What Is a Professional Learning Community?

Richard DuFour
The idea of improving schools by developing professional learningcommunities is currently in vogue. People use this term to
describe every imaginable combination of individuals with an interest in educationa grade-level teaching team, a school
committee, a high school department, an entire school district, a state department of education, a national professional organization,
and so on. In fact, the term has been used so ubiquitously that it is in danger of losing all meaning.
The professional learning community model has now reached a critical juncture, one well known to those who have witnessed the
fate of other well-intentioned school reform efforts. In this all-too-familiar cycle, initial enthusiasm gives way to confusion about the
fundamental concepts driving the initiative, followed by inevitable implementation problems, the conclusion that the reform has failed
to bring about the desired results, abandonment of the reform, and the launch of a new search for the next promising initiative.
Another reform movement has come and gone, reinforcing the conventional education wisdom that promises, This too shall pass.
The movement to develop professional learning communities can avoid this cycle, but only if educators reflect critically on the
concept's merits. What are the big ideas that represent the core principles of professional learning communities? How do these
principles guide schools' efforts to sustain the professional learning community model until it becomes deeply embedded in the
culture of the school?

Big Idea #1: Ensuring That Students Learn

The professional learning community model flows from the assumption that the core mission of formal education is not simply to
ensure that students are taught but to ensure that they learn. This simple shiftfrom a focus on teaching to a focus on learning
has profound implications for schools.
School mission statements that promise learning for all have become a clich. But when a school staff takes that statement
literallywhen teachers view it as a pledge to ensure the success of each student rather than as politically correct hyperbole
profound changes begin to take place. The school staff finds itself asking, What school characteristics and practices have been
most successful in helping all students achieve at high levels? How could we adopt those characteristics and practices in our own
school? What commitments would we have to make to one another to create such a school? What indicators could we monitor to
assess our progress? When the staff has built shared knowledge and found common ground on these questions, the school has a
solid foundation for moving forward with its improvement initiative.
As the school moves forward, every professional in the building must engage with colleagues in the ongoing exploration of three
crucial questions that drive the work of those within a professional learning community:

What do we want each student to learn?

How will we know when each student has learned it?
How will we respond when a student experiences difficulty in learning?
The answer to the third question separates learning communities from traditional schools.
Here is a scenario that plays out daily in traditional schools. A teacher teaches a unit to the best of his or her ability, but at the
conclusion of the unit some students have not mastered the essential outcomes. On the one hand, the teacher would like to take the
time to help those students. On the other hand, the teacher feels compelled to move forward to cover the course content. If the
teacher uses instructional time to assist students who have not learned, the progress of students who have mastered the content
will suffer; if the teacher pushes on with new concepts, the struggling students will fall farther behind.
What typically happens in this situation? Almost invariably, the school leaves the solution to the discretion of individual teachers,
who vary widely in the ways they respond. Some teachers conclude that the struggling students should transfer to a less rigorous
course or should be considered for special education. Some lower their expectations by adopting less challenging standards for
subgroups of students within their classrooms. Some look for ways to assist the students before and after school. Some allow
struggling students to fail.
When a school begins to function as a professional learning community, however, teachers become aware of the incongruity
between their commitment to ensure learning for all students and their lack of a coordinated strategy to respond when some
students do not learn. The staff addresses this discrepancy by designing strategies to ensure that struggling students receive
additional time and support, no matter who their teacher is. In addition to being systematic and schoolwide, the professional learning
community's response to students who experience difficulty is

Timely. The school quickly identifies students who need additional time and support.
Based on intervention rather than remediation. The plan provides students with help as soon as they experience difficulty rather
than relying on summer school, retention, and remedial courses.

Directive. Instead of inviting students to seek additional help, the systematic plan requires students to devote extra time and
receive additional assistance until they have mastered the necessary concepts.
The systematic, timely, and directive intervention program operating at Adlai Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois,
provides an excellent example. Every three weeks, every student receives a progress report. Within the first month of school, new
students discover that if they are not doing well in a class, they will receive a wide array of immediate interventions. First, the
teacher, counselor, and faculty advisor each talk with the student individually to help resolve the problem. The school also notifies
the student's parents about the concern. In addition, the school offers the struggling student a pass from study hall to a school
tutoring center to get additional help in the course. An older student mentor, in conjunction with the struggling student's advisor,
helps the student with homework during the student's daily advisory period.
Any student who continues to fall short of expectations at the end of six weeks despite these interventions is required, rather than
invited, to attend tutoring sessions during the study hall period. Counselors begin to make weekly checks on the struggling student's
progress. If tutoring fails to bring about improvement within the next six weeks, the student is assigned to a daily guided study hall
with 10 or fewer students. The guided study hall supervisor communicates with classroom teachers to learn exactly what homework
each student needs to complete and monitors the completion of that homework. Parents attend a meeting at the school at which the
student, parents, counselor, and classroom teacher must sign a contract clarifying what each party will do to help the student meet
the standards for the course.
Stevenson High School serves more than 4,000 students. Yet this school has found a way to monitor each student's learning on a
timely basis and to ensure that every student who experiences academic difficulty will receive extra time and support for learning.
Like Stevenson, schools that are truly committed to the concept of learning for each student will stopsubjecting struggling students
to a haphazard education lottery. These schools will guarantee that each student receives whatever additional support he or she
needs.

Big Idea #2: A Culture of Collaboration

Educators who are building a professional learning community recognize that they must work together to achieve their collective
purpose of learning for all. Therefore, they create structures to promote a collaborative culture.
Despite compelling evidence indicating that working collaboratively represents best practice, teachers in many schools continue to
work in isolation. Even in schools that endorse the idea of collaboration, the staff's willingness to collaborate often stops at the
classroom door. Some school staffs equate the term collaboration with congeniality and focus on building group camaraderie.
Other staffs join forces to develop consensus on operational procedures, such as how they will respond to tardiness or supervise
recess. Still others organize themselves into committees to oversee different facets of the school's operation, such as discipline,
technology, and social climate. Although each of these activities can serve a useful purpose, none represents the kind of
professional dialogue that can transform a school into a professional learning community.
The powerful collaboration that characterizes professional learning communities is a systematic process in which teachers work
together to analyze and improve their classroom practice. Teachers work in teams, engaging in an ongoing cycle of questions that
promote deep team learning. This process, in turn, leads to higher levels of student achievement.

Collaborating for School Improvement

At Boones Mill Elementary School, a K-5 school serving 400 students in rural Franklin County, Virginia, the powerful collaboration of
grade-level teams drives the school improvement process. The following scenario describes what Boones Mill staff members refer
to as their teaching-learning process.
The school's five 3rd grade teachers study state and national standards, the district curriculum guide, and student achievement data
to identify the essential knowledge and skills that all students should learn in an upcoming language arts unit. They also ask the 4th
grade teachers what they hope students will have mastered by the time they leave 3rd grade. On the basis of the shared knowledge
generated by this joint study, the 3rd grade team agrees on the critical outcomes that they will make sure each student achieves
during the unit.
Next, the team turns its attention to developing common formative assessments to monitor each student's mastery of the essential
outcomes. Team members discuss the most authentic and valid ways to assess student mastery. They set the standard for each
skill or concept that each student must achieve to be deemed proficient. They agree on the criteria by which they will judge the
quality of student work, and they practice applying those criteria until they can do so consistently. Finally, they decide when they will
administer the assessments.
After each teacher has examined the results of the common formative assessment for his or her students, the team analyzes how all
3rd graders performed. Team members identify strengths and weaknesses in student learning and begin to discuss how they can

build on the strengths and address the weaknesses. The entire team gains new insights into what is working and what is not, and
members discuss new strategies that they can implement in their classrooms to raise student achievement.
At Boones Mill, collaborative conversations happen routinely throughout the year. Teachers use frequent formative assessments to
investigate the questions Are students learning what they need to learn? and Who needs additional time and support to learn?
rather than relying solely on summative assessments that ask Which students learned what was intended and which students did
not?
Collaborative conversations call on team members to make public what has traditionally been privategoals, strategies, materials,
pacing, questions, concerns, and results. These discussions give every teacher someone to turn to and talk to, and they are
explicitly structured to improve the classroom practice of teachersindividually and collectively.
For teachers to participate in such a powerful process, the school must ensure that everyone belongs to a team that focuses on
student learning. Each team must have time to meet during the workday and throughout the school year. Teams must focus their
efforts on crucial questions related to learning and generate products that reflect that focus, such as lists of essential outcomes,
different kinds of assessment, analyses of student achievement, and strategies for improving results. Teams must develop norms or
protocols to clarify expectations regarding roles, responsibilities, and relationships among team members. Teams must adopt
student achievement goals linked with school and district goals.

Removing Barriers to Success

For meaningful collaboration to occur, a number of things must also stop happening. Schools must stop pretending that merely
presenting teachers with state standards or district curriculum guides will guarantee that all students have access to a common
curriculum. Even school districts that devote tremendous time and energy to designing the intended curriculum often pay little
attention to the implemented curriculum (what teachers actually teach) and even less to the attained curriculum (what students
learn) (Marzano, 2003). Schools must also give teachers time to analyze and discuss state and district curriculum documents. More
important, teacher conversations must quickly move beyond What are we expected to teach? to How will we know when each
student has learned?
In addition, faculties must stop making excuses for failing to collaborate. Few educators publicly assert that working in isolation is
the best strategy for improving schools. Instead, they give reasons why it is impossible for them to work together: We just can't find
the time. Not everyone on the staff has endorsed the idea. We need more training in collaboration. But the number of schools
that have created truly collaborative cultures proves that such barriers are not insurmountable. As Roland Barth (1991) wrote,
Are teachers and administrators willing to accept the fact that they are part of the problem? . . . God didn't create self-contained
classrooms, 50-minute periods, and subjects taught in isolation. We didbecause we find working alone safer than and preferable
to working together. (pp. 126127)
In the final analysis, building the collaborative culture of a professional learning community is a question of will. A group of staff
members who are determined to work together will find a way.

Big Idea #3: A Focus on Results

Professional learning communities judge their effectiveness on the basis of results. Working together to improve student
achievement becomes the routine work of everyone in the school. Every teacher team participates in an ongoing process of
identifying the current level of student achievement, establishing a goal to improve the current level, working together to achieve that
goal, and providing periodic evidence of progress. The focus of team goals shifts. Such goals as We will adopt the Junior
Great Books program or We will create three new labs for our science course give way to We will increase the percentage of
students who meet the state standard in language arts from 83 percent to 90 percent or We will reduce the failure rate in our
course by 50 percent.
Schools and teachers typically suffer from the DRIP syndromeData Rich/Information Poor. The results-oriented professional
learning community not only welcomes data but also turns data into useful and relevant information for staff. Teachers have never
suffered from a lack of data. Even a teacher who works in isolation can easily establish the mean, mode, median, standard
deviation, and percentage of students who demonstrated proficiency every time he or she administers a test. However, data will
become a catalyst for improved teacher practice only if the teacher has a basis of comparison.
When teacher teams develop common formative assessments throughout the school year, each teacher can identify how his or her
students performed on each skill compared with other students. Individual teachers can call on their team colleagues to help them
reflect on areas of concern. Each teacher has access to the ideas, materials, strategies, and talents of the entire team.
Freeport Intermediate School, located 50 miles south of Houston, Texas, attributes its success to an unrelenting focus on results.
Teachers work in collaborative teams for 90 minutes daily to clarify the essential outcomes of their grade levels and courses and to

align those outcomes with state standards. They develop consistent instructional calendars and administer the same brief
assessment to all students at the same grade level at the conclusion of each instructional unit, roughly once a week.
Each quarter, the teams administer a common cumulative exam. Each spring, the teams develop and administer practice tests for
the state exam. Each year, the teams pore over the results of the state test, which are broken down to show every teacher how his
or her students performed on every skill and on every test item. The teachers share their results from all of these assessments with
their colleagues, and they quickly learn when a teammate has been particularly effective in teaching a certain skill. Team members
consciously look for successful practice and attempt to replicate it in their own practice; they also identify areas of the curriculum
that need more attention.
Freeport Intermediate has been transformed from one of the lowest-performing schools in the state to a national model for academic
achievement. Principal Clara Sale-Davis believes that the crucial first step in that transformation came when the staff began to
honestly confront data on student achievement and to work together to improve results rather than make excuses for them.
Of course, this focus on continual improvement and results requires educators to change traditional practices and revise prevalent
assumptions. Educators must begin to embrace data as a useful indicator of progress. They must stop disregarding or excusing
unfavorable data and honestly confront the sometimes-brutal facts. They must stop using averages to analyze student performance
and begin to focus on the success of each student.
Educators who focus on results must also stop limiting improvement goals to factors outside the classroom, such as student
discipline and staff morale, and shift their attention to goals that focus on student learning. They must stop assessing their own
effectiveness on the basis of how busy they are or how many new initiatives they have launched and begin instead to ask, Have we
made progress on the goals that are most important to us? Educators must stop working in isolation and hoarding their ideas,
materials, and strategies and begin to work together to meet the needs of all students.

Hard Work and Commitment

Even the grandest design eventually translates into hard work. The professional learning community model is a grand designa
powerful new way of working together that profoundly affects the practices of schooling. But initiating and sustaining the concept
requires hard work. It requires the school staff to focus on learning rather than teaching, work collaboratively on matters related to
learning, and hold itself accountable for the kind of results that fuel continual improvement.
When educators do the hard work necessary to implement these principles, their collective ability to help all students learn will rise.
If they fail to demonstrate the discipline to initiate and sustain this work, then their school is unlikely to become more effective, even
if those within it claim to be a professional learning community. The rise or fall of the professional learning community concept
depends not on the merits of the concept itself, but on the most important element in the improvement of any schoolthe
commitment and persistence of the educators within it.

References
Barth, R. (1991). Restructuring schools: Some questions for teachers and principals. Phi Delta Kappan, 73(2), 123128.
Marzano, R. (2003). What works in schools: Translating research into action. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Richard DuFour recently retired as Superintendent of Adlai Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois. He currently resides in Moneta,
Virginia, and may be reached at (540) 721-4662; rdufour@district125.k12.il.us. His forthcoming book is Whatever It Takes: How a
Professional Learning Community Responds When Kids Don't Learn(National Educational Service, in press).

How to Create a Professional Learning Community

It takes careful planning to form a useful and functional PLC, but once the foundation is built, the benefits will
soon be evident.
By Ellen Ullman
D E C E MB E R 23, 2 009

RELATED TAGS: Teacher Development,Professional Development,Personal Learning Network,Teacher

Leadership,New Teachers,All Grades

Share

21

This how-to article accompanies the feature "Teachers and Community Members Practice TLC with PLCs."
Here are a few tips to consider when planning a professional learning community:

Teach Participants How to Collaborate

The success of PLCs hinges on collaboration, but don't assume it'll come naturally. Help the teams develop their own
protocols and norms. Anne Smith, assistant superintendent of Long Island'sMattituck-Cutchogue School District,
began by facilitating everything herself. She wanted her teachersto know that they were not being judged. "You need
to teach them how to ask questions that don't put people on the defensive," Smith says. She circulated articles and
books and encouraged them to form study groups.

Credit: Edutopia
As a PLC facilitator, Nancy Krakowka, a sixth-grade language artsteacher at the district's Cutchogue East Elementary
School, knows that collaboration doesn't happen overnight. "I spent a lot of time figuring out how to make it work,"
she says. "Instead of saying, 'This is how we'll run our PLC,' I asked everyone for input."
Krakowka's group worked to find a common goal -- creating student portfolios. Once they let down their guard and
started sharing their own methods, they began to learn together. Five of them worked with a sixth teacher to move
past her fear of using portfolios. Having their support made her willing to take the risk.

Create an Atmosphere of Trust

To the educator accustomed to closing the door, sharing information about techniques can be discomforting. To
overcome those barriers, encourage teachers to form a book club or a discussiongroup about a teaching topic,
suggests Joseph Aguerrebere, president and CEO of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Once
they share opinions in a trusting setting, they'll be open to discussing more.
It's up to the school leader to establish trust. "The formal and informal leaders have to be clear that the goal is
collaboration and not competition," says the Mattituck-Cutchogue School District's Anne Smith. "You can't clobber
people about test scores and then say, 'Let's collaborate.' What are you doing to support the teacher?"
Aguerrebere suggests asking teachers to pair up and observe each other's classes. "There should be no judgment in
these visits," he says. "The goal is building comfort."

Allow Enough Time

It's important to carve out enough time for learning teams to meet and work through their issues regularly. Nancy
Krakowka's grade-level PLCs began by meeting once a month for regular meetings. They also had three daylong
gatherings each year, as well as common prep periods.

Credit: Edutopia
After a few months, teachers began leaving their doors open and meeting informally throughout the day. Anne Smith
finds additional meeting time by hiring substitutes to come in to cover entire grades. And next year, she's
guaranteeing designated time: Her contract will include an additional three hours a week dedicated to PLCs.
Smith's staff comes up with ways to help PLCs meet despite time constraints. The librarian and the music teacher at
Krakowka's school have started a storytelling unit that can take up to three classes at a time, allowing those teachers
to meet.

Be Broad and Inclusive

Although many PLCs consist only of teachers, a broader population can be brought in, such as administrators,
parents, and community members who support their school. The objective is to align everyone's interests and
expertise with the school's vision and goals.
In some cases, "teacher communities are not as robust as cross-role communities," says Giselle Martin-Kniep,
founder of Communities for Learning: Leading Lasting Change. For example, if a group is considering replacing
suspension with community service, the community can provide ideas. In cases involving big groups, it makes sense
to form smaller satellites that gather feedback to deliver to the larger group.

Get Outside Help

Hiring a consultant with a broader perspective may help with complex situations that can be difficult to untangle from
within. With Smith's group of teachers, the early days of the learning community were more like interest-based study
groups that didn't result in much change.
As the focus intensified and the groups began having tougher conversations about standards and curriculum
mapping, she hired a consultant. The consultant trained one teacher per grade level to facilitate the PLCs, and now
the funding for the consultant goes to a teacher who works half time with facilitators.

Remember the L in PLC

As the groups work on improving their professional practice, teacher development happens naturally. "Before PLCs,
no one offered any kind of support," says Nancy Krakowka. "Now, my colleagues and I are always going to each
other for advice."

Credit: Edutopia
When they discuss a topic as potentially controversial as assessments, the team learns from each other. "We're not
always on the same page and can have healthy disagreements," she says. "Rather than be defensive, we sit down
and discuss."
Krakowka loves hearing about her colleagues' different approaches. Through her work with the PLC, she realized that
although she did a great job teaching ancient civilization, she wasn't relating the subject to modern times. "By
comparing content, someone pointed out my gap," she says. "We exchanged ideas on how I could make those
connections."

Professional Learning Communities: What Are They And

Why Are They Important?
Introduction
In education circles, the term learning community has become commonplace. It is being used to mean any number of things, such
as extending classroom practice into the community; bringing community personnel into the school to enhance the curriculum and
learning tasks for students; or engaging students, teachers, and administrators simultaneously in learning - to suggest just a few.
This paper focuses on what Astuto and colleagues (1993) label the professional community of learners, in which the teachers in a
school and its administrators continuously seek and share learning and then act on what they learn. The goal of their actions is to
enhance their effectiveness as professionals so that students benefit. This arrangement has also been termed communities
of continuous inquiry and improvement.
As an organizational arrangement, the professional learning community is seen as a powerful staff development approach and a
potent strategy for school change and improvement. Thus, persons at all levels of the educational system concerned about school
improvement - state department personnel, intermediate service agency staff, district and campus administrators, teacher leaders,
key parents and local school community members - should find this paper of interest.
This paper represents an abbreviation of Hord's review of the literature (1997), which explored the concept and operationalization of
professional learning communities and their outcomes for staff and students.

The Beginnings of Professional Learning Community

During the eighties, Rosenholtz (1989) brought teachers' workplace factors into the discussion of teaching quality, maintaining that
teachers who felt supported in their own ongoing learning and classroom practice were more committed and effective than those
who did not receive such confirmation. Support by means of teacher networks, cooperation among colleagues, and expanded

professional roles increased teacher efficacy in meeting students' needs. Further, Rosenholtz found that teachers with a high sense
of their own efficacy were more likely to adopt new classroom behaviors and also more likely to stay in the profession.
McLaughlin and Talbert (1993) confirmed Rosenholtz's findings, suggesting that when teachers had opportunities for collaborative
inquiry and the learning related to it, they were able to develop and share a body of wisdom gleaned from their experience. Adding
to the discussion, Darling-Hammond (1996) cited shared decision making as a factor in curriculum reform and the transformation of
teaching roles in some schools. In such schools, structured time is provided for teachers to work together in planning instruction,
observing each other's classrooms, and sharing feedback. These and other attributes characterize professional learning
communities.

Attributes of Professional Learning Communities

The literature on professional learning communities repeatedly gives attention to five attributes of such organizational arrangements:
1.

supportive and shared leadership,

2.

collective creativity,

3.

shared values and vision,

4.

supportive conditions, and

5.

shared personal practice.

Each of these is discussed briefly in this paper.

Supportive and Shared Leadership

The school change and educational leadership literatures clearly recognize the role and influence of the campus administrator
(principal, and sometimes assistant principal) on whether change will occur in the school. It seems clear that transforming a school
organization into a learning community can be done only with the sanction of the leaders and the active nurturing of the entire staff's
development as a community. Thus, a look at the principal of a school whose staff is a professional learning community seems a
good starting point for describing what these learning communities look like and how the principal "accepts a collegial relationship
with teachers" (D. Rainey, personal communication, March 13, 1997) to share leadership, power, and decision making.
Lucianne Carmichael, the first resident principal of the Harvard University Principal Center and a principal who nurtured a
professional community of learners in her own school, discusses the position of authority and power typically held by principals, in
which the staff views them as all-wise and all-competent (1982). Principals have internalized this "omnicompetence," Carmichael
asserts. Others in the school reinforce it, making it difficult for principals to admit that they themselves can benefit from professional
development opportunities, or to recognize the dynamic potential of staff contributions to decision making. Furthermore, when the
principal's position is so thoroughly dominant, it is difficult for staff to propose divergent views or ideas about the school's
effectiveness.
Carmichael proposes that the notion of principals' omnicompetence be "ditched" in favor of their participation in their
ownprofessional development. Kleine-Kracht (1993) concurs and suggests that administrators, along with teachers, must be
learners too, "questioning, investigating, and seeking solutions" (p. 393) for school improvement. The traditional pattern that
"teachers teach, students learn, and administrators manage is completely altered . . . [There is] no longer a hierarchy of who
knows more than someone else, but rather the need for everyone to contribute" (p. 393).
This new relationship forged between administrators and teachers leads to shared and collegial leadership in the school, where all
grow professionally and learn to view themselves (to use an athletic metaphor) as "all playing on the same team and working toward
the same goal: a better school" (Hoerr, 1996, p. 381).
Louis and Kruse (1995) identify the supportive leadership of principals as one of the necessary human resources for restructuring
staff into school-based professional communities. The authors refer to these principals as "post-heroic leaders who do not view
themselves as the architects of school effectiveness" (p. 234). Prestine (1993) also defines characteristics of principals in schools

that undertake school restructuring: a willingness to share authority, the capacity to facilitate the work of staff, and the ability to
participate without dominating.
Sergiovanni explains that "the sources of authority for leadership are embedded in shared ideas" (1994b, p. 214), not in the power
of position. Snyder, Acker-Hocevar, and Snyder (1996) assert that it is also important that the principal believe that teachers have
the capacity to respond to the needs of students, that this belief "provides moral strength for principals to meet difficult political and
educational challenges along the way" (p. 19). Senge (quoted by O'Neil, 1995) adds that the principal's job is to create an
environment in which the staff can learn continuously; "[t]hen in turn, . . . the job of the superintendent is to find principals and
support [such] principals" (p. 21) who create this environment.
An additional dimension, then, is a chief executive of the school district who supports and encourages continuous learning of its
professionals. This observation suggests that no longer can leaders be thought of as top-down agents of change or seen as the
visionaries of the corporation; instead leaders must be regarded as democratic teachers.

Collective Creativity
In 1990, Peter Senge's book The Fifth Discipline arrived in bookstores and began popping up in the boardrooms ofcorporate
America. Over the next year or so, the book and its description of learning organizations, which might serve to increase
organizational capacity and creativity, moved into the educational environment. The idea of a learning organization
"where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking
are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together" (p. 3) caught
the attention of educators who were struggling to plan and implement reform in the nation's schools. As Senge's paradigm shift was
explored by educators and shared in educational journals, the label became learning communities.
In schools, the learning community is demonstrated by people from multiple constituencies, at all levels, collaboratively and
continually working together (Louis & Kruse, 1995). Such collaborative work is grounded in what Newmann (reported by Brandt,
1995) and Louis and Kruse label reflective dialogue, in which staff conduct conversations about students and teaching and learning,
identifying related issues and problems. Griffin (cited by Sergiovanni, 1994a, p. 154) refers to these activities as inquiry, and
believes that as principals and teachers inquire together they create community. Inquiry helps them to overcome chasms
caused by various specializations of grade level and subject matter. Inquiry forces debate among teachers about what is
important. Inquiry promotes understanding and appreciation for the work of others. . . . And inquiry helps principals and
teachers create the ties that bond them together as a special group and that bind them to a shared set of ideas. Inquiry, in
other words, helps principals and teachers become a community of learners.

Participants in such conversations learn to apply new ideas and information to problem solving and therefore are able to create new
conditions for students. Key tools in this process are shared values and vision; supportive physical, temporal, and social conditions;
and a shared personal practice. We will look at each of these in turn.

Shared Values and Vision

"Vision is a trite term these days, and at various times it refers to mission, purpose, goals, objectives, or a sheet of paper posted
near the principal's office" (Isaacson & Bamburg, 1992, p. 42). Sharing vision is not just agreeing with a good idea; it is a particular
mental image of what is important to an individual and to an organization. Staff are encouraged not only to be involved in the
process of developing a shared vision but to use that vision as a guidepost in making decisions about teaching and learning in the
school (ibid.).
A core characteristic of the vision is an undeviating focus on student learning, maintains Louis and Kruse (1995), in which each
student's potential achievement is carefully considered. These shared values and vision lead to binding norms of behavior that
the staff supports.
In such a community, the individual staff member is responsible for his/her actions, but the common good is placed on a par
with personal ambition. The relationships between individuals are described as caring. Such caring is supported by open
communication, made possible by trust (Fawcett, 1996).

Supportive Conditions
Several kinds of factors determine when, where, and how the staff can regularly come together as a unit to do the learning, decision
making, problem solving, and creative work that characterize a professional learning community. In order for learning communities
to function productively, the physical or structural conditions and the human qualities and capacities of the people involved must be
optimal (Boyd, 1992; Louis & Kruse, 1995).
Physical conditions. Louis and Kruse identify the following physical factors that support learning communities: time to meet and
talk, small school size and physical proximity of the staff to one another, interdependent teaching roles, well-developed
communication structures, school autonomy, and teacher empowerment. An additional factor is the staff's input in selecting teachers
and administrators for the school, and even encouraging staff who are not in tune with the program to find work elsewhere.
Boyd presents a similar list of physical factors that result in an environment conducive to school change and improvement: the
availability of resources; schedules and structures that reduce isolation; policies that encourage greater autonomy, foster
collaboration, enhance effective communication, and provide for staff development. Time is clearly a resource: "Time,
or more properly lack of it, is one of the most difficult problems faced by schools and districts." (Watts & Castle, 1993, p. 306). Time
is a significant issue for faculties who wish to work together collegially, and it has been cited as both a barrier (when it is not
available) and a supportive factor (when it is available) by staffs engaging in school improvement.
People capacities. One of the first characteristics cited by Louis and Kruse (1995) of individuals in a productive learning
community is a willingness to accept feedback and to work toward improvement. In addition, the following qualities are needed:
respect and trust among colleagues at the school and district level, possession of an appropriate cognitive and skill base that
enables effective teaching and learning, supportive leadership from administrators and others in key roles, and relatively intensive
socialization processes.
Note the strong parallel with the people or human factors identified by Boyd (1992): positive teacher attitudes toward schooling,
students, and change; students' heightened interest and engagement with learning (which could be construed as both an outcome
and an input, it seems); norms of continuous critical inquiry and continuous improvement; a widely shared vision or sense of
purpose; a norm of involvement in decision making; collegial relationships among teachers; positive, caring student-teacheradministrator relationships; a sense of community in the school; and two factors beyond the school staff - supportive community
attitudes and parents and community members as partners and allies.
Boyd (1992) points out that the physical and people factors are highly interactive, many of them influencing the others. Boyd and
Hord (1994) clustered the factors into four overarching functions that help build a context conducive to change and improvement:
reducing staff isolation, increasing staff capacity, providing a caring and productive environment, and improving the quality of the
school's programs for students.

Introduction
Supportive and Shared Leadership
Collective Creativity
Shared Values and Vision
Supportive Conditions
Shared Personal Practice
Outcomes of Professional Learning Communities for Staff and Students
In Conclusion
References and Credits

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Shared Personal Practice

Review of a teacher's behavior by colleagues is the norm in the professional learning community (Louis & Kruse, 1995). This
practice is not evaluative but is part of the "peers helping peers" process. Such review is conducted regularly by teachers, who visit
each other's classrooms to observe, script notes, and discuss their observations with the visited peer. The process is based on the
desire for individual and community improvement and is enabled by the mutual respect and trustworthiness of staff members.
Wignall (1992) describes a high school in which teachers share their practice and enjoy a high level of collaboration in their daily
work life. Mutual respect and understanding are the fundamental requirements for this kind of workplace culture. Teachers find help,
support, and trust as a result of developing warm relationships with each other. "Teachers tolerate (even encourage) debate,
discussion and disagreement. They are comfortable sharing both their successes and their failures. They praise and recognize one
another's triumphs, and offer empathy and support for each other's troubles" (p. 18). One of the conditions that supports such a
culture is the involvement of the teachers in interviewing, selecting, and hiring new teachers. They feel a commitment to their
selections and to ensuring the effectiveness of the entire staff.
One goal of reform is to provide appropriate learning environments for students. Teachers, too, need "an environment that values
and supports hard work, the acceptance of challenging tasks, risk taking, and the promotion of growth" (Midgley & Wood, 1993, p.
252). Sharing their personal practice contributes to creating such a setting.

Summary of Attributes
Reports in the literature are quite clear about what successful professional learning communities look like and act like. The
requirements necessary for such organizational arrangements include:

the collegial and facilitative participation of the principal, who shares

leadership - and thus, power and authority - through inviting staff input in
decision making
a shared vision that is developed from staff's unswerving commitment to
students' learning and that is consistently articulated and referenced for the
staff's work
collective learning among staff and application of that learning to solutions
that address students' needs
the visitation and review of each teacher's classroom behavior by peers as a
feedback and assistance activity to support individual and community
improvement and
physical conditions and human capacities that support such an operation

Outcomes of Professional Learning Communities for Staff

and Students
What difference does it make if staff are communally organized? What results, if any, might be gained from this kind of
arrangement? An abbreviated report of staff and student outcomes in schools where staff are engaged together in professional
learning communities follows. This report comes from the summary of results included in the literature review noted above (Hord,
1997, p. 27).
For staff, the following results have been observed:

reduction of isolation of teachers

increased commitment to the mission and goals of the school and increased vigor in working to strengthen the mission

shared responsibility for the total development of students and collective responsibility for students' success

powerful learning that defines good teaching and classroom practice and that creates new knowledge and beliefs about
teaching and learners
increased meaning and understanding of the content that teachers teach and the roles they play in helping all students
achieve expectations

higher likelihood that teachers will be well informed, professionally renewed, and inspired to inspire students

more satisfaction, higher morale, and lower rates of absenteeism

significant advances in adapting teaching to the students, accomplished more quickly than in traditional schools

commitment to making significant and lasting changes and

higher likelihood of undertaking fundamental systemic change (p. 27).

For students, the results include:

decreased dropout rate and fewer classes "skipped"

lower rates of absenteeism

increased learning that is distributed more equitably in the smaller high schools

greater academic gains in math, science, history, and reading than in traditional schools and

smaller achievement gaps between students from different backgrounds (p. 28).

For more information about these important professional learning community outcomes, please refer to the literature review (Hord,
1997).

In Conclusion
If strong results such as the above are linked to teachers and administrators working in professional learning communities, how
might the frequency of such communities in schools be increased? A paradigm shift is needed both by the public and by teachers
themselves, about what the role of teacher entails. Many in the public and in the profession believe that the only legitimate use of
teachers' time is standing in front of the class, working directly with students. In studies comparing how teachers around the globe
spend their time, it is clear that in countries such as Japan, teachers teach fewer classes and use a greater portion of their time to
plan, confer with colleagues, work with students individually, visit other classrooms, and engage in other professional
development activities (Darling-Hammond, 1994, 1996). Bringing about changes in perspective that will enable the public and the
profession to understand and value teachers' professional development will require focused and concerted effort. As Lucianne
Carmichael has said, "Teachers are the first learners." Through their participation in a professional learning community, teachers
become more effective, and student outcomes increase - a goal upon which we can all agree.

References and Credits

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Northeast and Islands.
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Boyd, V. & Hord, S.M. (1994). Principals and the new paradigm: Schools as learning communities. Paper presented at
theannual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans.
Brandt, R. (1995, November). On restructuring schools: A conversation with Fred Newmann. Educational Leadership,
53(3), 70-73.
Carmichael, L. (1982, October). Leaders as learners: A possible dream. Educational Leadership, 40(1), 58-59.
Darling-Hammond, L. (1994, November). The current status of teaching and teacher development in the United
States.New York: Teachers College, Columbia University.
Darling-Hammond, L. (1996, March). The quiet revolution: Rethinking teacher development. Educational Leadership,
53(6), 4-10.

Fawcett, G. (1996, Winter). Moving another big desk. Journal of Staff Development, 17(1), 34-36.

Hoerr, T.R. (1996, January). Collegiality: A new way to define instructional leadership. Phi Delta Kappan, 77(5), 380-381.

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Kleine-Kracht, P.A. (1993, July). The principal in a community of learning. Journal of School Leadership, 3(4), 391-399.
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Credits and Disclaimers

Issues . . . about Change is published and produced quarterly Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL). This
publication is based on work sponsored by the Office of Educational Research & Improvement, U.S. Department of Education under
grant number RJ96006801. The content herein does not necessarily reflect the views of the department or any other agency of the
U.S. government or any other source. Available in alternative formats.
SEDL is located at 4700 Mueller Blvd., Austin, Texas 78723; 512-476-6861. SEDL is an Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative
Action Employer and is committed to affording equal employment opportunities to all individuals in all employment matters.
This issue was written by Shirley M. Hord, SEDL.
Published in Issues ...about Change Volume 6, Number 1, Professional Learning Communities: What Are They And Why Are They
Important? (1997)