Leading professional learning: think 'system' and not 'individual school' if the goal is to fundamentally change the culture of schools

School Administrator, Nov, 2006 by Michael Fullan

Even a less contentious districtwide reform set of strategies, well designed and pursued over a five-year period in Duval County, Fla., did not accomplish much widespread reform, according to Jon Supovitz in his soon-to-be-published book, The Case for District-Based Reform.

Workplace Practices

What is going on here? We finally get jurisdictions to take the reform literature seriously and we still get halting reform efforts. Here is where I want to turn the corner and indicate what is missing, and correspondingly why it is so difficult to accomplish.

Elmore got it right when he observed: "Improvement is more a function of learning to do the right things in the settings where you work." Later he emphasizes: "The problem [is that] there is almost no opportunity for teachers to engage in continuous and sustained learning about their practice in the settings in which they actually work, observing and being observed by their colleagues in their own classrooms and classrooms of other teachers in other schools confronting similar problems of practice. This disconnect between the requirements of learning to teach well and the structure of teachers' work life is fatal to any sustained process of instructional improvement."

Previously Elmore identified what it would take to get substantial change in practice: "People make these fundamental transitions by having many opportunities to be exposed to the ideas, to argue them into their own normative belief systems, to practice the behaviors that go with these values, to observe others practicing those behaviors, and, most importantly, to be successful at practicing in the presence of others (that is, to be seen to be successful). In the panoply of rewards and sanctions that attach to accountability systems, the most powerful incentives reside in the face-to-face relationships among people in the organization, not in external systems."

We have made a similar case for achieving breakthrough results, which means success for 90 percent or more of all students, say in literacy. At the core of Breakthrough, we offered the Triple P model--personalization, precision and professional learning. The first two P's are what educators do when they try to get differentiated instruction right. That is to say learning for all requires we address the learning needs of each student (personalization) and do so in an instructional manner that fits their learning needs of the moment (precision).

We also said this has to be done in a way that is manageable. It has to be practical and efficient to the degree that it is feasible. The kicker is that in order to achieve these two P's, the third P is crucial: Every teacher must be learning how to do this virtually every day. Individually and collectively professional learning, getting better and better in the setting in which you work, must be built into the culture of the school in both its internal and external interactions.

What is missing in school cultures then is most schools, structurally and normatively, are not places where virtually every teacher is a learner all the time. This is the missing element in standards, qualifications, professional development and so on. The latter do not by themselves represent continuous professional learning.