Developing Learning Communities

A learning community can be seen as one where the concept of learning moves beyond the idea of ‘learning = being taught’ towards the view that ‘learning = constructing knowledge with others’ (Watkins, 2005). At Godolphin and Latymer, we have developed a series of learning communities for both staff and students; groups of volunteers engage in current research, exploring its applications to our specific school context. Our model is based on that of Leahy and Wiliam (2012), which was designed specifically to scale up professional development for formative assessment. However, as discussed in Eleanore Hargreaves’ accompanying article, learning community models have been shown to be effective with other foci, and at Godolphin and Latymer we have had groups focusing on a range of topics, including metacognition, assessment, thinking skills and the use of technology to support teaching and learning. Teacher learning communities (TLCs) Cordingley et al. (2015) have identified seve