Moving Toward the School as a Learning Community

By Rick DuFour
Journal of Staff Development, Winter 1997 (Vol.18., No. 1)

 

School practitioners have confronted significant challenges in the past two decades, but they have not suffered from a lack of advice. Reformers and critics of education have offered countless (and often conflicting) ideas, innovations, and remedies to enhance school effectiveness.

Educators have been urged down one path, and then another. Schools must demand more of students–more courses for graduation, more days in the school year, more homework, and greater mastery of more content. Schools must recognize that "less is more" and remove content from the curriculum.

Strong principals are the essential prerequisite of effective schools. The principalship should be abolished in favor of schools led by faculty committees. Schools exist to instill and develop essential core values in students. Schools must focus on teaching basic competencies and leave the task of teaching values to the family.

The school curriculum should transmit the traditional academic content that comprises the "cultural literacy" of an educated person. The school curriculum should concentrate on developing "process skills" and recognize that content is secondary. Teachers must be empowered if schools are to become more effective. Teacher unions with too much power represent the single biggest obstacle to meaningful school improvement.

Practitioners have been bombarded with conflicting images, ideas, and alternatives for improving schools. One of their greatest challenges is sifting through this cacophony of mixed signals to identify a strategy that offers the potential to transform a school and energize a faculty. Recently, however, researchers seem to be arriving at a remarkably similar conclusion about which path offers the best hope for significant school improvement. Consider the following findings.

The most successful organization of the future will be a learning organization where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire. (Peter Senge).

The leaders' new work for the future is building learning organizations where people continually expand their capacities. (Michael Fullan).

We have come to realize over the years that the development of a learning community of educators is itself a major cultural change that will spawn many others. (Beverly Showers and Bruce Joyce).

Creating conditions for professional learning communities offers the most powerful opportunity for reform . . . The path to change in the classroom lies within and through teachers' professional communities. (Milbrey McLaughlin).

Rarely has research given school practitioners such a consistent message and clear sense of direction. As Milbrey McLaughlin stated in her keynote address at the 1995 annual conference of the National Staff Development Council, "We are closer to 'the truth' than ever before."

But even if practitioners are persuaded that creating a learning community offers the best strategy for school improvement, difficult questions remain. What are the characteristics of a learning community? How can those characteristics be fostered in a school? What changes are required in the traditional structure and culture of schools? What are the implications for teachers and principals? How can we launch and sustain the initiative to create a learning organization?

As practitioners grapple with these questions, the need for effective professional development will be paramount. School leaders must be attentive to the content of professional development–the actual skills and knowledge to be acquired through the professional development initiative. They must also consider the importance of the process of professional development–the specific strategies used to help personnel acquire the intended knowledge and skill.

But the most important element in a professional development program that promotes the creation of a learning community is the context of the school's culture–the attitudes, behaviors, expectations, and beliefs that constitute the group norm.

As a young, inexperienced principal, my approach to professional development for my school was relatively straight forward: identify a relevant topic and provide a speaker who could inform and inspire. It took me a few years to figure out that even if the topic was timely and the speaker was able to generate initial enthusiasm, teachers were unlikely to gain mastery of the new knowledge and skill without frequent opportunities for practice and feedback.

With that bit of insight, my focus shifted from the training’s content to its process. I tried to ensure that teachers were provided with adequate practice, coaching, and support. Later still, I realized that, even if a professional development initiative was characterized by research-based content and processes that enabled teachers to gain mastery, the initiative was unlikely to be effective in a school environment that was hostile to change.

Any consultant or facilitator who has tried to help a school launch an improvement initiative has seen school culture at work. Two schools initiate professional development programs designed to improve conditions for teaching and learning. The consultant, content, and implementation processes are identical, but one school's faculty embraces the concept and works to adapt it to their school, while teachers at the other school are indifferent.

In the right school culture, even bad staff development practices can have a positive impact. Conversely, in the wrong school culture, even well-conceived and delivered activities are likely to be ineffective. As the National Staff Development Council's standards on professional development concluded, "A school's culture will either help or hinder the process of instructional change."

This column will explore issues that accompany the effort to change the culture of a school so it can function as a learning community. Subsequent columns will be devoted to clarifying terms, interviews with researchers, describing individual school initiatives, and analyzing current thinking in the field–all designed to help practitioners transform their schools into learning communities. I invite you to join me in the investigation of this timely topic.

About the Author

Rick DuFour is superintendent of Adlai Stevenson High School District 125, Two Stevenson Drive, Lincolnshire, IL 60069, (847) 634-4000, Ex. 268, (e-mail: rdufour@district125.k12.il.us).


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