Home  >  Features of PLOT

Our understanding of learning and learners has been applied in the construction of the website itself. We know that people learn in different ways. There are multiple entry points into the learning and teaching practices. These include:

We know that learning is context-based, and that you will have different needs at different points in your journey. There are a wide variety of ways that the material can be used, and wide choice in the pathways you choose to take.

The pedagogy material and the professional community processes are constructed around the six practices of:

• deep understanding
• inquiry
• comunication
• collaboration
• self responsibility
• human development

In other words, your professional community will be actively modelling these practices as they explore and use the content from the website.

Journals

1. Your personal journal stores any links to PLOT content (including quotes) that you have selected, your personal action plan that you can update at any time and the rubrics that you have completed.
2. Your team journal/s can also store links to content selected by your team leader/s and your team action plan. When you complete a rubric, your results are collated in your team journal.
3. Your school journal contains content links selected by your school manager as well as any school development plans. All rubric results are collated and displayed in the school journal for a holistic picture. Your school journal can also store up to five files that are relevant to your school's professional learning community eg vision statements, planning templates or documents and shared understandings.

Rubrics

There are currently three rubrics in PLOT that are specially designed by Joan Dalton to help your staff determine their own professional learning development and needs. PLOT provides detailed strategies on how to make the best use of the rubric including the processes and suggested pathways for working through the rubrics.

The pedagogy rubric assesses your current understandings and use of dialogue with others.

The substantive dialogue rubric assesses your understandings and use of dialogue with others.

The professional community rubric helps you assess your current stage as an adult professional community focused on pedagogy.

Pedagogy in action

• Deep understanding
  • purposeful, relevant, active
  • connected to learners' lives and real world contexts
  • diversity acknowledged
  • construction of understanding; multiple pathways
  • making connections with important ideas and processes
  • transfer/application to many contexts
• Inquiry
  • problem-based learning
  • questioning, investigating
  • skills of researching
  • rich topics, trans-disciplinary inquiry
  • risk-taking, learning from error
• Communication
  • integrating communication literacies
  • focus on substantive dialogue
  • use of language to empower learners
  • multiple ways of accessing/demonstrating learning
  • integrated use of multi-media and information technology
  • home-school communication
• Collaboration
  • commitment to teamwork, common vision/purpose
  • shared responsibility and teamwork principles
  • social-ethical values
  • skills of working effectively with others
  • involvement of broader community
• Self responsibility
  • honouring intrinsic motivation
  • learning how to learn
  • increasing responsibility for learning, thinking and behaviour
  • skills of self-direction and self-management
  • focus on higher order thinking and reflection
• Human development
  • caring relationships
  • developing proactive personal qualities, attitudes, dispositions
  • principled, social-ethical values
  • leadership: creating preferred futures and the 'new'
  • fostering community: unity, diversity, and citizenship