Assessing a School Staff as a Community of Professional Learners
Evolution of an Instrument
It would be nice to report that logic and rational thinking prevailed at this juncture. As a matter of fact, it was the angel of inspiration, which descended upon the SEDL researcher. Finding herself on a return trip from Africa with an eight-hour layover in the Cape Town airport, she passed the time by searching a late draft of the literature review for final editorial changes.
Without really thinking about problem solving or a product, she began "messing around" structuring a rubric that would assess the presence or absence of the components of a professional learning community as identified in the review of the literature. The resulting instrument was patterned as an Innovation Configuration matrix or "map" (IC) (Hall & Hord, 1987; Hord, Rutherford, Huling-Austin, & Hall, 1987). In essence, it was designed to assess the existing degree of implementation of the components of a professional learning community in operation in a school staff. The IC orientation provided a measurement of what was actually happening.
With no presumption of noteworthy accomplishment, the newly created instrument made it through customs and to SEDL headquarters in Austin, Texas. As serendipity or synchronicity would have it, however, there was an immediate and additional need for such an instrument. The professional learning community, or community of inquiry and improvement, was a concept that was of interest to others, notably a sister lab, the Appalachia Educational Laboratory (AEL), based in Charleston, West Virginia.
One of AEL's projects proposed to "establish a network and develop a process, both of which will harness the power of collective thinking and collegial learning for continuous improvement in schools" (Meehan, Orletsky, & Sattes, 1997, p. 5). It was believed that some aspects of the AEL project, such as "shared leadership," might be measured by the instrument. A long-standing collegial relationship between SEDL and AEL staff supported the exchange of professional learning community information, including the newly crafted instrument.
Next Page: The Instrument's Uses