Contexts and theoretical foundations for establishing Professional Learning Communities (PLCs): PLC models and their comparisons

Professional Learning Community (PLC) is the most effective strategy to improve the level of education and learning at schools. In these communities, the culture of the partnership and collaboration is enhanced and the teachers, students and educators play a greater role in their professional learning and their students' learning.This collaboration assists them to make constructive criticisms on the teaching methods and learn from their colleagues which result in their knowledge and skills' improvement and students’ enjoying better education. Also, in the meantime they also learn how to establish and administer a network of knowledge and skills. Utilizing descriptive-analytical approaches, this study aims to identify the theoretical backgrounds and contexts for developing the PLC's. In addition, by introducing and explaining the framework of the five different PLCs, including the PDSA, Cascading, Diagnostic, logical model and the third space, while explaining how to form the school learning communities, during the three stages of description, analysis and interpretation, evaluation criteria were extracted based on the basic components of PLCs and the models were judged based on them. The results of their comparison at the four determined levels showed that none of the models under study were desired, because they did not have all the determined indicators at high level. So, preferably it is better to suggest a model from among the models under study based on a combination of the components and key features. Such a model could be an integrated, comprehensive (elements, components and key features of the models) and nativised one which has the ability to perform and implement its elements and components at school in a way that is understandable and acceptable to its members.