Definition of a Professional Learning Environment

 

An effective professional learning community has the capacity to promote and sustain the training of all professionals and other staff in the school community with the collective purpose of enhancing pupil learning.

 

What is a Professional Learning Community (PLC)

 

A school that operates as a Professional Learning Centre engages the entire group of professionals in learning within a supportive community. Teacher and administrator learning are more complex and more fruitful in a social setting where participants can interact, test their ideas, and challenge their interferences and interpretations, and process new information within a group. When new ideas are processed in interaction with others, multiple sources of knowledge and expertise expand and test the new concepts as part of the learning experience. The Professional Learning Centre provides a setting that is richer and more stimulating. Imbedded in this Professional Learning Centre is discipline.

 

In a professional learning community there is a focus on learning rather than on teaching.

The idea of community is crucial to the success of professional learning communities.

Professional learning communities judge their effectiveness on the basis of results. 

Working together to improve learner achievement becomes the routine work of everyone in the school with the ultimate goal to prepare the learners for life after school.

The disciplinary system at Walvis Bay Private School encourages positive behaviour.  However, there is a need to balance it with the reality that all children prosper in an environment where there are boundaries, structures and routines.  When a child chooses to cross a boundary, there must be consequences.  This enables a child to learn responsibility and respect for authority.