Education Commons^™

Increasing Teacher Effectiveness Through Faculty Learning Communities, Rick Vandermolen, Catherine L. Meyer-Looze, Cynthia Sonderegger Smith, Suzanne Richards

Peer Reviewed Articles

Faculty sometimes experience isolation, which can negatively influence their teaching and capacity for improvement. The authors share the benefits of participation in a faculty learning community (FLC) to mitigate teaching isolation. This study used a protocol to structure conversations around instructional problems of practice. Participants found that these structured conversations benefited their teaching and learning as well as collegiality, collaborative inquiry, and reflective practice. This study affirmed the critical importance of FLCs as a structure for increasing teaching capacity and provided insights about the roles each participating faculty member must learn for an FLC to be effective.