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Introduction

The most promising strategy for sustained, substantive school improvement is developing the ability of school personnel to function as professional learning communities.

That is the message of this book in a nutshell! Everything else provides context and details—but careful examination and constant probing of context and detail are critical elements in becoming a professional learning community.

Each word of the phrase “professional learning community” has been chosen purposefully. A “professional” is someone with expertise in a specialized field, an individual who has not only pursued advanced training to enter the field, but who is also expected to remain current in its evolving knowledge base. The knowledge base of education has expanded dramatically in the past quarter century, both in terms of research and in terms of the articulation of recommended standards for the profession. Although many school personnel are unaware of or are inattentive to emerging research and standards, educators in a professional learning community make these findings the basis of their collaborative investigation of how they can better achieve their goals.

“Learning” suggests ongoing action and perpetual curiosity. In Chinese, the term “learning” is represented by two characters: the first means “to study,” and the second means “to practice constantly.” Many schools operate as though their personnel know everything they will ever need to know the day they enter the profession. The school that operates as a professional learning community recognizes that its members must engage in the ongoing study and constant practice that characterize an organization committed to continuous improvement.

Much has been written about learning organizations, but we prefer the term “community.” An organization has been defined both as an “administrative and functional structure” (Webster’s Dictionary) and as “a systematic arrangement for a definite purpose” (Oxford Dictionary). In each case, the emphasis is on structure and efficiency. In contrast, however, the term “community” suggests a group linked by common interests. As Corrine McLaughlin and Gordon Davidson (1994) write:

Community means different things to different people. To some it is a safe haven where survival is assured through mutual cooperation. To others, it is a place of emotional support, with deep sharing and bonding with close friends. Some see community as an intense crucible for personal growth. For others, it is simply a place to pioneer their dreams. (p. 471)

In a professional learning community, all of these characteristics are evident. Educators create an environment that fosters mutual cooperation, emotional support, and personal growth as they work together to achieve what they cannot accomplish alone.

This book offers specific, practical recommendations for those who seek to transform their schools into professional learning communities. The recommendations we offer are based on research, evident in best practice, and consistent with standards of quality adopted by various national organizations. References to and brief summaries of standards for curriculum, teacher preparation and development, school leadership, professional development programs, school-parent partnerships, and assessment practices are provided throughout this book.

We have not, however, limited our study to research, practices, and standards in education. We also examine organizational development, change processes, leadership, and successful practices outside of education. We rely heavily on the work of Linda Darling-Hammond, Michael Fullan, Andy Hargreaves, Milbrey McLaughlin, Fred Newmann, Seymour Sarason, Phil Schlechty, Ted Sizer, Dennis Sparks, and others who have focused on steps that can be taken to improve public schools. But we also have sought out the lessons that can be found for educators in the work of Warren Bennis, James Champy, Steven Covey, Terry Deal, Peter Drucker, John Gardner, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, John Kotter, James Kouzes, Burt Nanus, Tom Peters, Barry Posner, Peter Senge, Robert Waterman, and others.

Some educators may object to any suggestion that schools could benefit from the lessons that have been learned in the private sector. These teachers and administrators are often quick to point out that they have no control over who their “customers” are or will be; that while the private sector can focus on finding its niche in the market or enhancing the quality of its processes, schools must take all students, regardless of their abilities or levels of support from parents and the community. It is certainly true that children are not products and that educators are not assembly line workers. There are many differences between schools and industry, and those differences should not be minimized.

Nevertheless, one characteristic of a learning organization is a willingness to learn from its external environment, and it is this willingness that most educators have not demonstrated. In his study of school cultures, Seymour Sarason (1996) concludes that school personnel are remarkably uninterested in issues outside of their daily routines: “It is as if they are only interested in what they do and are confronted with in their encapsulated classrooms in their encapsulated schools” (pp. 329–330). Educators have been too quick to dismiss as irrelevant the experience and insights gained by those outside of education. Over a decade of research has established that the most successful people in any area look outside their narrow field for fresh perspectives and new ideas (Kanter, 1997). We believe that school practitioners can and should learn from the organizations outside of education that have struggled with some of the same issues that public schools face today. The best of these organizations have struggled to find answers to the following questions:

• How can we clarify and communicate the purpose, vision, and values of our organization?

• How can we initiate, implement, and sustain a change process?

• How can we provide strong leadership at the same time that we empower those closest to the action?

• How can we shape organizational culture and provide structures that support the culture we seek?

• How can we create collaborative processes that result in both individual and organizational learning?

• How can we foster an environment that is results-oriented yet encourages experimentation?

This book attempts to summarize the important lessons successful organizations have learned as they have struggled to answer these questions. Thus, the book merges educational research with research from areas outside of education.

The book also represents a merger of another kind—a merger of theory and practice. Too often, researchers and practitioners have different interests, speak different languages, and live in different worlds. This book attempts to bridge the chasm between theory and practice through the collaboration of its authors—the dean of a college of education whose background is in research and the superintendent of a nationally recognized school district. We have reviewed the research, but we have also worked in school districts in 40 states. We have observed and struggled with the perplexities of school improvement. Our experiences have given us insights into the practices that enable a school to function as a professional learning community and have helped us identify the obstacles a school must overcome in the pursuit of that goal.

Chapter Overviews

“Life,” Kierkegaard said, “must be lived forward, but it can be understood only backward.” While this book strives to describe a better future for public schools, it begins with a look backward. Chapter 1 provides a brief overview of educational reform efforts during the second half of the twentieth century with an emphasis on the Excellence Movement of the 1980s and the Restructuring Movement of the 1990s. It describes the reactions of despair and defiance that accompanied the failure of these movements to fulfill their promises of significant improvement in public education. It suggests the reasons for the failure and presents the assertion that the best hope for significant school improvement lies in transforming schools into professional learning communities.

Chapter 2 contrasts the factory model that has characterized the traditional school environment with the model of a professional learning community. It presents examples of the consistent research findings that have concluded that creating professional learning communities represents the best hope for sustained school improvement, and it specifies the characteristics of such communities. The chapter concludes with a scenario that describes one professional learning community at work.

Chapter 3 examines the complexity of the change process and the often confusing and contradictory advice that research on the change process seems to offer. It urges a realistic acceptance of the difficulty and complexity of substantive change and identifies common mistakes that are made when any organization attempts significant reform. It examines the assertion that a sense of urgency is a prerequisite for change and considers the possibilities for creating a sense of urgency in public schools.

Chapter 4 begins the examination of the four building blocks of a professional learning community—mission, vision, values, and goals. Each building block asks a question of the people in the school. When educators work together to answer these questions, they establish the foundation of a learning community. The mission building block probes the question, “What is our purpose?” to which schools often provide a trite and superficial response. Chapter 4 suggests how the issue can be examined in a way that serves as a catalyst for improvement. This chapter also examines the vision building block, which asks the question, “What do we hope to become?” It offers strategies for developing a shared vision, examines common questions related to articulating a vision, provides summaries of research that can be used to inform the process, and suggests criteria for assessing a vision statement.

Chapter 5 examines the third and fourth building blocks of a professional learning community—values and goals. The values block poses the question, “How must we behave in order to make our shared vision a reality?” Value statements articulate the attitudes, behaviors, and commitments that each group is prepared to demonstrate to advance toward the shared vision. The chapter offers examples of value statements for different groups in the school and suggestions for developing such statements. The remainder of the chapter is devoted to the goals building block, which clarifies the nature and timetable of the specific steps that will be taken in the initiative to move the school toward its vision. Goals help move the improvement effort from rhetoric to action and can provide the intermittent successes critical to sustaining the improvement process. The chapter identifies common mistakes that schools make in developing goals and presents criteria for assessing goals.

Chapter 6 emphasizes the importance of sustaining an improvement initiative through communication, and it offers a series of questions that can be used to audit the effectiveness with which educators communicate what is important in their schools. The chapter also makes a strong case for job-embedded collaborative structures as a sine qua non of a professional learning community. It suggests different structures that can be used and outlines the prerequisites for effective collaborative teams.

Chapter 7 discusses the importance of embedding a change initiative in the culture of a school—the assumptions, beliefs, values, and habits that constitute the norms for the school and that shape how its people think, feel, and act. It stresses the idea that inattention to culture has been a major flaw in past efforts to reform schools, and it suggests several strategies for shaping culture through the articulation of shared values, creation of structures that facilitate reflective dialogue, communication of symbolic stories, and attention to celebration. The chapter concludes with an examination of the interrelationship between the culture of a school and the policies, procedures, rules, and relationships that constitute its structure.

Chapter 8 discusses how the professional learning community addresses the critical issue of curriculum and argues for giving teachers a greater voice in curricular decisions. The chapter describes a process in which teachers work collaboratively to design a research-based curriculum that reflects the best thinking in each subject area and clarifies the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that each student is to acquire. It calls for a reduction of content so that all parties can focus on essential learning and for assessment procedures that give teachers relevant information that can guide their instructional decisions. The attention to this cycle of clarifying what students need to know and be able to do, monitoring student achievement, analyzing results, and making adjustments to instruction based on the actual versus the desired results is the prime example of the commitment to continuous improvement essential to a professional learning community.

Chapter 9 examines the complex role of the principal in the professional learning community. Principals have been torn by research that seems to offer contradictory advice. Some research findings urge principals to function as strong, forceful, aggressive, and assertive leaders. Other findings suggest that schools rely too heavily on principals and that it is time to transfer power from principals to teachers. Principals of professional learning communities are able to maintain the appropriate balance in addressing not only this dilemma but also all the other competing demands that seem to pull them in opposite directions. Chapter 9 describes the part the principal must play in creating a professional learning community and offers specific guidelines for him or her to follow. It concludes with observations of a nationally recognized principal on the challenge of her role in a professional learning community.

Chapter 10 examines the role of teachers in a professional learning community. It begins with the premise that is impossible to create good schools without good teachers, just as it is impossible to create professional learning communities without teachers who function as professionals. The work of the National Council of the Accreditation of Teacher Education, the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium, and the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards provide frameworks for the professionalization of teaching. The chapter reviews that body of work and also provides a synthesis of the research on teaching. It describes the unique perspectives and priorities that distinguish teachers in a professional learning community from their more traditional colleagues. It concludes with reflections on teaching in a professional learning community from a former National Teacher of the Year.

Chapter 11 considers the important role that parents play in the education of their children and presents strategies for creating meaningful partnerships between parents and schools. In effective business partnerships, each party is expected to bring specific skills and expertise to the enterprise, to offer a different perspective on issues, to provide support in difficult times, and to contribute toward the achievement of mutual goals. Effective parent-school partnerships are based on similar expectations. This chapter examines the national standards that have been identified for partnerships between parents and schools and suggests ways schools can meet those standards.

Chapter 12 examines staff development practices in a professional learning community. Although many school districts provide a variety of incentives to encourage staff members to improve their individual knowledge and skills, individual learning does not automatically translate into enhanced organizational effectiveness. The professional learning community emphasizes developing the collective capacity of the faculty to achieve school goals. Chapter 12 examines the national standards that have been identified for effective staff development. It argues that opportunities to learn should be integrated in the daily activities of educators, and it offers suggestions for staff development that is anchored in the workplace rather than in workshops.

Chapter 13 stresses the need for patience and persistence when attempting the systemic changes needed to transform traditional schools into professional learning communities. This transformation represents not a task to be accomplished or a project to be supervised, but rather an ongoing commitment to continuous improvement.

Appendix A offers examples of vision statements developed by Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois, and the Tintic School District in Eureka, Utah. Appendix B provides a brief summary of several different models that schools might use in their investigation of improvement and curriculum initiatives.

Any individual or organization that is committed to improving public schools should seriously consider how professional learning communities could transform education. Colleges and universities can reference Professional Learning Communities at Work in their preparation programs for teachers and principals. Boards of education and administrative teams can use it as they develop strategic plans for districts and schools. Faculties can use it as the basis of their school improvement efforts. We hope that this book will be used as a tool to stimulate the shared mission, vision, and values; the collective inquiry; the collaborative teams; the action orientation; the commitment to continuous improvement; and the focus on results that we believe are critical to the survival and success of public schools.