Using a Professional Learning Community Framework to Assist Early Field Experience Students as They Move from Teacher Candidate to Teacher

Abstract

Collaboration is rapidly becoming sacrosanct in today’s K-12 schools. A basis for these collaborative school experiences is the ability to share one’s observations of classroom activities. The Professional Learning Community (PLC) framework described here is a pedagogically based process that provides opportunities for Early Field Experience students to share their field involvements. The discussions are born from the teacher candidates’ experiential learning as they take part in a 25-hour field placement. Providing teacher candidates with weekly PLC opportunities for sharing, simultaneously, has assisted teacher candidates’ dispositional and pedagogical decision making as they make the transition from student to teacher.