Chapter 3: Community-Based Professional Learning Communities (CB-PLCS): Re-Envisioning a Model of PLCs for Urban Education

A vision of a community-based professional learning community (CB-PLC) imagines educational spaces shared by those within teacher education, K–12 schools, and neighborhood communities, as well as policymakers invested in improving the school curriculum and the educational experiences and lives of students in urban education. Schools institute professional learning communities (PLCs; Stoll et al., 2006) to develop teacher collaboration and support; however, PLCs rarely extend beyond the single stakeholder of the classroom teacher, and largely do not exist outside the parameters of the school space. In light of research on the lack of teacher diversity in the educator workforce (Villegas & Lucas, 2004), the pressing need to support teachers of color who are engaged in the work of critical reflection and racial justice (Kohli, 2019), and with the hopes of (re) imagining community-educational spaces, a CB-PLC offers a possibility for advancing the imperative of nourishing and improving the lives lived within urban education.