What’s the difference between a PLC and a CoP and does it matter?

There’s a lot of jargon out there and we don’t know many people who have time for deciphering it. When one of our clients asked us how a professional learning community (PLC) and a community of practice (CoP) are different, we dug in to learn more.

What is a Professional Learning Community?

Professional Learning Community (PLC) is a term typically used by schools and school systems. PLCs focus on increasing achievement of students within a given school while also building collaboration amongst teachers. Often, PLCs are led by the school principal and membership in the group is required as part of teachers’ employment at the school (Blankenship & Ruona, 2007).

What is a Community of Practice?

Community of Practice (CoP) is a term typically used in business or nonprofit organization environments. CoPs focus on improvement of practice and are led from within the group. Membership is voluntary and may be grounded in an individuals’ expertise or passion for a topic (Blankenship & Ruona, 2007).

Here’s a table that breaks out the details between PLCs and CoPs:

What Does This Mean for Afterschool Leaders?

So what if you--like most of our clients-- represent an educational nonprofit? Where do afterschool leaders fit? Here’s what we know:

Afterschool leaders may or may not be based in a school setting.
They do care about student achievement, but define achievement more broadly than academics.
Afterschool leaders are passionate about their work and want to improve their practice.
While some professional learning is required in afterschool, most is still pursued on a voluntary basis.

On one hand, I really like the term professional learning community because we’re always trying to remind the outside world that yes, afterschool is a profession of people who need and deserve professional learning.

But on the other hand, I like the idea of the community of practice being more focused on knowledge sharing and practice building of the professional with youth outcomes being one of the measures of effectiveness, not the only measure of effectiveness.

Where does that leave us? Well, honestly, I could go either way in what we call a community of learning for afterschool leaders. For me, it really depends on the goal of the group, how the group comes together, and what the group wants to call itself.

See Also:

References

Blankenship, S. & Ruona, W.E.A. (2007). Professional learning communities and communities of practice: a comparison of models, literature review. Retrieved 10/18/16 at http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED504776.pdf

DuFour, R. (2004). What is a professional learning community? Educational Leadership, 61/8, 6-11. Retrieved 10/21/16 http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/may04/vol61/num08/What-Is-a-Professional-Learning-Community¢.aspx.

Learning Forward, Standards for professional learning: learning communities. Website. Retrieved 9/26/16 at https://learningforward.org/standards/learning-communities

Wenger-Trayner, E. & Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015). Introduction to communities of practice: a brief overview of the concept and its uses. Retrieved 10/23/16 at http://wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/

PLC's and CoP's--Oh My!