Improving teaching quality to ensure that all children in school obtain the skills and knowledge they are meant to acquire has become a key objective internationally. Together with the growing recognition of the need to improve teaching, there is also a realization that the isolation teachers often face is not conducive to collaborative learning and improved teaching practices. In developing countries, many teachers, particularly those in rural areas teaching in multi-grade classrooms, often feel isolated and disconnected from their peers.

Developing countries have recently resorted to alternative models of teacher professional development, such as professional learning communities, or PLCs, to improve teaching quality and promote an approach to teacher development that is both social and contextual. PLCs have become so popular that many education systems in developing countries, as well as education development programs, include a PLC component as part of an overall professional development plan. PLCs enable teachers to cope with isolation, strengthening solidarity, camaraderie and teachers’ self-confidence as professionals. Although PLCs are in vogue and have been recently implemented in many Latin American and African countries, the concept of PLC originated in and has been applied and studied more widely in the context of developed countries, mainly the United States and United Kingdom.

In this post, we further define PLCs and review existing evidence on the effect of PLCs. We then outline FHI 360-funded research that we have initiated to study PLCs in three low- and middle-income countries: Equatorial Guinea, Ghana and Nigeria.