Co-Developers: Partners in a Study of Professional Learning Communities
Conceptualizing the Co-Developer Role
In the fall of 1997, SEDL invited selected colleagues from the Leadership for Change cadre within the region, and a few outside of the region known to have special interest in school improvement, to join the Creating Communities of Continuous Inquiry and Improvement (CCCII) project, known more informally as the PLC Project. Thirty individuals--practitioners and consultants from higher education faculties, state departments of education, intermediate education agencies, local education agencies, campuses, and another regional education laboratory--expressed an interest in participating in the project. Although knowledgeable in their own areas of expertise and experience, none of the participants was expected to enter the study with all the skills they would require as Co-Developers. Instead, they would partner with SEDL in a journey of discovery, on which they would be expected to act in four capacities:
- As colleagues in a professional learning community of Co-Developers. SEDL recognized the importance of giving Co-Developer individuals firsthand, experiential learning about what it is like to be part of a PLC, so they might have a meaningful understanding of what PLC is and how it operates.
- As external facilitators and field-based developers in their schools. Serving as an external change agent or facilitator is a very demanding role, requiring a wide array of capacities. This was the primary role to be played by Co-Developers if they were to help their schools operate as PLCs. Their preparation for this role was an imperative.
- As contributors to applied research. Being able to maintain records of their actions in the schools, their plans, and subsequent reflections on the effects of executing their plans would provide the project with information about what worked and what didn't in creating PLCs, and under what circumstances. Preparing Co-Developers to produce and maintain records of their work was highly important in documenting their experiences at their school sites.
- As disseminators of information about the project to other audiences. In order to "scale up"3 the creation of PLCs and the sharing of procedural knowledge for doing so, Co-Developers would make presentations to conferences and publish in education journals so that this information would be widely available.
The following section describes the processes SEDL designed and implemented in order to prepare and support this diverse group of education professionals in each of these roles for the work they undertook in schools.
Next Page: Colleagues in the Professional Learning Community of Co-Developers
