Assessing a School Staff as a Community of Professional Learners: Issues About Change, Volume 7, Number 1

SEDL invests staff and resources in studying and supporting schools in their efforts to improve their effectiveness so that students might become more successful learners. This work focuses on creating and nurturing the kind of workplace and culture in schools where students and learning are the undeviating focus and the staff worked collegially to achieve the desired results. This paper discusses how to use an instrument to assess how well a school staff functions as a team, as determined in five major areas:

1. the collegial and facilitative participation of the principal, who shares leadership (and power and authority) and decision making with the staff (with two descriptors);
2. 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);
3. learning that is done collectively to create solutions that address students' needs (with five descriptors);
4. 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
5. physical conditions and human capacities that support such an operation (with five descriptors).

This publication is one of a series of briefing papers called Issues About Change.

SEDL has published several publications about Professional Learning Communities:

• Leading Professional Learning Communities: Voices from Research and Practice
• Professional Learning Communities - Communities of Continuous Inquiry and Improvement
• Professional Learning Communities - An Ongoing Exploration
• Multiple Mirrors: Reflections on the Creation of Professional Learning Communities
• Schools as Learning Communities - Issues About Change, Volume 4, Number 1
• Professional Learning Communities: What Are They and Why Are They Important? - Issues About Change, Volume 6, Number 1
• Creating a Professional Learning Community: Cottonwood Creek School - Issues About Change, Volume 6, Number 2
• Assessing a School Staff as a Community of Professional Learners - Issues About Change, Volume 7, Number 1
• Principals and Teachers: Continuous Learners - Issues About Change, Volume 7, Number 2
• Launching Professional Learning Communities: Beginning Actions - Issues About Change, Volume 8, Number 1
• Co-Developers: Partners in a Study of Professional Learning Communities - Issues About Change, Volume 8, Number 2