The national network of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) for Physics Teachers

Leading team

• Prof. Edit Yerushalmi 
• Prof.  Emeriti Bat Sheva Eylon
• Dr.  Smadar Levy – Head of the Physics Teachers Professional Learning Communities (PLCs)
• Adi Noga – Leader, Teacher Leaders’ PLC
• Kobe Schwarzbord – Leader, Teacher Leaders’ PLC
• Dr. Zehorit Kapa – Leader, Restricted Inquiry Labs

Leading Team Members – Past

• Dr.  Esther Bagno – Head, the Physics Teachers Professional Learning Communities (PLCs)
• Dr. Hana Berger – Leader, Teacher Leaders’ PLC
• Esther Magen – Leader, Teacher Leaders’ PLC

Project members – The teacher leaders

• Smadar Avidan, leader of Beer Sheva PLC
• Boris Bam, leader of Hod Hasharon PLC
• Efrat Blau Barak, leader of Jerusalem and Amit PLCs
• Daphne Cohen Brener, leader of Gan Yavne – Ashdod PLC
• Ronit Diamant, leader of Amit PLC
• Michal Erlich, leader of Amit PLC
• DR. Meytal Hans, leader of Monday online PLC
• Oren Gilat, leader of Hod Hasharon PLC
• Salih Karakra, leader of Carmiel PLC
• Esther Magen, leader of Semel PLC
• Abed Masalha, leader of Tuesday online PLC
• DR.  Avraham Merzel, leader of Jerusalem PLC
• Adi Noga, leader of Sunday online PLC
• Kana Ofir, leader of Jerusalem PLC
• David Perl, leader of Haifa PLC
• Galina Podalov, leader of Ramat Gan PLC
• Aliza Rot, leader of Monday online PLC
• DR. Larisa Shachman, leader of Ramat Gan and Semel PLCs
• Boulus Shehade, leader of Carmiel PLC
• Tatyana Shuldiner, leader of Beer Sheva PLC
• Kobi Shwarzbord, leader of Tuesday online PLC
• Michal Sigron, leader of Gan Yavne – Ashdod PLC
• Nirit Vardi, leader of Haifa PLC
• Itai Yehezkeli, leader of Sunday online PLC

Summary

The national network of physics teachers PLCs have been operating for a decade, since 2011, with the aims to: promote the professional development of physics teachers in Israel; address the needs and difficulties of physics teaching; enable physics teachers to examine collaboratively their teaching as well as their students’ learning; and enrich physics teaching in Israel towards a “learner-centered” instruction.

The program is structured as a “Fan Model”, with 1 teacher-leaders’ PLC and 11 nation-wide regional PLCs (~300 physics teachers from all over Israel, about 25% of all high-school physics teachers in Israel).

The PLC teachers’ professional development is designed along well established research-based pedagogical guidelines, in an “evidence-based” approach. The learning process includes explicating teachers’ views, goals and perceptions, engaging them as learners with new instructional strategies, implementation in teachers’ classrooms, and sharing insights from classroom experiences. In this way the teachers are exposed to the classrooms of many teachers, discuss the best ways to implement new instructional strategies, and reflect collaboratively in an interactive and supportive environment, together with colleagues who go through similar experiences.

The contents of the program are renewed every year, to serve a large majority of the PLC teachers that participate in the program for several years. Each year there are two to four annual focal themes, each spanning three or four PLC meetings. To encourage implementation by so many teachers in diverse classrooms, the offered activities include a variety of examples in different subjects of the curriculum, for each of the high-school grade levels, and in accordance with the period during the school year.

A central role of the PLCs is to strengthen the teachers’ resilience – teachers’ capacity to exploit difficulties they encounter as means to an end, exploring approaches to fulfill their professional goals. For example, the teachers’ goals with respect to the instructional physics lab. A large survey in the PLCs has found a mismatch between the value the teachers assign to the integration of scientific inquiry practices in the instructional lab (e.g. experimental design), and its’ reflection in standardized assessments. A long-term process was carried out in the PLCs since 2019 in which teachers experienced and discussed ways to integrate the missing scientific inquiry practices, within the constraints of the standard curriculum. Further research examines this process, and in particular the challenges that teachers face, their response to these challenges, and the support they receive by the learning resources and the discourse in the PLC meetings. Previous studies examined the processes involved in the professional growth of the PLC teachers in other contexts, the changes in their knowledge, attitudes and practice, and the long-term implementation of new instructional practices in the classrooms.

The PLCs program has been acknowledged as one of the central factors in the increasing number of students choosing to major in physics (Ministry of Education, 2017).

Our thanks to the Eddie and Jules Trump Family Foundation and the Ministry of Education for their support of the project.

Administration

Rina Kimchi

Links for further reading

• Levy S., Kapach, Z., Magen, E. & Yerushalmi E. (2020). Re-defining Lab Norms via Professional Learning Communities of Physics Teachers, In Wolf, S., Bennett, M. & Frank, B. (Eds.), Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings, Washington, DC. 

• Levy, S., Bagno, E., Berger, H., & Eylon, B. S. (2020). Motivators, Contributors, and Inhibitors to Physics Teacher-Leaders’ Professional Development in a Program of Professional Learning Communities: The Case of a Collaborative Reading Assignment. In Kolikant, Y. B. D., Martinovic, D. & Milner-Bolotin, M. (Eds.), STEM Teachers and Teaching in the Digital Era – Professional expectations and advancement in 21st Century Schools. (pp. 159-184). Springer.

• Levy, S., Bagno, E., Berger, H., & Eylon, B. S. (2018). Physics Teacher-Leaders’ Learning in a National Program of Regional Professional Learning Communities. In Traxler, A., Cao, Y. & Wolf S. (Eds.), Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings, Washington, DC.