Assessing a School Staff as a Community of Professional Learners

Structure of the Instrument

The initial instrument was titled "Descriptors of Professional Learning Communities" and consisted of 17 descriptors grouped into five major areas or dimensions identified from the literature review (Hord, 1997). The five dimensions were:

the collegial and facilitative participation of the principal, who shares leadership (and power and authority) and decision making with the staff (with two descriptors);
a shared vision that is developed from the staff's unswerving commitment to students' learning and that is consistently articulated and referenced for the staff's work (with three descriptors);
learning that is done collectively to create solutions that address students' needs (with five descriptors);
the visitation and review of each teacher's classroom practices by peers as a feedback and assistance activity to support individual and community improvement (with two descriptors); and
physical conditions and human capacities that support such an operation (with five descriptors).

The 17 descriptors were organized to illuminate the dimensions and were distributed unevenly (as noted above) across the five dimensions. The descriptors were designed as a series of three statements structured along a continuum that would reflect most desirable or more mature practice of the descriptor to least desirable or less mature. For example, under the first dimension noted above, "collegial and facilitative participation of the principal, who shares leadership . . . through inviting shared decision making from the staff," one of the descriptors is presented as a series of three statements along a continuum:

Administrator(s) involves the entire staff.
Administrator(s) involves a small committee, council, or team of staff.
Administrator(s) does not involve any staff.

These statements were to differentiate the high, middle, and low parameters of the descriptor along a five-point scale. The format and layout of the instrument required the respondent to read all three indicators for each of the 17 descriptors and then mark the response scale. This format required more mental processing than usual for a selected-response, Likert-type instrument, but contributed much to the use of the instrument as a screening or filtering device (see Figure 1).

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