Updated: November 29, 2018

- Check out a webinar about this team's work.

- Download the protocol this team developed for designing PLCs for rural communities.

This Project Team identified and articulated a framework of best practices and principles for adapting standard professional learning community models to rural settings.

The Rural Professional Learning Community Project Team was led by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. Project Members included the Math Teachers' Circle Network, the National Writing Project, the Center for Children and Technology at the Education Development Center, the University of New Hampshire, and Freeport McMoran, Inc.

Together, these 6 organizations worked to define a framework for the features of professional learning community models that promise sustained success for rural communities, pulling from best practices of standard Professional Learning Communities and Communities of Practices. Previous models posed significant challenges in rural areas by not accounting for the deeply local cultural and structural aspects of implementation, and therefore the strong benefits of these models were rarely achieved. This team undertook a literature and social media review, conducted interviews with experts in this field, and documented existing success from within their programs and learnings to inform and develop their rural PLC framework.