A decade ago, the National Commission on Mathematics and Teaching for the 21st Century released its landmark report, Before It’s Too Late. This commission, led by Senator John Glenn, made several recommendations to advance the quality of science and mathematics education in the United States, including ways to improve the professional growth of K–12 teachers. The commission defined professional development as a planned, collaborative, educational process of continuous improvement for teachers that helps them do five things: 1) deepen their content knowledge, 2) enhance their teaching skills, 3) keep up with developments in the education field, 4) generate and contribute new knowledge to the profession, and 5) improve their ability to monitor students’ work so they can provide constructive feedback to students and appropriately redirect their own teaching.

One strong recommendation for professional development from the report is the need for schools and districts to form Inquiry Groups to meet regularly throughout the school year. The commission envisioned these groups as learning communities where teachers come together to share ideas, contribute to the knowledge base on teaching practice, learn from one another’s experiences, engage in common studies to enrich their knowledge of teaching and learning, and design ways to incorporate new developments into their teaching.

A decade later, the professional learning community (PLC), a powerful, job-embedded structure for professional development, is ubiquitous in today’s schools. The vision of the Glenn Commission’s Inquiry Groups has come of age in the modern PLC. Although PLCs have spread like wildfire throughout the K–12 education system, we still have a way to go, especially in science, if PLCs are to significantly impact science teaching and learning.

In many schools, administrators now require teachers to participate in PLCs on a regular basis. However, merely meeting during or after school or through an online network does not necessarily translate into a PLC. Many teachers and administrators still need better understanding of what constitutes a PLC. The PLC, like science as inquiry, has been characterized in a myriad of ways, depending on who is defining it. This ambiguity has led to a danger of it being hijacked (much like formative assessment and inquiry) and turned into the latest education fad. Unfortunately these “fads” often succumb to the TTWP (this too will pass) approach if they are not well-defined and supported.

PLCs are not meetings where science departments come together to focus on management issues. They are not loosely defined discussion groups. They are structures where teachers come together to engage in powerful learning where student success is at the core. The teachers’ learning is continually focused on how to become more effective so student learning is supported. The collective shared goals and participation of the group achieve results. This is a shift for some teachers who have traditionally viewed professional development as going off and doing their “own thing” by attending courses, workshops, conferences, and other such events for their own individual benefit. While this approach does help an individual teacher, it doesn’t necessarily improve the teaching of that educator’s colleagues by building a common knowledge base about effective science teaching and learning.

I, like many of my professional development colleagues, strongly believe PLCs can transform teacher practice and move teachers beyond the isolation of individual efforts to collaborating as a team to improve the science learning of all students. The very essence of a PLC is its focus on student learning. Imagine groups of science teachers coming together to identify student learning needs in science and then mapping out a strategy to learn more about how they can address these needs collectively. Picture them coming together to read and discuss journal articles on conceptual change teaching, trying out new forms of formative assessment, and discussing how they work. As researchers in their own classrooms, they could explore student thinking and share their findings with their peers as part of a PLC. This is powerful, in-depth learning, with the special knowledge and skills making science teaching a unique profession at its core. There is a tremendous need to help schools think about how to use content-specific PLC groups, such as science PLCs, to advance learning and support teaching so the specific needs of learners in the content area are met. With the current focus on improving STEM education, time, resources, and school support for building and maintaining PLCs must be sacrosanct.

One of the goals of my presidency has been to increase support for embedded forms of science professional development facilitated by teachers and focused on collegial learning by teams of teachers within a school. By supporting PLCs in the context of science, NSTA is well poised to bring clarity to this increasingly popular concept and show how it can support STEM teaching and learning. To address this, I have commissioned a special NSTA Press publication, Professional Learning Communities for Science Teaching: Lessons From Research and Practice, edited by Susan Mundry and Kathy Stiles. This book describes successful PLC models, outlines strategies used by science PLCs, and provides guidance for developing science PLCs. I believe it should be required reading for science teachers and administrators involved in PLCs.

In addition, NSTA is offering in early August its first summer institute geared toward school teams, Math-Science Partnership projects, and others interested in learning about science-specific PLCs. This institute, Professional Learning Communities in Science Institute—Designs, Tools, and Resources for Improving Student Learning, will feature the book’s editors and contributing authors as well as a cadre of national presenters helping participants design ways to build, improve, and sustain a PLC. They will also learn how to access and use NSTA resources to support this work. Check out NSTA’s website for more information on this special summer institute. I highly recommend schools engaged in PLC work and Math-Science Partnership projects using the PLC strategy send a representative or team, including an administrator or district science specialist, to this conference to bring back new ideas to jump start, focus, and energize their PLCs.

As NSTA’s John Glenn Center for Science Education evolves into a national centerpiece for professional learning, NSTA will continue to develop and support bold new initiatives to maintain Glenn’s vision of teacher professional development in the 21st Century to promote NSTA’s mission of “Excellence and Innovation in Science Teaching and Learning for All.” Our national and area conferences, NSTA Press publications, and the NSTA Learning Center are all gold mines of resources and ideas that can empower PLC leaders to foster the kind of professional development that builds powerful bridges between the effective science teaching described in research and practitioner knowledge and action.

I hope to see many of you at our PLC summer institute and other venues to explore the ways we can grow into a vital community working together to strengthen the relationship between ongoing professional learning in science and student achievement.