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The past two decades research on teachers' professional development focusses increasingly on professional learning communities (PLCs). Based on a literature search a conceptual framework was developed including a comprehensive PLC-concept. Comprehensive because it takes into account the complexity of the educational context. The PLCconcept outlining 11 characteristics, is embedded in a framework, containing five external factors that influence. The framework was evaluated by interviewing educational experts. The literature search and the interviews showed a great diversity of distinct PLC characteristics and a wide range of external influencing factors. Based on expert interviews, no essential elements appeared to be lacking in the framework, moreover no other perspectives on the framework were mentioned. An additional search on recent literature confirmed the constructed framework. As yet we concluded that the developed concept is sufficiently comprehensive and feasible for conducting research on PLCs.

For investigating a comprehensive PLC framework, instruments are needed that capture the multi-layered PLC characteristics and that take into account the complex influencing educational context. Such instruments are currently lacking. This study aims at describing the development and validation of two qualitative classification instruments usable for systematically identifying changes in PLCs. The 11 characteristics and accompanying behavioural and attitudinal indicators of a recently designed PLC framework were converted into codes and measuring values. For this conversion the 'directed content analysis approach' was used. The result is two classification instruments that can be used to collect and classify behavioural and attitudinal data from interviews and observations. The instruments cover all the characteristics, respectively indicators of the PLC framework and are suitable for validation by triangulation. This study contributes to the methodology for investigating PLCs by presenting two theoretically grounded and validated sets of codes, and two sets of measuring values. The latter is important for systematically developing knowledge on PLCs in educational practice. In everyday educational practice the instruments can be used to determine the state of the PLC and steps can be taken to stimulate its development.

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