Implementing professional learning communities
School leadership teams support their professional learning communities (PLCs) by:
- clearly communicating the goals of the School Strategic Plan (SSP) and Annual Implementation Pan (AIP) to staff
- establishing the use of a common instructional framework
- ensuring teams have a guaranteed and viable curriculum
- presenting key data in an accessible and engaging way.
Establishing underlying supportive conditions at a whole school level, as well as adequately prioritising and resourcing PLCs, will set teams up for the best chance of success.
Professional learning opportunities are available to support schools with their PLC implementation and improvement. Visit for more information.
Stages of the inquiry cycle and key actions – an example
While inquiry cycle lengths can vary based on the school context in which PLCs are operating, a rough guide is to work through the process on a termly basis. The following illustrative breakdown of a PLC cycle is based on the inquiry stages within the FISO 2.0 framework as used by many schools.
Establishing conditions for success at an individual PLC team level
PLC teams spend time establishing a common understanding around ways of working before commencing their first cycle and set the conditions for successful collaboration. These include meeting schedules, access to data sets, inquiry cycle documentation templates, and establishing a clear vision and protocols that promote effective collaboration.
Evaluate and diagnose
In this stage of the inquiry cycle, PLCs use the available evidence of student learning to identify where students are at in relation to whole-school improvement priorities. They determine foci for their inquiry that align with the school’s SSP and AIP.
Case study – evaluate and diagnose
The PLC team, consisting of Year 9 Humanities teachers at a large, metropolitan secondary school, selected increased student motivation and interest as a general direction for their inquiry cycle. Initial data analysis involved an exploration of year-on-year cohort Attitudes to School Survey (AToSS) data addressing motivation and interest over time, along with previous cohort survey data on the teaching and learning unit in question. From this, the team hypothesised that supporting students to see the connections between lessons and concepts across the unit would increase their motivation and interest. The team decided to develop their knowledge of the elements of learning in the VTLM 2.0, exploring how organising and sequencing the knowledge to be taught during the unit could support students to build strong mental models in their long-term memory. This would then improve their overall engagement, aligning with the school’s SSP and AIP priorities. Making connections would also assist in improving their ability to construct explanations and analyses, and developing these skills would contribute to improvements in other subjects such as English through text-to-world connections, and Science through cause-and-effect connections.
Prioritise and set goals
In this stage of the inquiry cycle, PLCs work collaboratively to identify the inquiry focus that is likely to have the greatest impact on student learning. They identify a sub-set of students who would most benefit from progression in this area, determine how to track their progress, and establish what a specific and achievable student learning goal may be.
Case study – prioritise and set goals
The team used an existing task within the planned sequence of teaching and learning to gather benchmark evidence of student achievement. Each member of the PLC team brought 3 student responses to this task to the PLC meeting, with each response representing a different level of achievement. The team moderated these samples by making direct comparisons between them, placing them in order of lowest to highest, and noted that the strongest responses were able make connections between concepts that were less explicit and more abstract. They examined available Progressive Achievement Test – Reading (PAT-R) data and decided to focus their inquiry on the sub-group of students who could interpret explicit information but had lower scores in interpreting implied information. The PLC team adapted an existing learning rubric to develop a continuum of achievement around explaining and analysing connections. Selecting 3 students from each class to monitor for progress against this rubric, the team constructed a digital data wall and mapped the current achievement of this student sub-set against the inquiry focus. The overall goal of the team was to progress student learning on this achievement continuum by at least one level.
Develop and plan
In this stage of the inquiry cycle, PLCs undertake professional learning, drawing on a diverse range of expertise, to determine the instructional strategies best suited to supporting learning growth against the inquiry focus. They use this learning to construct a sequence of teaching and learning, incorporating ‘point-in-time’ formative assessments that accurately measure growth and plan for the collection of agreed upon datasets to track progress.
Case study – develop and plan
Informed by the VTLM 2.0, the PLC team engaged in further professional reading from the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) around how students learn best. Based on this research, the team decided to build opportunities for spaced retrieval purposefully into the sequence of teaching and learning to support consolidation. Consolidation helps students achieve mastery and engage in the generative learning required to build new connections, leading to improved student outcomes against the inquiry focus. The planned lessons in the current sequence incorporated a quick review of the previous lesson – however, this did not involve any retrieval on the part of the students as the teacher delivered it. The team adjusted this to have students respond to a short series of questions focused on the knowledge built in the previous lesson, using mini whiteboards for students to show their responses. This informed the teacher’s 'in the moment' decision about whether to re-teach elements of the previous lesson, provide prompts and scaffolding so that students could successfully recall key content from previous lesson, or, if students demonstrated accurate retrieval of the previous lesson, proceed to the next area of new content. To further support consolidation, the team planned for the explicit teaching of the connections between lessons and concepts via collaboratively constructed statements to activate students’ prior knowledge.
To measure growth against the inquiry focus, the team developed a menu of checks for student understanding teachers could select for use during lessons and regular formative assessment routines to complement the start-of-lesson review. The team planned for the collection and analysis of responses from the focus sub-set of students, on alternating multiple-choice quizzes (MCQ) and 3, 2, 1 exit tickets. The PLC team established a schedule of short classroom observations with the wider teaching team to gauge consistency of teacher practice and to observe student interactions with the assessment activities. A final summative assessment was developed to provide students with the opportunity to demonstrate mastery.
Implement and monitor
In this stage of the inquiry cycle, PLCs put their planned sequence of teaching and learning into action and take deliberate steps to monitor the impact via the collection of agreed upon datasets. They undertake peer observations and engage in moderation practices to determine the effectiveness of their instructional strategies in progressing student learning against the inquiry focus. The team reflects on the results of the cycle and uses them to inform the next inquiry cycle.
Case study – implement and monitor
As the planned sequence of teaching and learning progressed, the PLC team used a familiar data analysis protocol to review the agreed upon data sets. The analysis determined that most of the student sub-set being monitored could make a direct link between adjacent lessons and their concepts. However, their responses rarely made connections to lessons before that. This meant that the team needed to adjust their teaching and learning sequence to support further progress against the inquiry focus. The team designed a one-page knowledge organiser to provide students with an overview of the knowledge covered in the learning sequence which could be referred to at the beginning of lessons and be used for student self-testing. The 3, 2, 1 exit tickets were replaced with short questions that prompted students to think about how specific concepts were connected to each other. The team also introduced short opportunities within lessons for students to practise content that had been taught more than one lesson previously, interleaving it with connected new content. Finally, the team broadened MCQs to include questions about a range of connected content taught at various points in the unit sequence. Those students who were exceeding expectations were encouraged to begin concept mapping all the different connections they could make, in preparation for the summative assessment task.
Analysis of the final summative assessment revealed that every student within the sub-set being tracked for progress was able to improve by at least one level on the achievement continuum. Within the wider Year 9 cohort, 63% improved by at least one level, with 15% improving by 2 – however, 22% of students remained static at the same level. The team decided to investigate this group as part of their next inquiry cycle. To further determine whether an impact on student engagement had been realised, the team made plans to revisit the AToSS data on motivation and interest the following year.
As part of a whole-school PLC celebration, the team shared their new understanding of consolidating learning and its importance in enabling students to think creatively and therefore build new and more complex connections between ideas. The team shared the strategies they had used and how they planned to build on these in their next unit, by using prompts on an A3 flow chart that students would respond to at the beginning of each lesson. This approach would act as a retrieval and review exercise but also explicitly map one lesson and its concept to the next.
Considerations for different school settings
Primary schools
In primary schools, PLC teams are usually aligned with year levels or with sub-schools of junior years (F to Year 2), middle years (Years 3 to 4) and senior years (Years 5 to 6). The timetabling structure can also provide the opportunity for more frequent meetings.
The teachers of specialist subjects such as STEM, Performing Arts and PE frequently form a PLC of their own, with the focus for action determined by its applicability and adaptability across age groups and subject areas.
Secondary schools
In secondary schools, PLCs can be grouped via subject area and by year level or sub-school, for example, Years 7 to 9 Science, Year 10 English, or Senior Art and Technology.
To find common time for the scheduling of their PLC meetings, teams may need to consider:
- the complexity of a secondary school timetable
- yard duty commitments
- teacher involvement in co-curricular programs (such as student clubs and study groups) that run across break periods.
Some schools choose to dedicate one of their after-school meetings for use by PLCs and meet more frequently. Others align the study periods assigned to senior school students with the planning periods timetabled for staff to support more opportunities to collaborate.
Some schools with high numbers of VET students, and therefore a significant portion of the student cohort off-site simultaneously, consult with school council to coordinate a termly or twice-termly variation to school hours. Refer to School Hours (including variation to hours) for guidance. An early release for students, combined with a shortened lunch break for teachers, can provide a block of time for teachers to engage in PLC processes as well as plan and prepare for lessons.
P–9 or P–12 schools
Combined primary and secondary schools may require similar flexibility around the construction of their PLC groupings and meeting schedules to that of secondary contexts. Taking a mixed approach to planning PLCs, for example year level groupings for junior classes and subject groupings in senior classes, can assist.
Small schools
With smaller staff and student cohorts, small school settings such as those in rural and regional areas may require flexibility in establishing their PLCs. For example, a school with a teaching principal and 2 to 3 staff would form one PLC for the entire school across all year levels. In this scenario, the focus for action would be selected based on its applicability and adaptability across age groups and subject areas.
Alternatively, schools may consider joining with similar schools to form more traditional PLC grouping based on year level or subject. Virtual technology can support collaboration and access to professional learning.
Specialist schools
Specialist schools face unique considerations when implementing PLCs due to the nature of their student cohort and their greater reliance on staff observations as a primary source of data.
Depending on the year levels enrolled at the school and the overall number of students, some specialist settings have established PLC groups in line with sub-groups of year levels such as junior school (F to Year 4), middle school (Years 5 to 8), and senior school (Years 9 to 12). Others have aligned with cross-age groupings of students with similar needs or adopted a whole school approach with a common focus area for action.
As with small school settings, specialist settings may also find that forming a cluster with similar schools is beneficial.
Other considerations
Regardless of school setting, research shows that PLCs need dedicated and privileged time to maximise effectiveness. School leadership teams can support this by:
- conducting an audit of the school’s meeting schedule to reduce overlap or double ups and enable more of the meeting schedule to be dedicated to PLCs
- allocating time during student free days (refer to School Dates for further information) for PLCs to continue their work and/or engage in relevant professional learning
- providing a system whereby PLCs can ‘book and block’ time through the daily organiser for less frequent PLC activities such as moderation of student work samples and peer observations.
Reviewed 09 July 2025