"Teacher Learning Communities"

Spring 2008

Summaries of classroom-based explorations by participants in two teacher learning communities

 

 Funding provided by:

San Juan College's Title III Endowment Fund

and

MetLife Retention Fund

 

Learning Communities for Faculty

"Creating a faculty learning community program is one approach that engages community in the cause of student and faculty learning and of transforming our institutions of higher education into learning organizations" (Cox and Richlin, 2004, p.5)

Faculty learning communities , or teacher learning communities as we've chosen to refer to them at San Juan College, allow instructors to explore topics in professional development that they have found personally interesting or important.  No one mandates their membership in a TLC; no specific outcome is required.  The summaries in this volume reflect each instructor's journey through a certain idea or hypothesis.  The summaries also reflect the wide and exciting range of creativity within our San Juan College faculty.

Since the late 1990's, faculty learning communities have grown in acceptance at four-year colleges and universities. San Juan College is among a small number of community colleges in the country that has started using this as model of professional development of its faculty.  I am grateful to Michelle Neaton, Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Century College, a two-year college in Minnesota, for sharing the faculty learning community program structure and ideas that they had developed while piloting learning communities (which they refer to as Teaching Circles) among their faculty.

Spring of 2008 marked the beginning of Teacher Learning Communities at San Juan College.  This current year, 2008-2009, the CTX is facilitating a year-long learning community for new faculty and laying the ground work for Professional Learning Communities for professional and support staff. 

For more information or to propose an idea for a TLC or PLC, contact Laura Kerr at 566-3392 or kerrla@sanjuancollege.edu

 

Cox, M. and Richlin, L. (Eds.). (2004). Building faculty learning communities. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, No. 97. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.