Personal vs professional learning networks: PLNs, PLCs, and where teachers connect now
A PLN is the network a teacher chooses. A PLC is the team a school builds. How they differ, where teachers network now, and how to build one.
Updated with current data and sources. Originally published April 15, 2016.
A personal learning network (PLN) is the set of people and resources a teacher chooses to learn from. A professional learning community (PLC) is a team inside a school working on results for its own students, and a healthy school protects time for both.
When I wrote this in 2016, the acronym PLN was used for both personal and professional learning networks, and I drew the line at who chooses. A personal network is individually chosen. The professional side carries the goals set by your school or district. That line still holds. What moved is the map of where teachers connect.
- Personal learning network (PLN)
- The individually chosen connections, online and in person, that a teacher learns from. Researchers often call the same idea a professional learning network. The key is that the teacher picks the connections.
- Professional learning community (PLC)
- A school or district team. AllThingsPLC describes the work as an ongoing process of collaborative inquiry and action research aimed at better results for the students those educators serve.
How is a PLN different from a PLC?
The simplest test is who sets the agenda. One review of The Connected Educator by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Lani Ritter Hall sums up their model this way: PLCs sit inside the school building and personal learning networks sit outside it.
| Question | PLN | PLC |
|---|---|---|
| Who decides the focus? | The teacher | The team, within school goals |
| Who is in it? | Anyone the teacher chooses, anywhere | Colleagues by grade, subject, or role |
| What is it for? | New ideas, interests, and pedagogies | Better results for the students in this school |
| When does it happen? | Anytime, on the teacher's own schedule | Recurring meetings on the calendar |
| What can a leader do? | Make room for it, and never mandate it | Protect the time and ask for evidence of learning |
The two compete for the same hours. School goals tend to take center stage because they are the directive, and training and resources usually follow them. That leaves little time for a teacher's own interests. Yet those interests are what fuel the passion for teaching, and they can be the door to a new pedagogy.
A PLC gets the school's work done, a PLN keeps the teacher curious, and a good principal protects time for both.Ernie Delgado, BeyondK12
Does teacher collaboration actually improve teaching?
Teachers say it does. In a RAND survey for 2022-23 reported by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, about 67% of K-12 public school teachers said collaborative learning improved their teaching or their students' learning to a moderate or large extent. About 43% said the same of workshops.
The test score evidence is more careful. GAO found that two of three meta-analyses reported generally positive associations between collaboration and effect sizes on test scores, and the third found no association. So treat a PLC as a sound bet, not a guarantee.
How U.S. lower secondary teachers collaborate
Who runs the meeting matters too. Gallup's 2025 study for the Walton Family Foundation found that 71% of teachers whose collaborative planning meetings are led by a teacher, or by no one, find them highly or moderately valuable. The figure is 61% when an administrator leads.
PLNs have a thinner research base. In a 2016 qualitative study of survey data from 732 P-12 teachers, Trust, Krutka, and Carpenter argued that a network's anytime, anywhere access and its fit with varied interests appear to support the growth of the whole teacher. They also noted a shortage of research on PLN effects at the time.
Where do teachers network now that Twitter has changed?
Across several places, and less publicly than before. Education Week reported that critics saw the platform decline after Elon Musk took over in 2022, with more bots, less content moderation, and more misinformation. "Twitter used to be the place," Ohio technology integration specialist Eric Curts told the paper.
The clearest tracking I can point to comes from Teacher Tapp, the daily survey of teachers in England, so read it as a signal for U.S. schools rather than a U.S. count. Its 2026 report says no single platform now reaches a majority of teachers for work.
Teachers in England: social media for work
- Bluesky. Education Week reported in December 2024 that at least 2,700 educators had signed up, according to a shared Google Sheet, that #EduSky feeds and starter packs were helping, and that weekly chats were coming back. It also said it was too early to tell whether Bluesky would become the go-to platform.
- YouTube. It is the most-used work platform in Teacher Tapp's data at 36%, but it works more like a library than a network. In the U.S., a national survey of 393 pre-K-12 teachers published in Educational Researcher found nearly three-quarters use YouTube as a classroom resource.
- Threads and Mastodon. Education Week reported that neither had drawn comparable attention, and educators said Threads never really took off in their networks.
- In person. Conferences outside your district and Edcamps put you in a room with people who share your questions.
4%
of teachers in England are active users, carrying out at least two work activities such as commenting or sharing resources.
Teacher Tapp, 2026
86%
of teachers in England who use YouTube for work say their main purpose is finding videos to show students, compared with 21% who use it to learn something themselves.
Teacher Tapp, 2026
Those two numbers carry the lesson. Following accounts is not the same as being connected. Elon University's Jeffrey Carpenter told Education Week that Twitter's community is unlikely to be recreated in one space. His 2026 conference paper on a teacher education hashtag, used in about 50,000 tweets over more than six years, suggests that networks built on a single platform may be fragile and recommends a multi-platform approach.
How do you build a PLN in 2026?
Getting started can feel like the hard part. Once you learn how, it may be the easiest step. These are the steps I gave teachers in 2016, adjusted for a world without one main platform.
- Choose one topic. Start from a pedagogy you want to try, such as STEAM, and look for people and resources on that topic.
- Connect in more than one place. Go to conferences outside your district, not only online. Stay with your topic and notice which networks the presenters use to connect.
- Lurk for a week. Find out what is being shared, who is active, and who shares your interests.
- Follow people you know, then who they follow. Start with colleagues, authors, and friends. Add a lot at first and thin out later. You will learn who adds value and who is spewing out junk.
- Pick a home base and a backup. Keep the one or two networks that prove most valuable. Curts told Education Week he built an email list in case Bluesky fails, and that is good insurance for any PLN.
- Commit to five minutes a day. Keeping up can be the most difficult part. Check in while you stand in line at the grocery store, pump gas, or eat breakfast. You may find you want to check in more.
What should a school leader do about PLNs and PLCs?
A leader cannot build a teacher's PLN, and should not try. A leader can make sure the PLC is worth attending and that the PLN has room to breathe. If staff also want structured training on classroom technology or AI, our professional development can support the work your teams are already doing.
Where to start this week
Ask each teacher one question: who outside this building have you learned from this year? The answers show how connected your staff is. Then look at next month's calendar and check whether PLC time survived.
If AI is part of what your teams need to learn, the free AI Readiness Assessment takes five minutes and scores your school across Policy, People, Curriculum, Guardrails, and Funding, with the three fixes that matter most.
Related reading: Professional development for educators in the era of human and AI collaboration: what works in 2025-2026 and Build your PLN at an Edcamp: how the unconference model works and how to run one.
Questions school leaders ask
What is the difference between a PLN and a PLC?
A PLN is a network a teacher chooses for themselves, usually across schools and online. A PLC is a team inside a school or district that works in recurring cycles of inquiry on results for its own students. The first follows the teacher's interests. The second follows the school's goals.
Does PLN mean personal or professional learning network?
Both are in use, and the acronym is often used for either. Researchers Trust, Krutka, and Carpenter write about professional learning networks. In this post PLN means the network the teacher chooses.
Where do teachers network now that X has changed?
Across several places. EdWeek reported in December 2024 that educators were testing Bluesky, with chats returning there, while Threads and Mastodon had not drawn comparable attention. In England, Teacher Tapp reports that YouTube is the most-used work platform at 36%, and 39% of teachers use no social media for work.
Do PLCs improve teaching?
Teachers say collaboration does, and the research leans that way. RAND estimated about 67% of U.S. public school teachers said collaborative learning improved their teaching or their students' learning to a moderate or large extent. GAO found two of three meta-analyses reported generally positive associations between collaboration and test score effects, and the third found none.
How much time does a PLN take?
Start with five minutes a day. Check in while you wait in line, pump gas, or eat breakfast. The hard part is keeping up, so a small habit beats an ambitious plan.
Sources
- EdTech Innovation Hub, Teacher Tapp report finds teachers are moving away from work social media as X drops to 10% (July 2026) (opens in a new tab) (checked 2026-11-05)
- Teacher Tapp, the largest daily survey of teachers in England (opens in a new tab) (checked 2026-11-05)
- Education Week, Is Bluesky the new Twitter for teachers? (December 2024) (opens in a new tab) (checked 2026-11-05)
- OECD, Results from TALIS 2024 country note: United States (October 2025) (opens in a new tab) (checked 2026-11-05)
- U.S. Government Accountability Office, K-12 Education: research on effectiveness of professional development is mixed, GAO-26-107874 (March 2026) (opens in a new tab) (checked 2026-11-05)
- Gallup and Walton Family Foundation, Teaching for Tomorrow: How supporting teachers today shapes classrooms tomorrow (2025) (opens in a new tab) (checked 2026-11-05)
- AllThingsPLC, About PLCs (opens in a new tab) (checked 2026-11-05)
- MiddleWeb, Connected professional learning (review of The Connected Educator by Nussbaum-Beach and Ritter Hall) (opens in a new tab) (checked 2026-11-05)
- Elon University, summary of Trust, Krutka, and Carpenter, Together we are better: professional learning networks for teachers, Computers and Education (2016) (opens in a new tab) (checked 2026-11-05)
- Carpenter, paper on the #OakEd hashtag network, American Educational Research Association annual meeting (April 2026) (opens in a new tab) (checked 2026-11-05)
- Elon University, Jeff Carpenter publishes research on teacher YouTube use, Educational Researcher national survey (June 2026) (opens in a new tab) (checked 2026-11-05)
- Google, frequently asked questions about the Google+ shutdown (opens in a new tab) (checked 2026-11-05)
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