Creating a Professional Learning Community: Cottonwood Creek School
Background
As noted above, the study of Cottonwood Creek School is intended to provide more knowledge and understanding about how a school professional staff becomes a community of learners. A basic feature of professional learning communities is the consistent collaboration among the staff. A review of the current research base reveals at least five major dimensions of the professional learning community: supportive and shared leadership, collective learning and application of learning, shared values and vision, supportive conditions, and shared personal practice. These attributes are present to various degrees in schools and are implemented in unique ways by different staffs. But the literature agrees that they are the defining characteristics of a professional learning community.
What is not so clear in the literature is how these characteristics are developed among the professionals of a school staff. Studies currently being conducted by SISS staff in schools such as Cottonwood Creek School are shedding light on this question.
Data were collected for the research study of Cottonwood Creek School in order to discover how the professional learning community characteristics were expressed in this particular school and how the school staff evolved into a professional community of learners. The data were gathered through personal interviews conducted by SISS staff with 30 members of the Cottonwood Creek School staff, the current principal, and the previous principal (who served the school for five years). In addition, an interview was conducted with the previous instructional guide who served in this role to support teachers' effective practice. Three parents, a central office staff person, and a professor from a nearby university who has been involved with the school for the past decade were also interviewed. All but three of the interviews were tape-recorded and later transcribed. This story of Cottonwood Creek School is a report of the case study research conducted by SISS researchers.
Next page: Cottonwood Creek School Description