Читать книгу The School Leader's Guide to Professional Learning Communities at Work TM - Richard DuFour - Страница 8
ОглавлениеGetting Started
One of the first questions a principal must address to create the conditions that lead to higher levels of learning for both students and staff is simply, Where do I begin? We recommend the following steps.
1. Start with questions.
2. Create a guiding coalition.
3. Build shared knowledge with staff by learning together.
4. Help staff members clarify the school they are attempting to create.
5. Clarify the commitments that are vital to creating the school.
6. Establish indicators of progress and strategies for monitoring those indicators.
7. Develop a critical mass to support implementation and begin taking action.
It is not imperative that a principal know all the answers to the challenges confronting a school; it is imperative that the principal ask the right questions to help identify and focus attention on those challenges. A principal new to a school should meet with the staff in small groups to ask a series of questions, such as:
• “What do you feel I need to know about this school to be effective as its principal?”
• “What makes you proud to be a staff member at this school?”
• “What are some of the challenges that you confront in the school that make it difficult for you to be as effective as you would like?”
• “What would make this an even better school?”
Small-group dialogues have three benefits:
1. They allow a principal to honor the past efforts of staff members and the history of the school.
2. They demonstrate that the principal values the perspective of others and recognizes they have important insights.
3. They make it possible for the principal to present challenges and ideas in the words of staff members themselves. At the conclusion of the process, a principal is able to say, “I have heard your concerns, and you have helped me to understand the challenges you face. Now let’s work together to address those challenges and make this an even better school.”
With some minor tweaking, a principal could use similar questions to engage both parent groups and central office staff in similar dialogue. The initial challenges of a new principal include engaging in a fact-finding mission about the school and establishing positive relationships. This good-faith effort to solicit the concerns and ideas of others is an important step in addressing both of those challenges.
These same conversations can also be helpful to an experienced principal. When leaders help staff identify areas of concern regarding student performance and the operation of the school, admit they don’t have all the answers, solicit advice and feedback from others, and demonstrate a willingness to act on that advice and feedback, they build trust in their leadership (Kouzes & Posner, 2010). A survey could also be used to gather information on others’ perspectives; however, surveys are most effective when they are followed by dialogue that allows for further probing and clarification.
Those who study the leadership of both schools and organizations in general would offer very consistent advice to principals: no single person has all of the energy and expertise to effectively address all of the responsibilities of leadership. For example, one study identifies twenty-one different duties of principals and concludes that the best strategy for fulfilling those duties is for principals to promote widely dispersed leadership throughout the school (Marzano, Waters, & McNulty, 2005). One important step in fostering this shared leadership is creating a guiding coalition.
There are several different ways principals can structure a guiding coalition. In many elementary schools, grade-level team leaders work directly with the principal to oversee the school’s improvement effort. In middle schools, department chairs often serve this purpose. Some schools have created a school improvement committee of staff members. Others create short-term task forces that call on designated staff to address an identified problem, develop a recommended solution, and help build consensus for implementation of that solution. Although the format of the guiding coalition may vary, principals who lead PLCs never forget that they cannot do it alone, and so before attempting to persuade an entire faculty to support the PLC process, they identify and recruit highly respected, key staff members to help them champion that process.
Build Shared Knowledge With Staff by Learning Together
A defining characteristic of a PLC is that its members begin their decision-making process by learning together. One of the most-important duties of a principal is ensuring staff members are provided with the information and knowledge essential to make informed decisions. Effective principals are vigilant about ensuring people have ready access to the most relevant information and that the group has collectively studied the information before it is called on to make a decision. The assumption here is that when people of good faith have access to the same information, the likelihood of their arrival at similar conclusions increases exponentially. Access to information is the lifeblood of empowered groups.
Initially, this attention to learning together should focus on the school’s current reality and the existing knowledge base regarding effective practice. Working with the guiding coalition, principals provide staff members with an evidenced-based profile of the school that helps them surface the school’s present conditions with a particular focus on evidence of student learning. The guiding coalition then provides staff with a concise summary of evidence regarding the most promising practices for raising student achievement.
All Things PLC (www.allthingsplc.info) provides very useful tools and resources to assist principals in this important step. Visit go.solution-tree.com/plcbooks to download the following reproducibles.
• See “A Data Picture of Our School” for a template to gather pertinent information on existing conditions in your school.
• See “Finding Common Ground in Education Reform” for a sampling of the research on PLCs.
• See “Cultural Shifts in a Professional Learning Community” for information on the cultural shifts that take place when a traditional school embraces the PLC process.
This information should be provided to all staff members. They should also be encouraged to identify additional data they feel are pertinent to understanding the school and to present any research they can find regarding promising practices.
It is important that this process engages the entire staff in reviewing all information. If the principal or guiding coalition does the analysis and merely reports findings to the faculty, staff members become passive recipients of someone else’s conclusions rather than active participants engaged in a process to build shared knowledge. If people are to feel ownership in a decision, they must be engaged in the decision-making process. As Stephen Covey (1989) admonishes: “Without involvement there is no commitment. Mark it down, asterisk it, circle it, underline it. No involvement, no commitment” (p. 143, emphasis in original).
Too often schools make decisions on the basis of opinion, anecdotes, appeals to mindless precedent, or authority. In a profession, however, there is an obligation to seek out and apply the most promising practices. A principal in a PLC will ensure that decisions are made on the basis of evidence rather than whimsy and will engage the entire staff in the review of that evidence.
Build the Foundation of a Professional Learning Community
Building shared knowledge about the current reality in the school as well as the research on the most promising practices in school improvement is a prerequisite for establishing the foundation of a PLC. Think of this foundation as resting on four pillars—(1) mission, (2) vision, (3) collective commitments, and (4) goals, each of which staff members understand and endorse. The mission pillar articulates the school’s purpose, the vision pillar addresses what the school must become to fulfill that purpose, the collective commitments pillar clarifies how each person must act in order to move the school toward the shared vision, and the goals pillar establishes when certain specified benchmarks will be accomplished to mark progress on the journey toward the vision. Let’s examine those pillars in more detail.
Establish the Fundamental Purpose of the School
Although educators in many schools use the terms mission and vision interchangeably, those terms represent two different aspects of the PLC foundation. The mission establishes the very reason the school exists, and on this issue, principals of PLCs must be clear and unequivocal: “the purpose of this school is to ensure high levels of learning for all students.” When a staff embraces this purpose, every practice, policy, and procedure of the school is assessed on the basis of how it will impact student learning. Every aspect of the PLC process flows from this fundamental premise regarding why the school exists.
Help Staff Members Clarify the School They Are Attempting to Create
One of the intended outcomes of building shared knowledge during the early stages of the PLC process is the creation of a facultywide understanding of the indicators of the most-effective schooling practices. Based on that understanding, staff members are called on to describe what their school will become. Principals recognize that they must know and clearly articulate where they want to take their schools if they expect others to join them on the journey. So they work with the staff to develop a shared vision—a desirable and credible future for the school that vividly describes what people are working to create and what it will look like when they get there.
A vision, however, will influence a school only to the extent that it is shared. The process we have described thus far is specifically intended to result in a shared vision. Instead of saying, “Listen to me, I know what this school must become,” a principal is able to say, “I have listened to you, and I understand the school you hope to create. Let’s begin to examine all of our current and proposed practices, policies, and procedures to see if they align with our shared hopes for our school.”
See “Why Should We Describe the School or District We Are Trying to Create?” for a sampling of research on developing a shared vision. Visit go.solution-tree.com/plcbooks to download this reproducible.
Clarify the Commitments That Are Vital to Creating the School
A shared vision describes what a school will become. Collective commitments describe the specific behaviors that individuals throughout the school must demonstrate in order to move the school in the desired direction. These commitments serve two purposes. First, they move the conversation from the discussion of what a staff hopes to create someday to the specific steps that must be taken today to bring the vision to reality. Second, articulated commitments help clarify how an individual can contribute to the school improvement effort. Whereas a shared vision focuses on the organization, collective commitments focus on people. The conversation moves from “What is the school we hope to create?” to “What must each of us start doing now to move us forward?”
The collective commitments should be specifically aligned with the vision statement, and the principal should model this important step by publicly stating the explicit commitments he or she is prepared to make to contribute to the achievement of the shared vision.
See the Schaumburg School District 54 “Mission and Goals” to download examples of collective commitments for principals, teachers, students, and parents. Visit go.solution-tree.com/plcbooks for a link to this reproducible.
See “Why Should We Articulate Collective Commitments?” for a sampling of the research on collective commitments. Visit go.solution-tree.com/plcbooks to download this reproducible.
Establish Indicators of Progress and Strategies for Monitoring Those Indicators
One of the most powerful ways leaders communicate their priorities is by creating a process for monitoring progress of those priorities. Effective principals will work with a leadership team to:
• Translate vision statements into specific actionable steps for making progress
• Establish a timeline for when the steps should be completed
• Monitor each step
• Intervene to provide support when staff members are struggling to move forward
• Identify specific benchmarks the staff can reference to keep track of improvement
• Set clear schoolwide goals and ensure that every collaborative team has translated one or more of those goals into a goal for the team that is strategic and specific, measurable, attainable, results oriented, and time bound (SMART)
In later chapters, we will have much more to say about the importance of SMART goals in implementing the PLC process. For now, we will simply assert that if a shared vision is to impact student achievement, principals must help people throughout the school identify and achieve strategic and specific, measurable short-term and long-term goals that serve as milestones of progress toward the vision.
When a staff has answered these questions—Why do we exist? What kind of school must we become to fulfill our purpose? What collective commitments must we make to create that school? and When do we expect to achieve benchmarks on our journey?—people throughout the school have the benefit of knowing why they are engaged in the work they are doing each day. Furthermore, clarity regarding how these questions are answered provides staff members with a powerful frame of reference when they are called on to make decisions. They know decisions that are consistent with the purpose of learning for all, that move the school toward the shared vision, that honor the collective commitments, and that contribute to the achievement of the school and team goals are certain to be supported. Establishing this foundation is just one of many steps on the journey to becoming a PLC; however, it is a vital step that should not be overlooked.
See “The Professional Learning Communities at Work™ Continuum: Laying the Foundation” and “Where Do We Go From Here? Worksheet: Laying the Foundation of a PLC” for information to guide you on your PLC journey. Visit go.solution-tree.com/plcbooks to download these reproducibles.
Develop a Critical Mass to Support Implementation and Begin Taking Action
One of the most common mistakes principals make in attempting to implement the PLC process is to delay taking action until every staff member has endorsed the action. Do not confuse a widely shared vision with universal support among staff. Principals must strive for consensus as opposed to unanimity. It is unlikely that everyone on a staff will welcome the substantive changes necessary to transform a traditional school into a PLC. Principals who delay action until every staff member is willing to board the PLC train are almost certain to discover the train will never leave the station.
Those who hope to lead a professional learning community must recognize that professionals are expected to make decisions based on the evidence of the most promising strategy for meeting the needs of those they serve. In a profession, evidence trumps appeals to mindless precedent (“This is how I have always done it”) or personal preference (“This is how I like to do it”). Therefore, effective principals ensure staff members are provided with the evidence to make informed decisions. They do not allow an individual’s preference to supersede a professional’s obligation to apply what is considered the most effective practice in his or her field.
Therefore, in attempting to build consensus for implementing the PLC process, principals should work with their leadership team to:
• Build shared knowledge regarding the elements of the PLC process and the research base supporting the benefits of the process
• Engage in dialogue with staff to identify and address concerns and questions
• Encourage dissent and invite all staff to present contradictory research and evidence that suggests the PLC process is detrimental to student learning
• Seek to understand the perspective of those who are opposed to taking action by asking them to share their thought processes and assumptions
• Articulate their thought processes and assumptions, search for areas of agreement, and acknowledge areas of disagreement
• Demonstrate a willingness to compromise on some of the specifics of implementation provided those compromises do not violate the big ideas of the PLC process
Once the leadership team has met these obligations, we recommend a two-part standard for moving forward with implementation.
1. All points of view have been heard.
2. The will of the group is evident even to those who oppose it.
If that standard is met, all staff members should be expected and must be required to act according to the will of the group. Although it is certainly preferable to have staff members engaged in the PLC process out of commitment, actions based on compliance are better than the interminable inaction of waiting for resistant staff members to change their beliefs. Research advises that people are far more likely to behave their way into new beliefs than to believe their way into new behaviors (Pfeffer & Sutton, 2000; Reeves, 2002). A principal cannot stipulate that resistant staff members change their beliefs. A principal can, however, insist that resistant staff members behave in new ways, engaging in behaviors that are essential to the PLC process. If that process proves beneficial to students, provides resistant staff with a positive experience, and leads to better results, changes in their beliefs and levels of commitment are likely to follow. Personal experience remains “the great persuader” and “the mother of all cognitive map changes” (Patterson, Grenny, Maxfield, McMillan, & Switzler, 2008, p. 51).
See “The Professional Learning Communities at Work™ Continuum: Responding to Conflict” and “Where Do We Go From Here? Worksheet: Effective Communication (Chapter 9)” for more information on building consensus and dealing with resistance. Visit go.solution-tree.com/plcbooks to download these reproducibles.
Finally, you must identify the specific action steps people within the school will take in order to begin the PLC journey. Don’t confuse articulating mission, vision, collective commitments, and goals with school improvement. Addressing these issues will benefit the school only if people begin to act in new ways.
The deepest understanding about the PLC process will not occur until the staff begin to do what PLCs do. Don’t procrastinate. Work with staff members to make the structural changes that support their new way of working together, clarify the specific work that needs to be done, and begin doing that work.
