Overview of Teacher-led Learning Circles Project

The Teacher-led Learning Circles project is led by Education International with funding from the Jacobs Foundation. This project will involve seven countries: Brazil, Columbia, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Malaysia, South Korea, and Switzerland. In each country, the project will support three Learning Circles to provide professional development for groups of teachers to support their leadership of educational development projects including understanding and use of formative assessment practices. Each Learning Circle will be comprised of local facilitators, a local union representative, and ten teachers. Local facilitators and union representatives will be trained and supported by international facilitators from the HertsCam Network, an international organization with an established process of facilitating teacher leadership development. In addition, national researcher(s) will support research activities for each country’s Learning Circles. Local facilitator pairs in each country will prepare and facilitate Learning Circles workshops (virtually or in-person) for their group of ten teachers and provide ongoing classroom support to these teachers over one school year. Within the Learning Circle process, participating teachers will: develop an Action Plan for teacher-led development processes in their school: develop, adapt and evaluate formative assessment practices and their benefits for teaching and learning: complete ongoing reflections in a Record of Participation; construct a Portfolio of practice-based evidence; and create a Vignette to share their learning and experience within and beyond the project.

National researcher(s) in each country will support teachers’ data collection and analysis to help them gather and provide evidence about effective formative assessment practices and associated impacts for teachers’ teaching and for students’ learning. National researchers will also develop country profile reports, including analyses of relevant policy and practice documents, and evidence from the Teacher-led Learning-Circles work with teachers in their contexts. The project also involves an international research team from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, and Queen’s University, Ontario, Canada. The international researchers will provide an overall international research framework, relevant research and evidence to inform teacher leadership, professional development, and formative assessment, and analysis and reporting on effective practices and linked impacts from the Teacher-led Learning Circles across all of the countries involved. This document is the first report from the international research team providing an overview of relevant research literature and practical evidence to inform approaches to teacher leadership and professional development and learning for teachers’ understanding and use of formative assessment practices to support students’ learning and improve student outcomes.