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Chapter 2

A New Model: The Professional Learning Community

Our decade-long effort to reform U.S. education has failed. It has failed because it has not let go of an educational vision that is neither workable nor appropriate to today’s needs.

—Seymour Sarason (1996, p. 358)

In times of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves beautifully equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.

—Eric Hoffer (1972, p. 32)

American public schools were originally organized according to the concepts and principles of the factory model, the prevalent organizational model of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The professional learning community is based on an entirely different model. If schools are to be transformed into learning communities, educators must be prepared first of all to acknowledge that the traditional guiding model of education is no longer relevant in a post-industrial, knowledge-based society. Second, they must embrace ideas and assumptions that are radically different than those that have guided schools in the past.

By the late nineteenth century, efforts to create schools in the image of the factory had become explicit and purposeful. In Principles of Scientific Management, the bible that articulated the concepts of the industrial model, Frederick Winslow Taylor (1911) argued that “one best system” could be identified to complete any task or solve any organizational problem. According to this philosophy, it was management’s job to identify the one best way, train workers accordingly, and then provide the supervision and monitoring needed to ensure that workers would follow the prescribed methods. Thus, a small group of people could do the thinking for the entire organization. Workers were regarded as relatively interchangeable parts in the industrial process. Taylor’s model demanded centralization, standardization, hierarchical top-down management, a rigid sense of time, and accountability based on adherence to the system. The assembly line embodied Taylor’s principles and had helped the United States become the world’s industrial giant. Assured that they had discovered the one best way to run an organization, business leaders and politicians argued that schools should adopt a similar model to produce the kinds of workers that industry required.

For the most part, educators needed little prompting. Much enamored with the industrial model, leading educators were enthusiastic about applying its principles to their enterprises. An ardent advocate of the industrial model, William T. Harris was one of the most influential school superintendents in the United States in the late nineteenth century, serving as the president and director of the National Education Association, the president of the National Association of School Superintendents, and the United States commissioner of education. He wrote:

Our schools are, in a sense, factories in which the raw materials (children) are to be shaped and fashioned in order to meet the various demands of life. The specifications for manufacturing come from the demands of the twentieth century civilization, and it is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down. (quoted in Fiske, 1992, pp. 32–33)

Ellwood Cubberly, a professor at Stanford University and one of the nation’s foremost educational thinkers of his time, reflected the opinion of his contemporaries when he wrote the following in 1934:

The public schools of the United States are, in a sense, a manufactury, doing a two billion dollar business each year in trying to prepare future citizens for usefulness and efficiency in life. As such we have recently been engaged in revising our manufacturing specifications and in applying to the conduct of our business some of the same principles of specialized production and manufacturing efficiency which control in other parts of the manufacturing world. (p. 528)

The uniformity, standardization, and bureaucracy of the factory model soon became predominant characteristics of the school district. The key was to have the thinkers of the organization specify exactly what and how to teach at each grade level and then to provide strict supervision to ensure that teachers did as they were told. Decisions flowed from state boards of education down the ladder of the educational bureaucracy to local school boards, superintendents, and principals. Eventually, decisions would be directed to teachers who, like factory workers, were viewed as underlings responsible for carrying out the decisions of their bosses. Students were simply the raw material transported along the educational assembly line. They would be moved to a station where a teacher would “pour” in mathematics until the bell rang; then they would be moved to the next station where another teacher would “assemble” the nuts and bolts of English until the next bell rang, and so on. Those who completed this 13-year trek on the assembly line would emerge as finished products, ready to function efficiently in the industrial world.

Unfortunately, many of the principles of this factory model still prevail within the structures of American schools. Schools continue to focus on procedures rather than results, following the assumption that if they adhere to the rules—teaching the prescribed curriculum, maintaining the correct class sizes, using the appropriate textbooks, accumulating the right number of course credits—students will learn what they need to know. Less attention is paid to determining whether or not the learning has actually occurred. Instead, schools remain preoccupied with time and design, organizing the class period, school day, and school year according to rigid schedules that must be followed. In many schools, teachers and their opinions are still considered to be insignificant. Above all else, the factory model has established a conservative tradition in American schools. Taylor’s concept of the one right system has led to a credo of “get it right—then keep it going.” As a result of this philosophy, many educators seem unable to embrace a concept of continuous improvement that has the significantly different credo of “get it right, and then make it better and better and better.”

In defense of nineteenth-century educators, the factory model may have indeed served schools well when they were not intended to educate large numbers of students to a high level. In 1893, for example, when the Committee of Ten issued the report that was to shape the high school curriculum for decades, 1893), less than three percent of American students were actually graduating from high school. Even as late as 1950, the majority of students continued to drop out of high school before graduation. In this way, the factory model did indeed function as it was intended by sorting and selecting students. The model continued to work reasonably well as long as dropouts had ready access to unskilled jobs in industry, regardless of their educational level. The number of unskilled jobs in industry has declined significantly, however, and the most enlightened corporations—even many factories—have abandoned this model (Blankstein, 1992).

The factory model is woefully inadequate for meeting the national education goals of today—goals that call for all students to master rigorous content, learn how to learn, pursue productive employment, and compete in a global economy. If educators are to meet these challenges, they must abandon an outdated model that is contrary to the findings of educational research, the best practices of both schools and industry, and common sense. They must embrace a new conceptual model for schools. The issue then becomes identifying the model that offers the best hope for significant school improvement.

The School as a Professional Learning Community

Researchers both inside and outside of education offer remarkably similar conclusions about the best path for sustained organizational improvement. Consider the following findings:

Only the organizations that have a passion for learning will have an enduring influence. (Covey, 1996, p. 149)

Every enterprise has to become a learning institution [and] a teaching institution. Organizations that build in continuous learning in jobs will dominate the twenty-first century. (Drucker, 1992, p. 108)

The most successful corporation of the future will be a learning organization. (Senge, 1990, p. 4)

Preferred organizations will be learning organizations.… It has been said that people who stop learning stop living. This is also true of organizations. (Handy, 1995, p. 55)

The new problem of change … is what would it take to make the educational system a learning organization—expert at dealing with change as a normal part of its work, not just in relation to the latest policy, but as a way of life. (Fullan, 1993, p. 4)

The Commission recommends that schools be restructured to become genuine learning organizations for both students and teachers; organizations that respect learning, honor teaching, and teach for understanding. (Darling-Hammond, 1996, p. 198)

We have come to realize over the years that the development of a learning community of educators is itself a major cultural change that will spawn many others. (Joyce & Showers, 1995, p. 3)

If schools want to enhance their organizational capacity to boost student learning, they should work on building a professional community that is characterized by shared purpose, collaborative activity, and collective responsibility among staff. (Newmann & Wehlage, 1995, p. 37)

We argue, however, that when schools attempt significant reform, efforts to form a schoolwide professional community are critical. (Louis, Kruse, & Raywid, 1996, p. 13)

Rarely has research given school practitioners such a consistent message and clear sense of direction. But even if educators are persuaded that creating a professional learning community offers the best strategy for school improvement, difficult questions remain. The best way to initiate consideration of these questions is to “begin with the end in mind” (Covey, 1989, p. 95)—that is, to describe the characteristics of a professional learning community, the conduct and habits of mind of the people who work within it, and its day-to-day functioning. A clear vision of what a learning community looks like and how people operate within it will offer insight into the steps that must be taken to transform a school into a learning community.

Characteristics of Professional Learning Communities

1. Shared mission, vision, and values. The sine qua non of a learning community is shared understandings and common values. What separates a learning community from an ordinary school is its collective commitment to guiding principles that articulate what the people in the school believe and what they seek to create. Furthermore, these guiding principles are not just articulated by those in positions of leadership; even more important, they are embedded in the hearts and minds of people throughout the school. Mission, vision, and values are so integral to a learning community that each will be discussed in detail in later chapters.

2. Collective inquiry. The engine of improvement, growth, and renewal in a professional learning community is collective inquiry. People in such a community are relentless in questioning the status quo, seeking new methods, testing those methods, and then reflecting on the results. Not only do they have an acute sense of curiosity and openness to new possibilities, they also recognize that the process of searching for answers is more important than having an answer. Furthermore, their search is a collective one.

Ross, Smith, and Roberts (1994) refer to the collective inquiry process as “the team learning wheel” and identify four steps in that process:

1. Public reflection—members of the team talk about their assumptions and beliefs and challenge each other gently but relentlessly.

2. Shared meaning—the team arrives at common ground, shared insights.

3. Joint planning—the team designs action steps, an initiative to test their shared insights.

4. Coordinated action—the team carries out the action plan. This action need not be joint action but can be carried out independently by the members of the team.

At this point, the team analyzes the results of its actions and repeats the four-step cycle.

This process enables team members to benefit from what Senge et al. (1994) has called “the deep learning cycle … the essence of the learning organization” (p. 18). Collective inquiry enables team members to develop new skills and capabilities, which in turn lead to new experiences and awareness. Gradually, the heightened awareness is assimilated into fundamental shifts in attitudes and beliefs. Ultimately, it is this ability to examine and modify beliefs that enables team members to view the world differently and make significant changes in the culture of the organization.

3. Collaborative teams. The basic structure of the professional learning community is a group of collaborative teams that share a common purpose. Some organizations base their improvement strategies on efforts to enhance the knowledge and skills of individuals. Although individual growth is essential for organizational growth to occur, it does not guarantee organizational growth. Thus, building a school’s capacity to learn is a collaborative rather than an individual task. People who engage in collaborative team learning are able to learn from one another, thus creating momentum to fuel continued improvement.

On the other hand, team learning is not the same as team building. The latter focuses on creating courteous protocols, improving communication, building stronger relationships, or enhancing the group’s ability to perform routine tasks together. Collaborative team learning focuses on organizational renewal and a willingness to work together in continuous improvement processes.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of collaborative teams in the improvement process. Fullan (1993) stresses their importance in Change Forces:

The ability to collaborate—on both a large and small scale—is one of the core requisites of post modern society…. [I]n short, without collaborative skills and relationships it is not possible to learn and to continue to learn as much as you need in order to be an agent for social improvement. (pp. 17–18)

4. Action orientation and experimentation. Professional learning communities are action oriented. Members of such organizations turn aspirations into action and visions into reality. Not only do they act; they are unwilling to tolerate inaction. They recognize that learning always occurs in a context of taking action, and they believe engagement and experience are the most effective teachers. Even seemingly chaotic activity is preferred to orderly, passive inaction.

An important corollary of the action orientation is a willingness to experiment—to develop and test hypotheses. Members of professional learning communities are often asked to develop, test, and evaluate theories. They reflect on what happened and why, develop new theories, try new tests, evaluate the results, and so on. This willingness to experiment is accompanied by a tolerance for results that may be contrary to what was anticipated. While traditional organizations tend to brand such experiments as failures and then seek to assign blame, learning organizations consider failed experiments to be an integral part of the learning process—opportunities to learn and then begin again more intelligently.

5. Continuous improvement. A persistent discomfort with the status quo and a constant search for a better way characterize the heart of a professional learning community. Continuous improvement requires that each member of the organization is engaged in considering several key questions:

1. What is our fundamental purpose?

2. What do we hope to achieve?

3. What are our strategies for becoming better?

4. What criteria will we use to assess our improvement efforts?

A commitment to continuous improvement is evident in an environment in which innovation and experimentation are viewed not as tasks to accomplish or projects to complete, but as ways of conducting day-to-day business, forever. Members of a professional learning community recognize and celebrate the fact that mission and vision are ideals that will never be fully realized, but must always be worked toward. In short, becoming a learning community is less like getting in shape than staying in shape—it is not a fad diet, but a never-ending commitment to an essential, vital way of life.

6. Results orientation. Finally, a professional learning community realizes that its efforts to develop shared mission, vision, and values; engage in collective inquiry; build collaborative teams; take action; and focus on continuous improvement must be assessed on the basis of results rather than intentions. Unless initiatives are subject to ongoing assessment on the basis of tangible results, they represent random groping in the dark rather than purposeful improvement. Peter Senge (1996) notes that “the rationale for any strategy for building a learning organization revolves around the premise that such organizations will produce dramatically improved results” (p. 44).

The School as a Professional Learning Community: A Scenario

How would these characteristics of learning communities affect daily operation of a school? Consider the following scenario, which illustrates the professional learning community at work:

Connie Donovan approached her first teaching assignment with all the anxiety and nervous trepidation of any first-year teacher. She had been assured during her interview that her new school operated as a learning community that valued teacher collaboration. Nevertheless, the memory of her roommate’s introduction to the teaching profession the year before was still fresh in her mind. Poor Beth had been assigned to teach one of the most difficult remedial courses in her school—classes filled with students who had failed the course in the past due to a variety of problems. Her orientation had consisted of a review of the employee manual and an overview of the teacher’s contract by the principal on the morning of the day before students were to arrive. Then she was given the key to her room, the teacher’s edition of the textbook, and her class roster. The following day, she faced her 135 students for the first time. Her nine weeks of training as a student teacher had not prepared her for the difficulties she encountered, and there was no support system to help her. She did not know how to respond to student misbehavior and apathy, and she had told Connie tearfully that she felt she was losing control of her class. Connie had watched Beth work far into the night, preparing lessons and grading papers, but each week Beth only seemed to become more discouraged and overwhelmed. Weekends offered no respite. Beth’s teaching position had been contingent upon her willingness to serve as cheerleading sponsor, and Friday nights and Saturdays were spent supervising cheerleaders. By March, she had decided that she was not cut out for teaching. She dreaded each day and frequently called in sick. By the end of the year, she had admitted to Connie that she felt like she was hanging on by her fingernails.

Knowing this story as she did, Connie was relieved to get a phone call that summer from Jim, a veteran member of the faculty of her new school. Jim had participated on the committee that had interviewed her for the position. He congratulated her on her appointment to the social studies department, explained that he would be serving as her mentor during her first year, and invited her to lunch to make introductions and answer any questions she might have. Her anxiety diminished somewhat when Jim told her that the school provided two full days of orientation and another three days for the faculty to work together before students arrived.

The new teacher orientation was nothing like what Beth had described. After introductions, the principal spent the morning explaining the history of the school. She carefully reviewed the school’s vision statement, pointing out that it had been jointly developed by the faculty, administration, community members, and students. She explained that the statement described what the school was striving to become, and she highlighted recent initiatives that the school had begun in its effort to move closer to the ideal described in the vision. She then divided all the new teachers into small groups and asked them to identify any points of the vision statement that they felt needed clarification. The emphasis the principal gave to the vision statement made it clear to Connie that it was a major focus for the school.

Connie spent the afternoon with her department chairman and Jim. Together they provided Connie with an overview of the entire scope and sequence of the social studies department’s curriculum. They also provided her with course descriptions that teachers had developed for each course, and they reviewed the essential outcomes all students were expected to achieve in the courses she was teaching. They explained further that these outcomes had been determined collectively by the teachers after considerable discussion and a lengthy review of the state’s goals in social studies, the report on student achievement in social studies by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and the curriculum standards recommended by the National Council for the Social Studies and the National Center for History in the Schools. Finally, they reviewed the vision statement for the department that the teachers themselves had developed. They discussed the department’s improvement goals and priorities and demonstrated to Connie how she might use the department’s common files in her own planning and assessment activities.

On the second day of orientation, the principal introduced the president of the teachers’ association, who distributed and explained the faculty value statements. These statements had been developed by the faculty to give direction to the daily work of teachers. The association president pointed out the link between the value statements and the school’s vision and explained that every group in the school—the Board of Education, administration, support staff, students, and parents—had articulated similar statements of the commitments they were prepared to make to improve the school.

The rest of the morning was spent hearing from representatives of the different support services available to teachers—the deans, the director of the media center, the technology coordinator, the pupil personnel department, the special education department, and the tutors from the resource centers. Each speaker emphasized that his or her function was to help teachers. That afternoon, Connie’s mentor helped her set up her classroom, asked what she hoped to accomplish on the first day and during the first week of class, and offered a few suggestions based on her response.

When the entire faculty arrived the next day, Connie was surprised to see that the morning was devoted to a celebration of the start of the school year. At the opening meeting, the principal announced milestones—weddings, births, engagements, advanced degrees, and other important events that faculty members had experienced over the summer. Each announcement was met with warm applause by the faculty. The principal then stressed several themes from the vision statement and reminded teachers of the priorities they had established for that school year. Each new faculty member was introduced to the group by his or her mentor and then given a faculty T-shirt. The rest of the morning was spent enjoying a festive, schoolwide brunch, complete with skits and entertainment presented by members of the faculty and administration. Connie was surprised and pleased to learn that this back-to-school celebration was an annual tradition planned and orchestrated by a faculty committee.

That afternoon, the teachers split into teaching teams to discuss how the team would handle its responsibilities. Every teacher in the school had been appointed as a member of one or more teaching teams. Connie was a member of an interdisciplinary team that included an English teacher and a science teacher. Together the three of them would be responsible for 75 students. These students were assigned to Connie and her two colleagues for a three-hour block every day and would remain with the same three teachers for two full years. Connie was excited about this assignment. She believed in the benefits of an integrated curriculum. She felt that the long-term relationships with students would be beneficial, and she welcomed the idea of working closely with two colleagues who shared the same students. She was also enthusiastic about the fact that the teachers were free to schedule the three-hour block as they saw fit. Free from the limits of a 50-minute period, Connie thought she could offer some interesting simulations and mock trials for her students. She spent the rest of the day working with her colleagues to strengthen their first interdisciplinary unit. She appreciated the fact that they solicited her opinion and were receptive to her questions.

On the next day, Connie worked with her other team—the United States history team. All teachers responsible for teaching the same course were members of a team for that course. The teams developed common course descriptions, articulated the essential outcomes for the course, established the criteria for assessing the quality of student work, and developed common assessment instruments. The history team spent considerable time reviewing and grading ex-amples of essays that students had written the year before. Connie found this practice particularly helpful in both understanding what the department emphasized and identifying the criteria for evaluating student work. By the end of the morning, the teachers were very consistent in the way they applied the departmental criteria to grading student work.

That afternoon the team analyzed student performance according to the common assessment instruments from the previous year, identified areas where students did not meet the desired proficiencies established by the team, and discussed strategies for improving student performance. The discussion helped Connie understand what students were to accomplish, how they were to be assessed, and where they had experienced difficulties in the past. She found the discussion to be invaluable. She spent part of the third day of teacher preparation working with her teams and discussing with her mentor a few ideas she planned to use in her opening comments to students the next day. Finally, she spent the rest of her day examining profiles of her new students.

Once the school year was underway, the new teachers continued to meet at least once each month for ongoing orientation. Sometimes teachers with particular interests or skills would talk to the group on activities in their classes. One of these sessions helped Connie solve a problem she was having structuring individual accountability into cooperative learning activities. Other times, the principal provided new teachers with an article or case study and asked them to react to the item in their personal journals. These reflections then became the basis for the group’s discussion. The sessions always included an opportunity to ask questions. As the year progressed, Connie found that her meetings with the other new teachers helped her develop a sense of camaraderie and shared experience with them.

By the third week of school, Connie had become concerned about one of her history students who seemed unwilling to work. Although he was not disruptive, Matthew seemed detached in class and rarely turned in any work. Connie spoke to him after class one day to express her concerns and to discuss possible ways of engaging him in the classroom activity. When the conference failed to bring about any change, Connie discussed the problem with Jim. He suggested alerting Matthew’s student support team (SST). Connie learned that teachers were not the only ones in the school to work in teams. A counselor, dean, and social worker also shared responsibility for the same group of students. When Connie explained her concerns to Matthew’s counselor, the SST decided to seek information from all of his teachers. It soon became evident that the behavior pattern that Matthew demonstrated in Connie’s classroom was evident in all of his classes. The SST decided it was time to convene a parent conference to review Matthew’s status both with his parents and teachers. At the conference, the teachers jointly developed strategies that would enable Matthew’s parents to be aware of his assignments. The parents promised to monitor their son carefully to ensure he would keep up with his work.

Jim trained Connie in the school’s approach to classroom observation and teacher evaluation before the department chairman and principal began the formal process with her. She became comfortable having Jim observe her teaching and found her debriefing sessions with him to be very helpful. He explained that all the mentors had been trained in analyzing teaching and providing constructive feedback.

Connie expected the principal to be more directive in the teacher evaluation process and anticipated she would receive some kind of rating at the conclusion of her conference with the principal. She was wrong on both counts. The principal asked probing questions: Why did you decide to teach this content? How does it fit with the major outcomes of the course? How did you know students had the prerequisite knowledge and skills to be successful in this unit? Why did you use the instructional strategies you selected? How do you know if students achieved the intended outcomes? What patterns do you see in your teaching? What worked and what did not work in this lesson? If you were to teach this lesson again, would you do anything differently? By the end of the conference, Connie realized that she had done most of the talking and that the principal was simply providing prompts to encourage her to reflect on and articulate her conclusions about her teaching.

Connie was surprised to discover the number of action research projects in progress in her department. For example, teachers were divided on the question of ability grouping. Some argued that remedial classes created a climate of low expectations and were harmful to students. They called for students to be grouped heterogeneously. Others argued that remedial classes offered the best strategy for meeting the special needs of students who had experienced trouble with social studies in the past. The teachers subsequently agreed to put their respective theories to the test. Remedial students were randomly assigned either to heterogeneous classes or to remedial classes, and the teachers agreed on the assessment strategies they would use at the end of the year to see which approach was more effective. In another project, some teachers volunteered to increase their class size by 25% in order to reduce their teaching assignment from five sections to four, thus leaving more time for joint planning. Once again, teachers in the experimental and traditional classes agreed on the criteria they would monitor to determine the effectiveness of each approach.

Connie learned that action research was not limited to her department; in fact, each department had various action research projects underway. She also learned that the school had established a special entrepreneurial fund offering teachers opportunities to develop grant proposals for projects to improve the school. After a review by a faculty committee to determine which proposals offered the greatest promise, the school board provided funding for the implementation of those proposals. It was obvious to Connie that experimentation played an important part in the culture of her new school.

Reflection and dialogue were also essential to the workings of the school. For example, all teachers benefited from peer observation. Teachers created reading clubs that reviewed and discussed books and major articles on teaching and learning. Faculty members participated in a portfolio development project based on the criteria identified by the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards. Department meetings typically opened with a teacher sharing a strategy or insight with colleagues and then responding to questions. Connie was impressed with the lively give and take of these discussions. She noticed that teachers felt comfortable probing and challenging one another’s thinking.

It was soon very evident that ongoing professional growth was expected at this school. The district offered three different areas of concentration—authentic assessment, student-centered learning, or multiple intelligences. Teaching teams agreed to pursue one of these three professional development initiatives for at least three years. Connie’s interdisciplinary team had already opted for authentic assessment. Each school year, five half-days and two full days had been set aside for concentrated focus on these topics.

The faculty members had committed themselves to making a concerted effort to integrate technology into the curriculum. They had agreed to adjust other budget areas in order to fund a full-time technology trainer. This trainer not only offered a regular schedule of technology classes for all staff during their preparation periods; she also provided one-on-one, just-in-time training when individual staff members identified a need. With the trainer’s help, Connie learned to log onto a social studies teachers’ group on the Internet. She enjoyed asking a question and soliciting ideas from colleagues around the world.

Each teacher in the school was asked to develop an individualized professional growth plan in an area of special interest. Connie decided to focus on effective questioning strategies and worked with her department chairman to develop a plan for investigating the topic. The chairman provided her with articles summarizing the research on questioning strategies, and the principal recommended that she observe several teachers who were particularly skilled in questioning. During the next several weeks, Connie implemented some of the strategies she had either read about or observed firsthand. She also requested feedback on her questioning techniques from Jim after he had observed her teaching.

In addition, the district offered a series of workshops and courses that were tied to district goals. Most of these classes were taught by local teachers or administrators. Connie took the course on questioning strategies as well as a series of courses on classroom management, and she received credit on the salary schedule for doing so. The district not only encouraged teachers to be active in their professional organizations, it also contributed toward the membership fee of approved organizations. Connie joined both the National Council of Social Studies Teachers and its state affiliate. The principal, department chairman, and Connie’s colleagues frequently distributed copies of journal articles that they found interesting, and team and department meetings were often devoted to the discussion of the ideas in those articles. The district also published its own professional journal once each year, comprised exclusively of articles written by teachers in the district.

The district’s partnership with a local college served as another stimulus for reflection and productive interchange. Undergraduate students in education were frequent observers and often served as teacher aides in the school. They had many questions after they observed a class. University staff often advised teachers in setting up action research projects. School staff reciprocated by participating in the research of the university. Professors frequently taught units in the high school, and many of the undergraduate and graduate education courses were team-taught by university staff members and a teacher from the district. Late in the year, Connie was invited to share reflections on her experience as a first-year teacher with a class of college students as they prepared for their student teaching assignments.

Connie had been surprised when, shortly after she had accepted her teaching position, the personnel office asked her to complete a survey on her experience as a teaching candidate. As the year went on, she realized that surveys soliciting feedback were frequently used throughout the district. The principal and department chairpersons distributed surveys to the staff for feedback on their performance. Teachers could choose from a variety of survey instruments that gave students the opportunity to comment on the teacher and the class. All seniors were asked to complete a survey reflecting on their high school experience, and the school conducted a phone survey of randomly selected students one year and five years after their graduation to assess their high school experience and to determine their current status.

Parents were surveyed annually to determine their impressions of the school, and the principal and members of the school board participated in neighborhood coffees throughout the district to seek feedback and answer questions from members of the community. Teachers completed annual surveys for assessing the school’s improvement efforts and identifying areas for improvement. They also completed self-evaluation forms on how effectively their teams functioned. It was clear that seeking and considering feedback on performance was the norm both within the school and throughout the district.

Connie considered her common planning time with the members of her interdisciplinary team and several members of her history team to be her most valuable resource. The members of the interdisciplinary team used some of their time to refine integrated curriculum units and to discuss how to apply what they were learning about authentic assessment. Much of this time was spent discussing the students they had in common, identifying individuals who seemed to be having problems, and developing unified strategies for helping those students. Because the history team did not share the same students, its discussions focused more on ideas for teaching particular units and assessing students’ understanding in general.

At the end of the semester, Connie worked with her teams to analyze the results of student performance on the common comprehensive assessments the teams had developed. First, they compared the students’ achievements to the anticipated proficiency levels the teams had set. Then they compared the results to their longitudinal study of past student performance. They identified areas of concern and then brainstormed steps that they might take to improve the level of student achievement. Finally, they wrote a brief summary of their analysis and improvement plan and sent copies to the principal and their department chairpersons.

Connie felt there was never enough time to do everything that was required, but she appreciated the efforts the school had made to provide teachers with time to plan, reflect, and collaborate. In addition to the teacher planning days at the start of the year, the five half-days and three full days set aside for professional development, and the common preparation periods allocated for teaching teams, teachers were given two hours every two weeks for planning and conferencing. This was possible because a few years earlier the faculty had agreed to extend the school day by 10 minutes each day in exchange for a two-hour block every other Wednesday when teachers could work together on joint projects. The principal emphasized the importance of teacher collaboration by assuring her faculty that she would provide substitutes for any team that needed more time to complete its work. She also had an enlisted corps of parent volunteers who would substitute for this purpose as needed.

That spring, teaching teams were invited to develop proposals for summer curriculum projects. The proposal form called on each team to describe what it wanted to accomplish, how the project was related to departmental and school visions, and what the project would produce. Connie’s interdisciplinary team submitted a proposal for creating two units that linked American literature, United States history, and scientific principles. After their plan was approved by the faculty committee that reviewed project proposals, the team members coordinated their calendars to find a week during the summer break when everyone would be available.

On three different occasions during the year, Connie participated in small-group discussions on proposals developed by different school improvement task forces. The task forces—composed of teachers, parents, and students—were convened to generate strategies for addressing priorities that had been identified by the school. One task force submitted a proposal to increase student participation in co-curricular activities. Another offered strategies for teaching students to accept increasing responsibility for their learning as they advanced from their freshman to senior years. The third proposed a systematic way of monitoring each student’s academic progress and responding to any student who was in danger of failing. Each proposal included the criteria with which the long-term impact of its recommendations should be assessed. Connie learned that every teacher in the school was expected to participate in these improvement task forces from time to time, and that one of the primary responsibilities of each task force was to build a consensus in support of its recommendations. It became apparent that proposals often had to be revised several times before that consensus could be reached.

At the end of the school year, Jim asked Connie to reflect on her overall experience. She acknowledged that not every lesson had gone well and that there had been days when she was frustrated and perplexed. Teaching had turned out to be much more difficult and complex than she had ever imagined. She had expected that her enthusiasm for history would be contagious and that her students would learn to love the subject just as she had. She now had to acknowledge that some did not seem to care for history at all, and she wondered why she had been unable to generate their enthusiasm. She had been certain that she would be able to reach every student, and when one of her students elected to withdraw from school saying, “This school sucks!” she questioned why she had been unable to connect with him. She admitted she did not understand where her responsibility for student learning ended and the student’s began. She often asked herself if she were doing too much or not enough to help each student succeed in her class.

She had been quite certain she knew all the answers when she decided to become a teacher, but as she worked through her first year of actual experience, she felt as though she had more questions than answers. It was not until the second semester that she came to realize that good teaching is driven by such questions. She gradually came to a clearer understanding and appreciation of the section of the school’s vision statement that said, “We will be a school that is noted for two characteristics: our commitment to promoting the success of every student and our continuous discontent with the immediate present.” In her school, the process of searching for answers was more important than actually having answers.

It was clear that every teacher was called on to ask him- or herself each day, “How can I be more effective in my efforts to be a positive influence in the lives of the students entrusted to me?” Yet, it was equally clear that teachers were never to conclude that they had arrived at the definitive answer to any fundamental question. The year had been exhilarating and exhausting, fun and frustrating, but at its end, despite all of the unanswered questions, Connie was certain of one thing—her life would be spent teaching!

The experience described above could not occur in a school that continues to operate according to the principles of the industrial model. Connie’s school offers a fundamentally different model based on significantly different assumptions, beliefs, and behaviors. The challenge of implementing this model is determining how schools can initiate and sustain a change process that transforms their traditional culture so that they can function as professional learning communities.

Summary

The assumptions that have guided the operation of schools since the late nineteenth century were based on the factory model and its reliance on centralization, standardization, hierarchical top-down management, a rigid sense of time, and accountability based on adherence to the system. That model is no longer valid in a post-industrial, knowledge-based society. Researchers both inside and outside of education have arrived at the same conclusions regarding a new model that offers the best hope for stimulating significant improvement in the ability of schools to achieve their objectives. This model requires schools to function as professional learning communities characterized by a shared mission, vision, and values; collective inquiry; collaborative teams; an orientation toward action and a willingness to experiment; commitment to continuous improvement; and a focus on results. The scenario that ends the chapter describes how a school organized as a professional learning community might function during the course of a typical school year.