Building communities of practice: creating small learning communities of school leaders that support teacher development has a transformational effect on student achievement

Leadership, Sept-Oct, 2004 by Gary Bloom, Robert Stein

There's an old expression (one that may not be entirely politically correct), "What's good for the goose is good for the gander." In the case of building communities of practice among teachers and school leaders, we think that this expression applies.

Over the course of the past few years, many schools and school districts have invested heavily in establishing collaborative practice among teachers. Where these learning communities are making a contribution to student achievement, teachers have regular, well-facilitated discussions for the purposes of reviewing evidence of student learning, determining student needs and designing interventions to address those needs.

The establishment of similar communities of practice among school administrators lags well behind what has been achieved among classroom teachers. It's worth noting that the same school leaders who go to great lengths to ensure that their teachers meet together regularly to discuss practice often avoid making the same commitment for themselves.

There is a substantial body of literature that describes models for achievement-focused teacher collaboration and evaluates the impact of the process. The benefits of teacher collaboration are experienced at a variety of levels. At the school level, a culture of collaboration and a focus upon instruction is transformational: it infuses the institution, impacting productivity, morale, teacher retention, public perception and, ultimately, student achievement.

Teachers benefit through improved pedagogical and interpersonal knowledge and skills, by experiencing the increased motivation that comes with increased efficacy, and though the efficiencies that come with sharing work. Ultimately, students benefit when teachers hone their practice in collaboration with one another.

The primary responsibility of the classroom teacher is to maximize the efficacy of each and every student in his or her class. A parallel responsibility of the school principal is to maximize the efficacy of each and every teacher in his or her school. At the best schools, teachers work together on a regular and structured basis to examine the need and progress of their students, to problem-solve and share strategies and resources with one another, and to collaborate in order to meet student needs. What would a parallel process look like for school principals?

For a number of years now, the New Teacher Center at University of California Santa Cruz has been helping school administrators to sharpen their skills as supervisors. We believe that a site administrator's most important responsibility is to ensure that teachers are successful, and that administrators do this by ensuring the existence of supportive conditions, clear goals, accountability systems and a supervision process that contributes to teacher growth. Unfortunately, most supervision processes fall far short of their potential, and most principals have had very little practical training as supervisors of classroom instruction.

We have worked in typical training settings with thousands of California principals to help them understand the California Standards for the Teaching Profession, to reflect on adult learning and the characteristics of effective supervision, and to examine student work and many data sources beyond the formal observation as they play the supervision role.

We watch classroom videos and calibrate our observations to the CSTP, and we role-play coaching conversations. We plan conferences with reluctant teacher learners, and we ask principals to share real case studies from their own sites.

All of this has been very well received and has changed practice in schools and school districts. However, leadership training absent site-based collegial practice falls short. We can't expect it to be any more effective than an isolated teacher in-service that is not followed up by some form of practice and accountability.

Fortunately, a number of school districts around the country have recognized the importance of effective supervision and the value of ongoing, focused professional development, and have worked with the New Teacher Center to develop communities of practice with their leadership staffs.

Through these collaborations, we have designed a very simple model for leadership professional development around supporting classroom instruction that has the following characteristics:

1. It is focused and ongoing. These districts have made the commitment to concentrate their leadership professional development around one focus area for one or more years. Professional development activities are periodic and relatively brief; for example, sessions are one day long or shorter and occur on a monthly or quarterly basis.

2. Participants are exposed to new research, perspectives and methods. Participants learn new content and skills, often in traditional in-service settings. For example, many districts choose to focus on brief classroom visits as a tool for data gathering and impacting instruction. In Bellingham, Wash., a team of 80 administrators all read Marzano's "Classroom Instruction that Works" and selected two best practices to focus on during the 2003-2004 school year: "similarities and differences" and "setting objectives and providing feedback."