Toward More Inclusive Professional Learning Communities

Abstract

Collaboration among teachers is an important vehicle for teacher development, shared leadership, improving student achievement, building school culture, and attracting and retaining effective teachers. However, if professional collaborative environments are not truly diverse and inclusive or marginalize individual teachers or groups of teachers based on their identities, the professional communities are less effective and efforts to increase teacher diversity and student achievement by attracting and retaining teachers of color will be thwarted. We investigate whether a sustained commitment to anti-racism and/or diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) through districtwide teacher training efforts contributes to more inclusive professional learning communities within schools and whether these efforts, in creating more inclusive professional learning communities (PLCs), increase recruitment and retention of teachers of color. We investigate trends in two selected case study districts that implemented districtwide training for all teachers on anti-racism and/or DEI, using comparative interrupted time series and synthetic control methods. We find mixed and mainly null findings on teacher reports of inclusive PLCs following DEI initiatives, but the efforts do lead to small and not significant positive effects on teacher diversity.