Читать книгу The School Leader's Guide to Professional Learning Communities at Work TM - Richard DuFour - Страница 7

The Essentials for Principals series offers a rich resource for both aspiring and experienced principals. Each book in the series addresses a topic of vital interest to principals and offers specific steps to help them apply the most-promising strategies in that area to their schools. Ultimately, however, the impact of the insights and recommendations the series will provide will be determined to a large extent by the way in which the principal defines his or her role and the purpose of the school.

What Is the Role of the Principal?

What is the role of the principal? Do not take that question lightly! How you answer it will influence not only how you approach the position but also will significantly impact your effectiveness in meeting its challenges. Do not assume that there is universal agreement regarding the role of the principal. Are principals middle managers who serve as a conduit between the central office and the school’s staff to ensure policies others create are implemented efficiently? Or are principals leaders who rally stakeholders around a shared vision of a great school?

If you profess your belief in the idea of the principal as a leader, what kind of leadership is required of a principal? Different researchers have argued that a principal must serve as an instructional leader, transformational leader, servant leader, strategic leader, learning leader, empowering leader, participatory leader, delegatory leader, or moral leader (Fullan, 2011b; Leithwood, Louis, Anderson, & Wahlstrom, 2004; Robinson et al., 2010).

Do not assume there is general agreement on the fundamental purpose of schooling. While mission statements are almost certain to assert the school’s purpose is to ensure all students learn, traditionally, schools have not operated that way. You will encounter staff and community members who argue that learning is a function of ability, and thus the school should focus on sorting and selecting students into different tracks based on their innate abilities. Others will argue the school’s purpose is merely to provide students with the opportunity to learn rather than to ensure that learning actually takes place. Still others will debate what is worthy of learning and will call for more or less emphasis on specific subject areas or will place higher or lower value on academic outcomes versus affective outcomes. Some will assert that the school should be responsible and accountable for doing whatever it takes to ensure high levels of learning for all students.

Do not assume that there is consensus on the primary clients you are to serve as principal. The board and superintendent will expect you to be their instrument for the implementation of policy, and to a great extent, your tenure in the position will depend on their perception of your commitment to and effectiveness in serving this purpose. Community members will remind you that their taxes pay your salary and that the school exists to serve the community. Faculty members will argue that the school will be effective only to the extent that you meet their needs—providing them with resources, supporting their decisions, and buffering them from outside interference. It is easy to say that a school exists to meet the needs of its students, but it is sometimes difficult to be a student-centered school when so many different adults demand that the principal do their bidding.

The Underlying Assumptions of This Book

This book is based on four assumptions:

1. The school’s primary purpose is to ensure high levels of learning for all students.

2. The most promising strategy for fulfilling that purpose is to develop the staff’s capacity to function as a professional learning community (PLC).

3. The principal’s role is to lead a collective effort to create a PLC that ensures high levels of learning for students through recursive processes that promote adult learning.

4. Principals play a vital role in creating the conditions that lead to improved learning for both students and the adults in their schools.

The idea that principals should serve as leaders of a learning community is not new. In 2001, the National Association of Elementary School Principals articulated the professional standards for principals in its publication Leading Learning Communities: Standards for What Principals Should Know and Be Able to Do. What has become more evident in the time since that publication are the strategies and processes principals must implement in order to create high-performing PLCs in their schools. This book is intended to provide clarity regarding specific, research-based, and actionable steps you can take to develop and lead a PLC.

Visit go.solution-tree.com/plcbooks to see “Why Is Principal Leadership So Important?” for a sampling of the research on principal leadership.

It may seem from the progression of the chapters in this book that the PLC process is sequential and linear: first do this, then do that, and so on. In reality, however, transforming a school into a PLC is neither sequential nor linear. In most instances you must address several issues simultaneously and you will almost inevitably need to return to correct or improve upon your initial efforts. Therefore, do not think of this book as providing you with a recipe, but rather, consider it a resource you can turn to for ideas as you confront a specific challenge.

Although the ideas presented in this book are grounded in research, we have opted to be more conversational than scholarly in tone. We do, however, provide readers with access to relevant research as well as reproducible tools and templates, all available at go.solution-tree.com/plcbooks. Throughout the book you will see feature boxes (like the one above) that refer you to these materials. In addition, www.allthingsplc.info is a tremendous free resource for those interested in implementing the PLC process in their school. This site also will provide you with more information on any of the schools we reference in this book, including contact information for readers who have questions for those schools.

Chapter 1 offers strategies for initiating the PLC process and laying the solid foundation that supports high-performing PLCs. Chapter 2 considers the steps principals take in creating the structures to support the collaborative team process. Chapter 3 draws a distinction between groups and teams, identifies the defining characteristics of effective teams, and presents specific tools for helping educators in a school make the transition from a group to a team. Chapter 4 stresses the importance of helping collaborative teams focus their efforts on factors that impact the learning of students. It also presents ideas for bringing new staff onto existing teams. Chapter 5 examines how effective principals monitor the work of the teams in their school and provides teams with the clarity, resources, and support to be successful at what they are called upon to do.

Chapter 6 is devoted to helping a school develop a key characteristic of a PLC: a results orientation. It explores how schools are using evidence of student learning to drive a continuous improvement process that represents the most powerful form of professional development. Chapter 7 provides keys to creating intervention systems that ensure any student who struggles to acquire an essential skill or concept will receive additional time and support for learning through a process that is timely, specific, directive, and systematic. It presents common mistakes that schools are making as they attempt to implement a response to intervention (RTI) process and suggests how to avoid those mistakes. Chapter 8 offers a tool to help principals reflect on the effectiveness of their communication, including strategies for addressing staff members who resist any effort to align the practices of their school with the PLC process. Chapter 9 outlines three keys for sustaining a school improvement initiative. Finally, chapter 10 argues that one of a principal’s most important responsibilities is helping others to believe in their ability to accomplish important objectives in spite of the obstacles they confront. It offers keys to creating this sense of collective efficacy among a staff.

What Is a Professional Learning Community?

In order to lead a PLC, principals must have a deep understanding of what constitutes a PLC and what does not. The growing recognition of the potential of the PLC process to impact student achievement in a powerful and positive way has helped bring the term professional learning community into the common vocabulary of educators throughout the world. While the term has become widespread, the underlying practices have not, and many of the schools that proudly proclaim to be professional learning communities do none of the things PLCs actually do. It will be difficult to implement the PLC process in schools when the principal and staff recognize what the process entails: it will be impossible to do so when there is ambiguity or only a superficial understanding of what must be done.

Some educators approach the PLC process as if it were a program—simply one more addition to the school’s existing practices. It is not a program to be purchased or an appendage to the existing structure and culture of a school but a process that profoundly impacts the existing structure and culture. Others regard it as a meeting, as in, “We do PLCs on Wednesdays from 9:00 to 10:00 a.m., and then we return to business as usual.” It is not a meeting. Still others equate a PLC to a book club, as in, “We all read the same book and talk about it.” It is not a book club. It is “an ethos that infuses every single aspect of a school’s operation” (Hargreaves as cited in Sparks, 2004, p. 48) that calls on all educators in the school to redefine their roles and responsibilities.

The following section, adapted from DuFour and Marzano (2011), attempts to clarify the three big ideas that drive the PLC process. Each of these ideas has a significant implication for educators.

1. The first big idea is that the fundamental purpose of our school is to ensure that all students learn at high levels. In order to bring this idea to life, educators work together to clarify the following.

› What is it we want our students to know? What knowledge, skills, and dispositions must all students acquire as a result of this grade level, this course, and this unit we are about to teach? What systems have we put in place to ensure we are providing every student with access to a guaranteed and viable curriculum regardless of the teacher to whom that student might be assigned?

› How will we know if our students are learning? How can we check for understanding on an ongoing basis in our individual classrooms? How will we gather evidence of each student’s learning as a team? What criteria will we establish to assess the quality of student work? How can we be certain we can apply the criteria consistently?

› How will we respond when students do not learn? What steps can we put in place to provide students who struggle with additional time and support for learning in a way that is timely, directive, and systematic rather than invitational and random? How can we provide students with multiple opportunities to demonstrate learning?

› How will we enrich and extend the learning for students who are proficient? How can we differentiate instruction among us so that the needs of all students are being met without relying on rigid tracking?

2. The second big idea is that if we are to help all students learn, it will require us to work collaboratively in a collective effort to meet the needs of each student. Bringing this idea to life requires attention to the following conditions:

› Educators are organized into meaningful collaborative teams in which members work interdependently to achieve common goals for which they are mutually accountable.

› Regular time for collaboration is embedded into the school’s routine practices.

› Educators are clear on the purpose and priorities of their collaboration. They stay focused on the right work.

› Principals demonstrate reciprocal accountability (Elmore, 2004). They provide teachers with the resources, training, and ongoing support to help them succeed in implementing the PLC process.

3. The third big idea is that in order to know if students are learning and to respond appropriately to their needs, educators must create a results orientation. They must be hungry for evidence of student learning and use that evidence to drive continuous improvement of the PLC process. This big idea requires attention to the following conditions:

› Every member of the organization is working collaboratively with others to achieve SMART goals that are (O’Neill & Conzemius, 2006):

a. Strategically and specifically aligned with school and district goals

b. Measurable

c. Attainable

d. Results oriented, that is, requiring evidence of higher levels of student learning in order to be achieved

e. Time bound

› Every member of the organization is working collaboratively with others to gather and analyze evidence of student learning on a regular basis to inform and improve his or her professional practice as well as the collective practice of the collaborative team. Team members explore questions such as, Who among us is getting excellent results teaching this skill? How can we learn from one another? What is the area in which our students are having the most difficulty? What must we learn as a team in order to better address that area of difficulty?

› Evidence of student learning is being used on a regular basis to identify the specific needs of individual students. The school moves beyond using data to make general observations about the achievement of all students. It creates processes to use assessment results to respond to students by name and by need.

› Educators throughout the school assess the effectiveness of every policy, program, procedure, and practice on the basis of its impact on student learning.

It is imperative to note that the emphasis placed on student learning in a PLC does not diminish the importance of teaching. In fact, the primary reason to become a PLC is to impact and improve teaching. Too many school reforms have swirled around but not within the classroom. Schools have changed their schedules, added graduation requirements, administered required tests, and responded to countless other reform initiatives, and yet, instructional practice in the classroom has too often remained unchanged. The PLC process is specifically intended to create the conditions that help educators become more skillful in teaching because great teaching and high levels of learning go hand in hand.

Before addressing the actionable steps that bring the big ideas to life, once again we return to the question of how you will define your role as principal. All principals work hard. What distinguishes effective principals from their less effective colleagues is that they identify the conditions most vital to the success of their school and concentrate their efforts on creating those conditions. Warren Bennis (2000) asserts that the difference between managers and leaders is that managers do things right but leaders do the right thing. Both roles are important, and effective principals will certainly manage the building well. However, they will also be driven to lead because they recognize the moral imperative that the school serves. They focus on impacting lives whereas less effective principals focus on managing their jobs (Louis, Leithwood, Wahlstrom, & Anderson, 2010). So before pressing on with the rest of this book, take time to think about and ultimately to clearly define your role as principal. If a Martian were to ask you to explain the responsibilities of a principal, how would you respond?