Towards critical colleagueship for improved teacher collaboration and professional learning

Professional learning communities (PLCs) are widely promoted as a way to support teacher development, improve workplace culture, and enhance job satisfaction, yet many PLCs remain compliance-driven, lacking the intellectual rigour needed for meaningful growth. This study explores how PLCs might be conceptualised and constructed to produce powerful learning. First, we draw on Lord’s (1994) conception of critical colleagueship to interrogate how collegial engagement can enhance the rigour and impact of PLCs. Second, we apply Lord’s principles to Quality Teaching Rounds (QTR), a well-established professional development approach centred on PLCs that fosters both teacher and student learning. Through interviews with teachers (n = 23) and school leaders (n = 6) from two Australian schools we analyse how QTR enacts Lord’s six criteria for critical colleagueship. Rather than assessing QTR’s effectiveness, we use Lord’s framework to examine the nature and depth of teacher interactions with this structured approach. Our findings demonstrate that QTR operationalises critical colleagueship through sustained dialogue, shared vulnerability, and guided critique, moving beyond surface-level collegiality. We argue that Lord’s framework offers a valuable lens for evaluating and reimagining collaborative professional learning, highlighting the conditions necessary for meaningful teacher growth and transformative practice.