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What is PLN and What Can it Be?
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To
set some context, the Education Initiatives team offered their view of
"What is PLN and what can it be?"
Their flow chart and script follow here.
Section
1
Visual: Ball Foundation and its partners
Speaker
2: Here at the Ball Foundation, we provide financial resources, expertise
in the form of foundation staff and external consultants and other resources
to support the on-the-ground work in our partnerships.
Speaker 3: The Partnership Learning Network serves as one of those partnership
resources.
Speaker 1: The Partnership Learning Network can be the community in which
you, our partners, staff and others share what we know, question, and
think together.
Speaker 4: What are our expectations from each partnership?
Speaker 5: In a partnership, partners bring their needs, goals and ambitions
to the table. The best partnerships are those whose partners have these
in alignment.
Speaker 6: They can recognize and keep their partners' needs on the table
when decisions are made.
Speaker 2: Education Initiatives' needs are articulated in our Theory
of Change and in what our purpose is as the Ball Foundation.
Speaker 3: We need to clarify your needs with regards to the Partnership
Learning Network.
Speaker 4: What are your expectations of the foundation and one another?
Section
2
Visual: Authentic work of school-level change
Speaker 5: The authentic work of school-level change brings theory and
practice together to transform individuals, classrooms, schools, and districts
in ways that must benefit all students.
Speaker 6: We believe coaching, feedback, and training, the reduction
of isolation, and well-designed professional development create increased
capacity among educators.
Speaker 2: Adult capacity building to us is a means to an end: leading
change in our partner districts, buildings and classrooms.
Speaker 3: We need to see the work with teachers and principals focused
on literacy and see increased student performance on standardized tests
and other generally accepted measures.
Speaker 4: We need to ensure we have common vocabulary that relates to
the characteristics of productive educational organizations.
Speaker 1: The Partnership Learning Network can be the community in which
you, our partners, staff and others share what we know, question, and
think together.
Speaker 5: The Partnership Learning Network can help us in defining, developing,
assessing and disseminating best practices at the theory and practice
levels (why and how) between and among our partners.
Section
3
Visual: Knowledge about systemic change and improving student outcomes;
evidence of success
Speaker 6: We desire better and stronger processes for creating, identifying,
harvesting and disseminating knowledge. All of us -- Education Initiatives,
you, our consultants and evaluators -- will need to be involved in this.
Speaker 2: We believe there are individual pockets of learning, and occasionally,
in the work we support, people interact and share what they know. We recognize
we have not yet built the structures or processes to build a collective
body of knowledge.
Speaker 1: The Partnership Learning Network can be the community in which
you, our partners, staff and others share what we know, question, and
think together.
Speaker 3: We measure our work against Education Initiatives' theory of
change and partnership site theories of change and against the partnership
agreements.
Speaker 4: Our theories of change reflect emergent work and thus they
are neither perfect nor completely clear, but we are OK with this.
Speaker 5: We also measure our work in relation to the productivity characteristics.
Speaker 6: We have a desire for joint processes to examine qualitative
and quantitative data about our work.
Speaker 2: We want to transform the Partnership Learning Network from
events (an annual conference and site visits) to more of an ongoing practice.
Speaker 3: We think that this requires us (Education Initiatives and partners)
to function as a learning community so that we can discover what works
and why, creating the capacity for the generation of new knowledge.
Section
4
Visual: Further investments in systemic change; legacy for Ball Foundation
Speaker 4: If we build a collective body of knowledge about systemic change
and improving student outcomes and show evidence of success, we can generate
further investments in systemic change.
Speaker 5: We think that this requires us (Education Initiatives and partners)
to function as a learning community so that we can discover what works
and why.
All Speakers: The Partnership Learning Network can be the community in
which you, our partners, staff and others share what we know, question,
and think together.
Table
of Contents
What is PLN and What Can It
Be?
Agenda
The Lost and Found Conversation
IRI and Café Etiquette
Themes from the World Café and EI -
What We Are Hearing
What Are We Discovering About What Works and
How?
What's Getting Lost?
Themes from the Passion Café
Organizational Behavior, Change and Communities
of Practice
Scenarios
Closing Comments
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