens of hiring and promotional practice in PLC sense-making. Interviews highlighted how the internal transition from teachers to coaches, and administrative positions was purposefully determined by the extent to which individuals working at Weddington were receptive and shared a favorable perspective of the culture of collaboration. A senior teacher, Ms. Allen, in recollecting the history of the PLC implementation at Weddington pointed to Mr. Turner rising from a physical education teacher to the rank of administrator. For example, when asked if new teacher hires at his school need to respect the school's PLC culture, Mr. Turner took a district-level response,What we've done, the district that we are, we hold a professional learning community model above all. And in order to do that, when you interview [for a job], you are gonna understand the model.... When you are within our system; we speak a language and the language is a professional learning community. So, I think that in order to succeed in this district, you have to not only understand what a professional learning community is, but you have to understand your role within that professional learning community, and how to support it.</p> <p>Mr. Turner poignantly shares his perspective that new teachers hired at his school must understand, accept, and welcome collaboration as a school norm in alignment with the district leadership's thinking.</p> <p>Meanwhile, Ms. Green also indicated how she and Mr. Turner informally used their time in team meetings to identify potential team leaders by how teachers engaged in dialogue, "the way they are talking about students' learning and collaboration. You hear that from certain individuals and you're like, we need to really hone in their leadership and get them to be another internal leader in the building." Moreover, an understanding of leadership transition is captured by Ms. Green's reflection on her recent promotion from assistant principal at Weddington to principal at an elementary school in the district. She offers "So now, going over to the elementary school as a principal to make sure that I'm instilling the things that I've learned [about PLC] as a leader here, into the school that I'm moving to." Her response points to an inference of her support for and extension to continuing the PLC norm at her new school in the district. Related, Mr. Howard, the literacy coach, discussed his viewpoint on promotions and demotion in leadership capacity at Weddington; similar to Mr. Turner, Mr. Howard took a district-wise lens, stating,If you look at our retention rate of teachers, it was like over 92%. Most administration are former teachers in the district, so basically, we promote internally. Sort of people that have been working together for a long time and those that are promoted to leadership roles, whether former administration or informal, tend to be the people that believe very strongly in this [PLC] being the best model, that believes very strongly in the mission, vision, values, and works towards that. And the coaching role, like my formal leadership role, ...sometimes transitions to administration, [and] sometimes go back to the classrooms based on how much they continue to believe in it.</p> <p>In sum, WMS utilized multiple strategies to support the <emph>ongoing</emph> staff sense-making of PLC. For new hires, leaders provided a pre-semester PD to build up new hires' initial understanding of collaboration as the guiding principle. After that, the administration used weekly staff meetings to refine staff understanding of the core PLC tenets, and coaches worked closely with teachers to help translate the shared collaborative norm into policy implementation. Also, school-wide internal promotions relied on a purposeful selection design to choose educators committed to the collaborative vision of the school, with a few mentioning its alignment with district goals; thus, educators with the same vision strengthen the organization-wide culture of tight collaboration within WMS.</p> <hd id="AN0183109782-12">RQ1, subtheme (2): vulnerability and security as foundation for openness to collaboration</hd> <p>The second theme indicates how school leaders endorsed the cultivation of a sense of security and vulnerability and supported the development of openness to collaboration among staff. We assert that security entails the WMS staff feeling safe and free from fear of failure in their work tied to the relational trust from school leadership. It is important to note that although the sense of security was desired and openly discussed by all participants, it did not mean staff fear and anxiety were non-existent; instead, participants expressed achieving personal growth toward being more comfortable sharing their concerns and vulnerability with colleagues and school leaders over time.</p> <p>Although nothing stands out from WMS' grade-level and interdisciplinary meetings in terms of physical structure, it is critical to note that these meetings were purposefully facilitated to promote a sense of security. The administration's purpose was for teachers to perceive their PLC meetings as <emph>safe</emph> spaces. Such a sense of safety emphasized allowing teachers to openly share student data regardless of results. Ms. Green remarked,I think there's still an element of some teachers being nervous to share their data. Even though [a teacher's] students didn't perform as well on this formative assessment, let's share [the data] with the entire team.. and I think that can be scary for teachers sometimes, which is why it's so important for Mr. Turner and I can be at as many of those meetings as we can.</p> <p>Above, the perception of security centered on the effort by both administrators to attend meetings to support teachers' being open and vulnerable with sharing data.</p> <p>Ms. Green further identified the culture that exists at the school as "There's an element of not being afraid of failure.. you're not going to be in trouble for something not working out." She believed having such a culture "takes a little bit of that fear.. if it [instructional strategy] fails, that's okay. We'll make it work if it doesn't work out the first time." The concept of failure has been reconstructed from being an undesirable practice to something valuable about which staff can feel secure with one another. Related, Mr. Howard shared feeling a sense of security was essential for sharing his student data and inviting colleagues' experiences to improve student learning: "People would give me lots of ideas that I would reflect on and incorporate, but I had to be okay sharing... to trust my team would not be judgmental." The shared sense of security allows teachers to accept meetings as authentic venues for growth instead of perceiving them as additional tasks.</p> <p>Emphasizing the school's focus on supporting instead of judging teachers' work, special education teacher Ms. Anderson added,It's all about the students, and whenever a teacher is struggling, top-down again [from school leaders] ... 'What do you need help with? What can we do for you?' Whether it's going to conferences, [or] giving us release time to go to another classroom so that we can see what's going on, [and] bringing in coaches to help us, and it's never about <emph>judging</emph> us. It's about <emph>supporting</emph> us. And I think that's the big difference. You don't feel like you're looked down on because you don't know.</p> <p>Above, Ms. Anderson expresses leaders' facilitation of a sense of security led to staff demonstrating an openness to collaborate and revealing vulnerability. Instead of teachers feeling obliged to defend student data, their accumulated experiences of receiving support in meetings from colleagues and school leaders to address instructional challenges led teachers to freely share their struggles in the classroom, which increased their willingness to be vulnerable and commitment to the norm of collaboration. We operationalize vulnerability as a state of mind of staff to be open about their weakness based on the belief that others are supportive and not judgmental.</p> <p>It is important to note that the atmosphere of vulnerability was built on people's ubiquitous feeling of security, starting from the principal. Overall, the principal played a critical role in promoting vulnerability to be part of the school's culture. In a self-reflection on his leadership practice, Mr. Turner revealed that he does not shy away from admitting to his staff that it is okay to fail and that being able to demonstrate vulnerability is a valuable cultural norm. He stated, "The culture we've created here is one, I point out the things I do wrong all the time.. And I can make a mistake because I know I've got this staff backing me up, doing all the right things." Being vulnerable to admitting mistakes results from a culture of security among teachers connected to the PLC. For example, Mr. Howard believed,One of the most important parts of the mindset in the PLC is the idea that we are professionally responsible for continuous, ongoing professional development and learning. And really that vulnerability to work with other people. If you are willing to learn from them, willing to share the assets you have, but not be judgmental ever, just continue to learn and improve the same way we expect from our students.</p> <p>Above, Mr. Howard illustrates that in their PLC culture, being vulnerable sits at the core because authentic collaboration requires vulnerability, and vulnerability emerges from an open-minded ethos supported by the sense of security in the school.</p> <p>Vulnerability also showed up in teaching evaluations. For example, Ms. Cooper, a social studies teacher working in the district for 21 years, discussed how, during a recent teacher evaluation, she decided to incorporate a district initiative of differentiated instruction, "we've been doing a lot of differentiation as part of our PD, and that's where I've really felt the weakest in all the years that I've been teaching." Reflecting on why she decided to try differentiated instruction, she said, "I trust [the administration], I am going to take a risk here," and "I think they're [administration] sending that message to teachers that in the PLC model, it's okay to fail and you struggle, and you work together to figure that out." Similarly, Ms. Gonzales, a science teacher working in the district for six years, shared a significant difference in her teaching from when she started teaching to the present time:When I first started teaching, I had a difficult time sharing my struggles because I didn't want to be looked upon as a bad teacher. Now that I've been teaching for a while, I know that my colleagues support me.. I don't feel badly about having to ask for help now.</p> <p>Above, Ms. Gonzales shared how being vulnerable has helped her seek out help and stay away from working in silos and more in a community with one another.</p> <p>Meanwhile, the focus group interview with the six instructional coaches further sheds light on the culture of openness to collaboration and vulnerability as critical characteristics for the school to maintain a high-functioning PLC. Again, the principal played a crucial role in promoting the shared norm of vulnerability to be part of the schools' PLC culture. One coach described Mr. Turner's leadership around the idea of staff feeling comfortable and open to talking about their weaknesses: "It really does start from the top down; oftentimes, because he [principal] has created a culture where people feel like they can take the risk [and], they are not gonna be judged if something goes wrong." The coaches underscored the culture was assisted through a non-judgmental approach by everyone in the building, starting with leadership. However, it is essential to note that this openness to collaboration and vulnerable identity takes time to develop in the school. A coach recalled encountering a resistant teacher during her first year of coaching who would complain to the principal about her. She stated, "I think there was a level of discomfort 'cause she didn't know how she was gonna change. I think through the PLC process, she was able to start adding to the agenda things she didn't understand" and now "she is probably one of the most innovative teachers of the group." The PLC culture demonstrated at Weddington is built on the belief in the sense of security that supports openness to collaborate, and revealing one's vulnerability was a desirable practice.</p> <p>Mr. Howard discussed how he planned to implement a teacher-student mentoring program to build better relationships with marginalized students, "I am working with the administration here to figure out the ways to particularly in staff meetings to have a focused celebrating teacher-student relationship." When asked if he was concerned about the program not being successful, he shared, "I've done things that did not work that has failed.. I think my administration tends to trust the things that I do because they always see that consistent and focusing on their mission, vision, [and] values."</p> <p>According to Ms. Allen, a health science teacher in her third year in the school, she believed, "I think that the teachers have the freedom to try new things and to try something new if they think it's going to work for students." Similarly, Ms. Anderson, a special education teacher working in the school for 18 years, discussed recognizing the need to make her instruction more engaging for students,I have first to recognize that there's always another way that things could be done and be open to that. And I've gone into my younger, junior teachers and observed them and seeing the excitement that the students have utilizing a different model that's what makes me want to do it. Okay, show me how to do this, because I want that in my room.</p> <p>The above response by Ms. Anderson highlights how she understands that the culture in Weddington is one where senior staff can feel secure in their vulnerability to ask for instructional assistance from new teachers if it aids in student engagement.</p> <p>Overall, a culture of open-mindedness to collaboration and being vulnerable and reconstructing failure from an adverse to a productive action facilitated an atmosphere in Weddington for educators to be innovative and try school initiatives (e.g., Ms. Cooper with differentiated instruction) or implement new practices (e.g., Mr. Howard with student mentoring) with a focus on student learning. The second theme also reveals the school leadership's essential role in building trusting relationships with staff and role-modeling habits that engender a ubiquitous sense of security and vulnerability to facilitate teacher innovation and enhance instruction and collaboration. The significance of educators in Weddington feeling secure and having a general openness to being vulnerable with peers and administration contributed to making PLC meaningful to teachers, improving teaching practice across the school, and ultimately sustaining a culture of collaboration and innovation.</p> <hd id="AN0183109782-13">RQ2: equity as a work in progress</hd> <p>The first two themes responded to the first research question and explored how school leaders at WMS obtained staff support for the shared norm of collaboration via promoting organization-wide sense-making, vulnerability, and security. Next, a closer examination of data highlighted WMS' translation of the shared norm of collaboration into daily practices around equity remains an ongoing work in progress for WMS' school leaders. An essential emergent finding was the school's equity journey within the PLC culture—particularly when we examined participants' discussions of minoritized students and their families and community resistance. Throughout the interviews, participants promoted the school's equity orientation, including support for low-income, special education, and ELs. The school has worked to create positions and incorporate systems that facilitate conversations toward the achievement of <emph>all</emph> students, which is aligned with Hord's ([<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref135">36</reflink>]) second PLC dimension (a shared vision that all students can achieve high-quality learning). Nevertheless, participants also highlighted having to challenge deficit language, giving an indication that institutionalizing equity as a part of the organizational norm remains a work in progress.</p> <p>Several points stand out regarding the third theme of equity as a work in progress. According to the principal, Mr. Turner, the school's implementation of Common Core Standards was one of the most challenging experiences he has had as an administrator to the extent that it questioned the shared norm of collaboration. Mr. Turner reflected, "The first three months were as hard of any three months I've ever had in education because the teachers were so upset and they were so questioning what we were doing." He continued, "Our language arts teachers looked at it [Common Core] and they were like, 'What are you asking us? These kids cannot possibly do this'...it challenged our foundation of what we are about as a professional learning community." Although the school was able to develop a collaborative culture, this incident points out that it is not clear how effectively the school's shared norm of collaboration addressed some teachers' deficit approaches to higher expectations of <emph>all</emph> students.</p> <p>Moreover, the school's recent equity initiative towards inclusion encountered some teachers framing ELs and special education students as "someone else's students." In presenting the current culture in the school, Ms. Green stated if someone is saying, "Well, this student can't do this, or that student can't.. you'll hear a staff member, a teacher, a coach, an administrator, 'Well, that's not the Weddington Way.' We don't believe that about students." Similarly, a coach discussed an issue of the schools' inclusion of ELs and Special Education students was around some general education teachers taking responsibility for all students. A coach stated, "teachers' kind of view is like, 'Oh, those are your [special education or bilingual teachers] students.' Now [students] are fully integrated, and it really helps to create that collaborative culture." Both responses imply that the culture exists to challenge deficit thinking and has shifted to be more responsive, but such "othering" views of ELs and special education students point to the unrelenting power tension of deficit-focused language in the school (Tan & Thorius, [<reflink idref="bib67" id="ref136">67</reflink>]). Meanwhile, discussing a PD, where parents of color presented about cultural diversity, Ms. Gonzales shared, "we had rotations, where some parents came to talk about cultural diversity, and that was cool because we were learning with other colleagues that we normally don't get to learn with." In her response, Ms. Gonzales acknowledges the benefit of developing collegiality with colleagues instead of centering the voices of parents of color and the primary focus of the PD on cultural diversity. Ms. Gonzales' response is reminiscent with Thorius's ([<reflink idref="bib67" id="ref137">67</reflink>]) observation where educators are prompted by PD facilitators to reflect on race, "yet the concepts and activities introduced to them as glancing blows easily shaken off by the collective imaginary of white, non-disabled superiority" (p. 327).</p> <p>At the same time, the political debates that have affected schools since Trump's presidency also provided a critical context to the district's engagement with equity. Reflecting on community factors that impacted the instructional programming of the school, Mr. Howard recalled an incident where an Arab-American ELA teacher teaching a Civil Rights unit received backlash from some parents for teaching a poem written by Colin Kaepernick—a former football player and civil rights activist. He stated, "I think there was also the racial component of her being an Arab-American teacher because the white teacher in that building had no sort of flag, nor the teacher teaching the same poem in the other building." About the conflict he shared,A parent of a student in the class created a social media campaign about why are they teaching all this, like Black Lives Matter, why they are teaching about culture and race, why aren't they just teaching kids how to put periods and commas in the right place, and spell words.</p> <p>On the one hand, the school's response supported the Arab-American teacher and redirected the community members who were pressuring the school by ensuring that the instruction was connected to the core mission and vision of the school and Common Core Standards.</p> <p>On the other hand, Mr. Howard felt that "we could do even better by taking a proactive approach to articulate to the community what we believe in, related to culture, race, equity, ethics, rather than respond [to] things in closed doors about these topics." Here, we interpret the school leaders' action to address community complaints of a female teacher from an Arabic ethnic background remained reactive. Therefore, the third theme shows that the power tensions surrounding equity issues were manifested by teachers struggling to shift their deficit mindsets (Tan & Thorius, [<reflink idref="bib67" id="ref138">67</reflink>]; Thorius, [<reflink idref="bib67" id="ref139">67</reflink>]), educators' lack of attention to listening to the voice of parents of color, and the school's remaining reactive in promoting racial equity across the community. Again, although WMS has been successful in sustaining a shared culture of collaboration, it is unclear how much WMS' shared norm of collaboration has prepared the staff to translate their PLC into a safe learning community that proactively addresses issues around equity, making it clear to the local community that teaching racial equity is part of the school's focus. WMS' journey of providing equitable outcomes remains complex and a work in progress.</p> <hd id="AN0183109782-14">Discussion and implications</hd> <p>The findings of this study foreground how Hord's five PLC dimensions interact and influence the PLC culture within a case study of WMS. Regarding the first research question, WMS' ability to sustain its staff commitment to the collaborative climate for an extended period was more about "changing the professional culture of a system" (Talbert, [<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref140">66</reflink>], p. 556) by promoting staff sense-making, sense of security, and vulnerability and less about mandating participation or imposing bureaucratic measures (e.g., PLC checklists). Furthermore, we argue that an essential outcome when educators within a PLC culture feel safe and vulnerable is that it opens the door for educators to be willingly more comfortable trying innovative instructional practices. In organizational learning terms, WMS' leadership focused more on conceptual staff learning than on operational learning (Weinbaum et al., [<reflink idref="bib74" id="ref141">74</reflink>]). Regarding the second research question, we also identified that while institutionalizing a shared value of student learning can lead to innovative practices, fulfilling equity for all students as a part of the organizational norm remains a work in progress (Cochran-Smith, [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref142">14</reflink>]). Based on our findings, we have devised Fig. 1 to illustrate how WMS' high-functioning PLC operated using Hord's ([<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref143">36</reflink>]) five PLC dimensions and how the themes of this study interplay within WMS' PLC (see Fig. 1). In Fig. 1, we indicated Hord's five PLC dimensions as rectangles, whereas the themes this study identified are denoted as ovals, while also showing which oval/theme relates to what research question (e.g., The first oval on the left indicates that it is relevant to research question 1). Below, we outline the complexity of this model.</p> <p>Graph: Fig. 1 Conceptualized PLC implementation framework at WMS. Note Rectangles represent Hord's ([<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref144">36</reflink>]) five PLC dimensions, while ovals denote themes identified in this study</p> <p>In this study's findings, supportive and shared leadership (Hord's Dimension 1) and supportive conditions (Dimension 4) provide the foundation for continuous staff sense-making of PLC tenets (theme 1), which leads to shared practice and collective learning and application of learning. Next, WMS was able to cultivate staff sense of security through supportive leadership conditions (Dimension 1). Sense of security, then, proceeded to establish staff being comfortable with demonstrating vulnerability (Theme 2) leading them to be open to collaboration, which also facilitated innovative practices. A close examination of the participants' responses reveals the reciprocal relationship between shared personal practice (Dimension 2) with educators' sense of security and openness to collaboration and vulnerability (Theme 2), represented as bidirectional arrows in Fig. 1. Our findings point out that a sense of security, as well as openness to collaboration and vulnerability, provided staff motivation to freely share practice. We also infer that the accumulated experiences of practice sharing strengthened staff beliefs that their interactions with colleagues as secure, rendering them to continue to be open to collaborate and be vulnerable to one another while sharing student data. Thus, because staff felt secure in being vulnerable, they were more inclined to try innovative practices.</p> <p>The first and second themes (RQ1) are consistent with prior scholarly and practitioner insights (DuFour et al., [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref145">21</reflink>]; McLaughlin & Talbert, [<reflink idref="bib48" id="ref146">48</reflink>]) and suggest that the establishment of norms of collaboration plays a critical role in PLC development. This study adds nuance to the extant knowledgebase by illustrating that the collaborative norm may be shaped through staff sense-making, sense of security, and vulnerability. Leadership efforts to cultivate PLCs and promote shared instructional practices (e.g., peer observation) are often faced with teacher resistance as they challenge the prevalent notion of the autonomy the teaching profession has been characterized by (Little, [<reflink idref="bib45" id="ref147">45</reflink>]). Promoting a closer coupling of instruction with policy and curriculum often causes tensions within an organization (Meyer & Rowan, [<reflink idref="bib50" id="ref148">50</reflink>]). Related, Spillane et al. ([<reflink idref="bib63" id="ref149">63</reflink>]) suggest organizational routines can play essential roles in achieving a closer coupling between policy mandates and classroom instructional practices. The principal creates routines and structures so teachers can collectively reflect on their instructional practices (Spillane et al., [<reflink idref="bib63" id="ref150">63</reflink>]). Our findings further suggest that leadership efforts to promote staff sense-making of PLC, sense of safety and vulnerability play a crucial role in organizational routines to be institutionalized as the core school culture (Huffman, [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref151">38</reflink>]).</p> <p>Related to the organizational learning perspectives discussed in the literature review, it is critical to note that administrators at WMS promoted both operational and conceptual staff learning (Lau et al., [<reflink idref="bib40" id="ref152">40</reflink>]; Weinbaum et al., [<reflink idref="bib74" id="ref153">74</reflink>]). As discussed by Turner, Green, and coaches, WMS created pre-semester PD and weekly staff meetings, secured time for grade- and subject-level meetings, appointed coaches to facilitate meetings, and set up an online platform for adding agenda items, promoting staff operational learning. Facilitating system-and process-oriented learning (i.e., thus operational learning) and as their school develops as PLC over time, WMS' leaders simultaneously and increasingly focused on staff internalization of PLC tenets (i.e., conceptual learning; Lau et al., [<reflink idref="bib40" id="ref154">40</reflink>]) by nurturing staff sense-making, sense of security, and vulnerability. The integration of both operational and conceptual learning is important because mutually exclusive approaches to organizational change are unrealistic (Talbert, [<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref155">66</reflink>]). Our findings indicate that operational learning is <emph>necessary</emph> but <emph>not sufficient</emph> to institutionalize the norm of collaboration. Instead, a heightened focus on staff conceptual learning along with operational learning can play a critical role in the sustainability of a high-functioning PLC, shaping and being shaped by the typical PLC dimensions (Hord, [<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref156">36</reflink>]) (see Fig. 1). When pressured to participate in PLCs without fully understanding the why behind it (i.e., conceptual learning), teachers may exhibit ritual enactment of PLC mandates but never accept the notion that PLC is worth their time (Talbert, [<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref157">66</reflink>]). Thus, school leaders should balance both operational and conceptual learning by promoting cultural change, a sense of security, and organization-wide openness to collaboration and vulnerability, which also helped facilitate an innovative culture in Weddington.</p> <p>Critically, among Hord's ([<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref158">36</reflink>]) five PLC dimensions, shared personal practice (Dimension 5) and collective learning (Dimension 3) have been documented as the least common and most difficult features to be implemented in PLCs (Huffman, [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref159">38</reflink>]). Our PLC implementation framework adds to the field's understanding by suggesting that leadership support for promoting a sense of security (Theme 2) may play a critical role in resulting in these shared practices. Repeated practice sharing with peers, in turn, strengthens staff sense of security and vulnerability. It is also important to note that the principal set the tone and modeled vulnerability while interacting with the staff. Based on this finding, school and district efforts toward sustaining the collaborative culture should be focused on facilitating staff sense of security and vulnerability. When teachers clearly understand PLC is worth their time and that they can share errors and frustrations and take risks with colleagues and administrators, they can more willingly deprivatize instructional practices, resulting in an effective learning community, which can ultimately contribute to enhanced student learning (Hallam et al., [<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref160">31</reflink>]).</p> <p>Furthermore, we interpret the ongoing staff sense-making as nurtured by the district-wide and administration focus on internal staff promotion, which we categorize as an organizational support to sustain the organizational memory of PLC (O'Keeffe, [<reflink idref="bib53" id="ref161">53</reflink>]). Four (principal, assistant principals, a coach, and a teacher) out of the seven individual interviewees indicated that the internal promotion was instrumental in developing a body of staff members who strongly believed in the purpose and value of collaboration so that the value becomes institutionalized as an organizational norm over time. It seems evident that internal promotion preferably selected educators who strongly support the core PLC tenets, thus retaining shared-minded educators and strengthening the shared value of collaboration over time. We also found that WMS' maintaining close lines of communication with the district was instrumental in WMS' PLC development over an extended period. Close communication with the district is critical as organizational context moderates the principal's belief and commitment (van den Boom-Muilenburg et al., [<reflink idref="bib69" id="ref162">69</reflink>]). Although the principal is fully committed to PLC principles, their leadership can be tempered faced with a lack of support from the district. Indeed, WMS leaders' efforts to promote staff sense-making, internal promotion, and staffing coaches were all provided by the district. Thus, our findings indicate that school and district leaders should maintain close communications with one another to parallel the culture of schools and district (Fullan, [<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref163">23</reflink>]).</p> <p>While it is important to see that Weddington's promotion of staff sense-making was <emph>concerted efforts</emph> between district, school leaders, and teachers, it is also critical to note that the collective sense-making involves a political nature. For example, principals and teachers may develop conflicting interpretations of school changes, thus competing for legitimacy, which highlights the political nature of the sense-making process (Walls, [<reflink idref="bib72" id="ref164">72</reflink>]). For example, while making sense of educational changes, principals adopt changes that they regard as most important at the school level (Gawlik, [<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref165">26</reflink>]), whereas teachers care more about changes in classroom practices (Schmidt & Datnow, [<reflink idref="bib58" id="ref166">58</reflink>]). Similarly, Walls' ([<reflink idref="bib72" id="ref167">72</reflink>]) case study illustrates how superintendents' or principals' actions that did not fully address the political nature of sense-making led to educators' identity threat, substantial teacher turnover, and ultimately resulting in unexpected school closures. We also anticipate future research that foregrounds the political nature of sense-making and the importance of concerted efforts between stakeholders located in different places in the organizational hierarchy.</p> <p>As the final note on staff sense-making process, although WMS sustained their collaborative norms and structures for an extended period of time, teachers still sometimes derailed from the shared agenda items focused on student learning. It directly speaks to the point that sense-making in school change should be an <emph>ongoing</emph> process (Gannon-Shilon & Schechter, [<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref168">24</reflink>]). School leaders at Weddington utilized weekly staff meetings, team meetings, and external PLC institutes to facilitate this ongoing sense-making process. We argue these continuing organizational supports may assist teachers examine whether the proposed school changes (e.g., PLC norms) are aligned with their inherent interests and existing knowledge (Schmidt & Datnow, [<reflink idref="bib58" id="ref169">58</reflink>]).</p> <p>Related to the third theme (RQ2), as suburban enrollment becomes more diverse (Mordechay & Orfield, [<reflink idref="bib51" id="ref170">51</reflink>]), a small but growing number of researchers have begun examining the experiences of minoritized students in such contexts (e.g. Chapman, [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref171">12</reflink>]; Diamond & Lewis, [<reflink idref="bib19" id="ref172">19</reflink>]; Diem et al., [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref173">20</reflink>]; Holme et al., [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref174">35</reflink>]; Rhodes & Warkentien, [<reflink idref="bib55" id="ref175">55</reflink>]; Welton et al., [<reflink idref="bib75" id="ref176">75</reflink>]). Our case study advances these discussions by investigating the relationship between school context (suburban) and the vision of a high-functioning PLC focused on student learning for all. Despite WMS' success in garnering staff support for continuous staff collaboration, issues around educational equity relevant to educator race, ELs, and inclusive practices for students with special needs were rather limited and indeed need further improvement. Cochran-Smith ([<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref177">14</reflink>]) highlights that educators working in communities for equity "push one another to interrogate their underlying assumptions and rethink much of what is taken for granted in teaching, learning, and schooling" (p. 113). Despite evidence of WMS' efforts to achieve educational equity (e.g., Howard's teacher-student mentoring program), multiple equity-related concerns stood out. Therefore, a dotted arrow in Fig. 1 between equity work in progress and the goal of shared vision indicates that WMS' efforts to advance equity are developing gradually but require a more concerted effort.</p> <p>Specifically, although WMS' PLC structure is highly effective in collaboration and vulnerability, there are numerous examples to suggest that equity is a work in progress. For instance, WMS' leaders exhibited reactive behaviors to calm down parent dissatisfaction that targeted a Muslim teacher incorporating culturally relevant teaching. Interestingly, while two white teachers also taught similar material, the community dissatisfaction focused on the Muslim teacher. A study by the Holme et al. ([<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref178">35</reflink>]) found that suburban schools with a growing minoritized student population encounter political resistance from the larger community. Missing in WMS' PLC is the collective efficacy of educators interrogating their identities and pedagogical practices that marginalize some students and seeing the cultural assets of diverse students (Carter Andrews & Richmond, [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref179">11</reflink>]). While there were attempts by the administrators to redirect deficit thinking, more critical conversations of whiteness and racism (Thorius, [<reflink idref="bib67" id="ref180">67</reflink>]) were lacking, and proactive support systems were not in place for their teachers of color in case of backlash.</p> <p>Thus, while the administration asserted that they valued equity, there were no tangible or actionable steps to execute equity within the PLC structure. Equity was not explicitly part of WMS' PLC theory of change. Relevant to McLaughlin and Talbert's PLC developmental stages ([<reflink idref="bib48" id="ref181">48</reflink>]), we interpret that WMS' commitment to equity as a shared vision implies characteristics of schools in the novice stage in that some teachers revealed deficit-laden perspectives of students ("those students are in special-ed") evidenced by Ms. Green's quote within the first theme of this study (McLaughlin & Talbert, [<reflink idref="bib48" id="ref182">48</reflink>]).</p> <p>An emerging body of research linking organizational change with equity as the goal for change indicates that when equity is not explicitly embedded in the school's organizational routines and reflective practice, their espoused intentions regarding equity will misalign with what occurs in practice (Welton et al., [<reflink idref="bib76" id="ref183">76</reflink>]; Diamond & Gomez, [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref184">18</reflink>]; Lewis & Diamond, [<reflink idref="bib43" id="ref185">43</reflink>]). In hindsight, if WMS made equity an explicit centerpiece of their PLC structure instead of an afterthought, equity as a shared vision would be the fundamental starting point of Hord's framework which now acts as a driving force for the remaining dimensions. As such, in Fig. 2, we suggest an expanded version of Hord's framework where equity as the shared vision is at the center and drives the remaining four domains. We encourage future research to further explore this reframing of equity-centered PLCs.</p> <p>Graph: Fig. 2 Reconceptualized PLC implementation framework</p> <p>On the other hand, we must recognize the efforts taking place at WMS to support their minoritized students. Mr. Howard said his coaching position was specifically created to improve the "educational experiences and outcomes for culturally, linguistically diverse, bi-literacy and low-income students." Also, administrators openly discussed that challenging teacher deficit ideologies was part of the school's shared vision, and innovative practices discussed by participants were focused on student learning. This case study supports the argument that equity in PLCs requires purposeful and constant focus (Andrews & Richmond, [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref186">11</reflink>]; Cochran-Smith, [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref187">14</reflink>]; McLaughlin & Talbert, [<reflink idref="bib48" id="ref188">48</reflink>]; Thorius, [<reflink idref="bib67" id="ref189">67</reflink>]).</p> <p>Our findings provide implications for future research. Talbert ([<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref190">66</reflink>]) suggests teachers are categorized into three groups depending on their responses to organizational efforts for PLC development: enthusiasts, cooperators, and wait-and-see teachers. Enthusiasts are those who participate in significant professional development of PLC and often assume leadership roles to work with colleagues for PLC implementation. Meanwhile, cooperators willingly attempt to make sense of how they could work collaboratively with colleagues although they sometimes are unsure whether the time they spend in PLC is worthwhile. Lastly, the wait-and-see staff "stand by to see how the work will go" (Talbert, [<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref191">66</reflink>], p. 566) and do not actively participate in organizational collaboration. Although we identified that staff sense-making, security, and vulnerability played important roles in garnering staff support for the norm of collaboration, it is not clear how these concepts have differential impacts on enthusiasts, cooperators, and wait-and-sees throughout the stages of PLC development. Therefore, future research is warranted to explore how our PLC implementation framework (Fig. 1) works similarly or differently with the three types of staff. Additionally, it is troublesome that PLC literature remains largely silent on how the shared norm of collaboration that the PLC aims to achieve is connected to achieving racial equity in school. More research is necessary to add nuance to the field's understanding of what Hord's ([<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref192">36</reflink>]) second dimension of shared vision that <emph>all</emph> students can achieve high-quality learning, really means in PLC context and the extent to which educators materialize efforts to reduce opportunity gaps in student learning. In other words, what does PLC look like when equity is the center of the work? The next evolution of studying PLCs requires the careful interrogation of how shared value and vision that all students—especially students of color, low-income, special education, and English Learners—can learn is being operationalized within school-based PLCs.</p> <hd id="AN0183109782-15">Declarations</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0183109782-16">Conflict of interest</hd> <p>On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.</p> <hd id="AN0183109782-17">Publisher's Note</hd> <p>Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.</p> <ref id="AN0183109782-18"> <title> References </title> <blist> <bibl id="bib1" idref="ref1" type="bt">1</bibl> <bibtext> Ahn J. Taking a step to identify how to create professional learning communities: Report of a case study of a Korean public high school on how to create and sustain a school-based teacher professional learning community. 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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Educational+Change%22">Educational Change</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Cooperative+Learning%22">Cooperative Learning</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Communities+of+Practice%22">Communities of Practice</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Teaching+Methods%22">Teaching Methods</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Instructional+Improvement%22">Instructional Improvement</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Middle+School+Teachers%22">Middle School Teachers</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Equal+Education%22">Equal Education</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Race%22">Race</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22English+Learners%22">English Learners</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Instructional+Leadership%22">Instructional Leadership</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Barriers%22">Barriers</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22School+Culture%22">School Culture</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Teacher+Administrator+Relationship%22">Teacher Administrator Relationship</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Inclusion%22">Inclusion</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Special+Needs+Students%22">Special Needs Students</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Educational+Practices%22">Educational Practices</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Teacher+Characteristics%22">Teacher Characteristics</searchLink>
– Name: DOI
  Label: DOI
  Group: ID
  Data: 10.1007/s10833-024-09511-2
– Name: ISSN
  Label: ISSN
  Group: ISSN
  Data: 1389-2843<br />1573-1812
– Name: Abstract
  Label: Abstract
  Group: Ab
  Data: Despite the benefits of improving teaching and learning that research evidences, professional learning communities (PLCs) can be challenging to sustain for a sufficient period of time to become deeply engrained within the school's culture and accepted by teachers as organizational norms. As PLCs strive to achieve a system-level reform and promote educators' reflective dialogues and shared experiences, they have strong potential to achieve positive changes in teacher perspectives and teaching practices focused on equity. Despite this potential, only a small number of studies have explored the potential of PLCs being used as vehicles to advance equity, and challenges educators can experience in translating PLCs' collaborative culture into advancing equity are under-researched. Therefore, employing Hord's (1997) attributes of PLCs as our conceptual framework, we conducted this study to understand how a middle school in the U.S. Midwest sustained its PLC to be deeply permeated in and accepted by the staff as a prevailing organizational culture. This study also aims to identify equity-related challenges educators experienced in the process. Data analysis identified school leaders' support for staff sense-making of the PLC and the promotion of security and vulnerability as the essential mindset for shared practice and innovation. We also found that issues around educational equity relevant to educator race, English Learners, and inclusive practices for students with special needs were limited and indeed need further development. Implications for school leadership practice and future research are provided in the discussion.
– Name: AbstractInfo
  Label: Abstractor
  Group: Ab
  Data: As Provided
– Name: DateEntry
  Label: Entry Date
  Group: Date
  Data: 2025
– Name: AN
  Label: Accession Number
  Group: ID
  Data: EJ1460754
PLink https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=eric&AN=EJ1460754
RecordInfo BibRecord:
  BibEntity:
    Identifiers:
      – Type: doi
        Value: 10.1007/s10833-024-09511-2
    Languages:
      – Text: English
    PhysicalDescription:
      Pagination:
        PageCount: 31
        StartPage: 57
    Subjects:
      – SubjectFull: Educational Change
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Cooperative Learning
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Communities of Practice
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Teaching Methods
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Instructional Improvement
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Middle School Teachers
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Equal Education
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Race
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: English Learners
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Instructional Leadership
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Barriers
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: School Culture
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Teacher Administrator Relationship
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Inclusion
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Special Needs Students
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Educational Practices
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Teacher Characteristics
        Type: general
    Titles:
      – TitleFull: Challenges in Sustaining Professional Learning Communities Focused on Equity
        Type: main
  BibRelationships:
    HasContributorRelationships:
      – PersonEntity:
          Name:
            NameFull: Joonkil Ahn
      – PersonEntity:
          Name:
            NameFull: Osly J. Flores
      – PersonEntity:
          Name:
            NameFull: Anjalé D. Welton
      – PersonEntity:
          Name:
            NameFull: Donald G. Hackmann
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          Dates:
            – D: 01
              M: 03
              Type: published
              Y: 2025
          Identifiers:
            – Type: issn-print
              Value: 1389-2843
            – Type: issn-electronic
              Value: 1573-1812
          Numbering:
            – Type: volume
              Value: 26
            – Type: issue
              Value: 1
          Titles:
            – TitleFull: Journal of Educational Change
              Type: main
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