8 The Role of Professional Learning Communities In ... - Springer Link

8 The Role of Professional Learning Communities In International Education JAMES C. TOOLE School of Social Work, University of Minnesota and Compass Institute

KAREN SEASHORE LOUIS College of Education, University of Minnesota

"... The relationships among adults in schools are the basis, the precondition, the sine qua non that allow, energize, and sustain all other attempts at school improvement. Unless adults talk with one another, observe one another, and help one another, very little will change." (Barth, 1990, p. 32) INTRODUCTION Hollywood films such as The Blackboard Jungle, To Sir With Love, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Dead Poet's Society, Stand and Deliver, Dangerous Minds, and Mr. Holland's Opus all follow what is now a remarkably predictable story line. Good teaching is shown to be the result of individual character and will, while schools are portrayed like out-of-touch churches that either ignore or persecute their own saints. Similar images of schooling exist in non-U.S. movies: In the recent French film, Butterfly, a village teacher is portrayed as a highly effective educator of children, but is left unprotected by the local population when World War II begins. Film portrayals of the lone teacher hero reinforce an educational research tradition that attributes classroom success or failure to an individual teacher variable, such as personal characteristics, subject-matter knowledge, pedagogical competence, or decision-making skills (McLaughlin & Talbert, 1990). The problem with these movies, however, is that while the lead characters thrive through personal creativity and commitment, those in the adjoining classrooms or schools often flounder and rarely benefit from the nearby brilliance. Lortie foresaw this problem in his groundbreaking 1975 work Schoolteacher. He documented that the typical result for teachers working in isolation, each behind a closed classroom door, is the reinforcement of a culture of "presentism, 245 Second International Handbook of Educational Leadership and Administration, 245-279 K. Leithwood, P. Hallinger (eds.) © 2002 Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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Toole and Seashore Louis

individualism, and conservatism." This condition is not limited to the United States. Scholarship from the Netherlands suggests that many teachers, rather than lamenting this predicament, actually choose isolation over collaboration (Bakkenes, de Brabander, & Imants, 1999). Moreover, it has been shown in Pakistan that educational leaders may oppose the prospect for greater collegiality when it challenges existing status arrangements. (Ali, Qasm, Jaffer, & Greenland, 1999). Despite these obstacles, educational leaders are increasingly being asked to take the role of "culture-builders" of collegial work environments seriously (Bishop, 1999; Deal & Peterson, 1999). This chapter examines five questions that possess theoretical and empirical significance for school administrators who are asked to create learning cultures among teachers: 1) What is a professional learning community? 2) What is its importance to school improvement efforts? 3) What is its relevance to international education at this time in history? 4) What are the inherent tensions involved in its development? And 5) What role can leaders play to manage these tensions? Previous reviews and critiques of the concept (Louis, Kruse, & Bryk, 1994; Fuhrman-Brown, 1998) have typically focused on the experience of teachers in Western countries. That is not surprising given that the great majority of school context research has occurred in countries where Lortie's culture of individualism has strong historical and cultural roots. But interest in the effects of school culture on school improvement has emerged in international scholarship in countries as diverse as Canada (Hajnal, Walker, & Sackney, 1998), Ghana (Pryor, 1998), South Africa (Abrahams, 1997), Japan (Shimihara, 1998), and Mexico (Tatto, 1999). In order to add to this worldwide perspective, we have also mined writings from various countries on teacher education, professional development and school change that allowed us to speculate further about the potential receptivity and need for professional learning communities elsewhere. This chapter therefore takes an international perspective to explore, beyond anyone culture, the wide potential and meaning of what it means to be collegial. Chinese educator Liping Ma and American Lynn Paine (Paine & Ma, 1993) illustrate the importance of such a comparative view. In responding to Paine's comments on her native Chinese system, Ma confided that: "I was surprised that some features outstanding in her eyes were so regular and so common for me that they had not drawn my attention ... Working together constitutes the circumstances or environment in which Chinese teachers work; like the air in which we live, it seems to be too common and too customary for people to notice its existence" (p. 677). The authors point out that: " ... Chinese teachers ... have a decades-long tradition and well-articulated structure for teachers collaborating" (p.675). The cultural variance expressed by these authors illuminates two opportunities to reconsider teacher collaboration. First, standard professional learning community terms like collegiality, collective responsibility, reflection, and even school improvement are all culturally laden. What they mean and how they are interpreted will vary culture by culture. Secondly, a comparative discussion of

The Role of Professional Learning Communities in International Education

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professional learning communities offers the opportunity to see familiar problems in a new light. Samuel Johnson's famous dictum that he who only knows England, knows not England, underlines that only by leaving our own worldview can we clearly see ourselves for the first time. The focus on Western schools in the literature has obscured the potentially broader understanding available through examining the role of collegiality in diverse countries.

The Concept of Professional Learning Community: What is it? While Liping Ma finds Chinese teacher community so "regular and common" that she may overlook it, Western writers have struggled to make sense of the concept. Little (1990) explains that from the beginning of the American movement, constructs were "conceptually amorphous" (p. 509). The most common term in the early educational literature was collegiality, which was often confused with congeniality - a friendly faculty that enjoys each other's company (Barth, 1990). Westheimer (1999) argues that theories of teacher communities are "under conceptualized." Furman (1998) calls them "confusing," a "mismatch" with postmodern life, and providing "little guidance for practice." The initial problem facing research on professional learning communities therefore is not methodological (i.e. how to measure one), but conceptual (i.e., what it is that we should be measuring) (Rosenholtz, 1991). The challenge, as British writers Nias, Southworth and Yeomans (1989) explain, is translating "what has hitherto been represented as intangible (being described, for instance, as 'atmosphere,' 'ethos,' or 'good relationships') into the details of day-to-day practice" (p. 9). Adding to the confusion, researchers use a variety of terms to describe how to organize schools for teacher learning: collegiality (Barth, 1990; Little, 1982, 1990; Sergiovanni, 1994) collaboration (Nias, et ai., 1989; Rosenholtz, 1991; Zellermayer, 1997), professional community (Louis & Kruse, 1995; McLaughlin & Talbert, 2001), discourse communities (Putnam & Borko, 2000), teacher networks (Lieberman, 2000),professionallearning community (Hall & Hord, 2001), democratic communities (Kahne, 1994), and schools that learn (Leithwood, 2000; Senge, Cambron-McCabe, Lucas, Smith, Dutton, & Kleiner, 2000). By using the term professional learning community we signify our interest not only in discrete acts of teacher sharing, but in the establishment of a school-wide culture that makes collaboration expected, inclusive, genuine, ongoing, and focused on critically examining practice to improve student outcomes. The term integrates three robust concepts: a school culture that emphasizes professionalism is "client oriented and knowledge based" (Darling-Hammond, 1990); one that emphasizes learning places a high value on teachers' inquiry and reflection (Toole, 2002); and one that is communitarian emphasizes personal connection (Louis & Kruse, 1995). The hypothesis is that what teachers do together outside of the classroom can be as important as what they do inside in affecting school restructuring, teachers' professional development, and student learning (Louis & Kruse, 1995).

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From an international perspective, this hypothesis may be surprisingly heretical in many countries (a point that we will return to again several times). In studying teacher development programs in Pakistan, for example, Ali, et al. (1999) note that the governmental school systems have traditionally been "highly hierarchical." The teachers' role is to obey the district officer who in turn receives instructions from the director. Those things that most affect teachers' work (e.g., curriculum, textbooks, modes of examination, and professional development topics) are prescribed. The authors write that: ':Any consultation or grouping among teachers was viewed with suspicion, not only by the head but also by other teachers. Collegiality was an unknown creed" (p. 738). Although the idea of professional learning communities might appear more accepted in many Western countries, its practice challenges a fundamental assumption about school improvement as governments enact it and how the media frequently reports education. Barth (2001) recognized a remarkable and often overlooked bias in his review of the school reform literature published since 1983: "It dawned on me that behind the models, the rubrics, the principles, the analyses of the problems, and the prescriptions for improving them was a very chilling assumption: schools are not capable of improving themselves. Those who labor each day under the roof of the schoolhouse ... (were not seen as) capable of getting their own house in order. Else, why do you need these outside interventions" (p. xxi)? The concept of professional learning communities rests on a very different set of assumptions about the nature of teaching and about how teachers learn. These include: that teaching is inherently a non-routine and complex activity (i.e., teachers will need to continue learning throughout their career); that there is a great deal of untapped knowledge already existing in schools; that the challenges teachers face are partly localized and will need to be addressed "on the ground," and that teachers improve by engaging with their peers in analysis, evaluation, and experimentation.

Professional Learning Community: What Does One Look Like? Not all schools have a strong sense of community, and those schools that do may not have a learning community. McLaughlin and Talbert (2001) point out that strong school cultures create and reinforce common beliefs among multiple teachers - for better or for worse. They cite the example of two math departments in the same town. One department held a commonly shared belief that student failure resulted from a lack of ability (creating a self-fulfilling expectation that students would fail), while the other department believed that students' low performance resulted from poor "content pedagogy" (creating an ongoing search for better instructional methods). These departments illustrate that communal school beliefs hold the potential to shape teacher behaviors in ways that either support or hinder students' opportunities to learn. By itself, the concept of community is not inherently positive.


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What then does a genuine learning community look like? It is easy to be fooled. Having a happy faculty lounge or teachers sharing their favorite bag of tricks is not sufficient. It is necessary to look not only if teachers collaborate and share practice, but also at what forms and purposes those activities take. Fullan and Hargreaves (1996) talk about "comfortable collaboration" that is bounded in ways that protect norms of privacy and exclude deep investigation into teaching and learning. Little (1990) points out that the following three types of collaboration by themselves represent "weak ties:" 1) scanning and storytelling (e.g. telling classroom anecdotes), 2) offering help when asked; and 3) sharing ideas without critically examining or refining them. Here, collegiality may simply reinforce bad habits. Strong professional communities, in contrast, will typically produce frequent disagreements and disequilibrium because teachers are continually questioning and debating issues of practice (Fullan & Hargreaves, 1996). They are involved in a critical school-wide focus on teaching and learning that Little (1990) labels "joint work."! Deep teacher learning involves not just mastering new behaviors or techniques, but surfacing and critiquing core assumptions and beliefs about students, how they learn, and the role of teachers. For this type of challenging faculty inquiry to happen, as Leithwood and Louis (1998) note, schools must simultaneously become places of trust (communities) and places of risk-taking (learning organizations). Kruse, Louis and Bryk (1995) designate five interconnected variables that describe what they call genuine professional communities in such a broad manner that they can be applied to diverse settings. The variables are: shared norms and values, a focus on student learning, deprivatized practice, reflective dialogue, and collaboration. The authors also cite a series of "preconditions" that enable or facilitate the development of professional communities. In the area of human and social resources, they list openness to improvement, trust and respect, access to expertise, supportive leadership, and socialization. In the area of structural supports, they list time and places to meet and talk; interdependent teacher roles, communication structures, teacher empowerment and school autonomy. Researchers can and do vary on the exact list and number of key variables, and those variables can only act as general descriptors. Little (2000) points out that there is no simple checklist or template that will ever adequately guide the construction of professional learning communities. But the central idea of the model is the existence of a social architecture to school organizations that helps shape both teachers' attitudes and practice. Toole (2002) describes this social architecture as possessing three different categories of "building materials": 1. norms or an ethos that govern behavior (e.g., system thinking or collective responsibility); 2. forms of ongoing collegial interaction (jointly studying student work or observing other classrooms); and 3. environmental conditions (e.g., supportive principal or social trust). Together, these form what Little (2000) calls "a set of obligations, opportunities, and resources for teacher learning" (p. 257). They become manifest, as Nias et al. (1989) found, in an in-depth study of British schools, throughout the tiny, day-to-day details of teachers' work lives.

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Research reinforces that the components of professional learning communities often work only in combination with each other (i.e., as a system) (Louis & Kruse, 1995; McLaughlin & Talbert, 2001). A good example of how different elements of the social architecture interact with one other is in the area of teacher time. Educational leaders that want to increase teacher collaboration might predictably focus on creating more time for teachers to meet. But time by itself does not necessarily lead to more collegiality among teachers. Hargreaves (1994) found that increased preparation time is an important resource, but without the presence of an ethos of collaboration, teachers imbued with a strong individualistic sense will perceive extra time only as an occasion to work more on their solitary classroom. The professional learning community variables, because they simultaneously stress both relationships and student learning, transcend recent criticism that compares the effectiveness of communitarian versus academic cultures (Phillips, 1997). The type of professional learning communities that we envision are intended to integrate simultaneously a focus on teacher affiliation, teacher learning, and student achievement. When Bryk, Camburn, and Louis (1996) talk about professional community, it is as a "key organizational capacity necessary to promote the faculty development and instructional improvements required to advance 'rigorous intellectual work by all students.'"

Do Professional Learning Communities Matter?

When entering a classroom in any country, one usually sees a teacher and his/her students - the heart of the educational enterprise. What one does not see, however, are the rings of invisible contexts surrounding the teacher-student interaction (McLaughlin & Talbert, 1993). Like the Russian dolls that fit inside each other, the teacher's instructional program exists within conscious and unconscious rings of influence by parents, principals and headmasters, unions, school culture, national culture, organizational structures, micro-politics, professional networks, community educational values, and district, regional and national policies. (Blase & Blase, 1998; Rosenholtz, 1991). If such contexts influence teachers' work, then it is not possible to fully understand what is happening in any classroom (e.g., teacher changes in practice) without looking outside of it. Teachers' thinking, commitment, disposition, practice, content, risk-taking, student expectations, and even discipline policies all may reflect wider influential circles inhabited by teachers. Practice and context are inextricably bound. What contexts matter most for teachers' practice? Researchers are increasingly looking at a school's social organization and culture (Angelides & Ainscow, 2000; Louis & Kruse, 1995; McLaughlin & Talbert, 1993; Rosenholtz, 1991). Professional learning communities are being viewed as a form of school culture that can provide a critical context for school improvement. Authors emphasize different aspects of professional community because they have embraced it for varied reasons. Westheimer (1999) points out that "Reformers


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have failed to confront whether (teacher) community is outcome-oriented or a significant goal in its own right and what it would mean not to sidestep the latter" (p. 98). Is it a means to an end, an end in its own right, or both? It is important to note, as Little (2000) warns, that we do not yet have the "serious comparative and longitudinal studies" of professional learning communities that are needed to detail how they work and under what conditions. At this point, Little (2000) explains: '~ssertions about the relationship between school organization and teacher learning rest in large part on theoretical work in the area of social and organizational learning, studies of the implementation of innovation, and studies of the workplace conditions of teacher efficacy and adaptability" (p. 235). Still, the emerging evidence consistently points in positive directions and asks for further exploration in research and practice. Each of the three rationales that follow, although not mutually exclusive, reflect different hopes for professional learning communities. They concern teachers' work lives, teachers' learning, and organizational improvement.

1.

TEACHERS' WORK LIVES: Schools require professional learning communities to create supportive teacher work environments and career paths to facilitate recruitment and retention

Teacher recruitment is an international problem. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (2001) points out that a number of countries face a growing "time-bomb" in terms of aging teaching staff. In its 30 country pool, one third of lower secondary teachers are 50 years or older. Where teachers are most needed, in high-demand subjects such as math and science and in certain urban or rural areas, the shortages are even worse. In the United States, for example, school districts are getting ready to hire a projected 2.2 million new teachers over the next decade (Johnson, 2000). Moreover, the problem facing many countries includes teacher retention as well as teacher recruitment (Kyriacou, 1987). Given these issues, how do we construct rewarding career patterns and cultures for teachers? Job satisfaction in many occupations is associated with formal structural arrangements such as paid incentives and promotion. In the typically "flat" career structure for teachers, what is the source of professional rewards and advancements? McLaughlin and Talbert (2001) found that teachers in different high school departments and schools did experience and talk about their careers in markedly distinct ways. The critical variable turned out to be their relationships with students, other staff members, and coursework. These variables, in turn, were strongly mediated by the type of teacher community in which teachers worked. Weak school communities tended to produce a sense of a stagnant or declining career pattern. Especially in poor urban areas, teachers tended to burn out trying to succeed on their own and became disengaged from their careers. Teachers in tradition-bound communities tended to produce a divergent career trend (i.e., rewards varied based on teaching assignments, status

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and credentials); and strong learning communities tended to produce shared progress (i.e., teachers experienced collective growth and success). This power of collegial norms to shape teachers' professional rewards is exemplified by McLaughlin and Talbert's (2001) study of an English and Social Studies department in the same high school. Although the two departmental teachers taught the same students in the same environment, the enthusiasm characteristic of the collaborative English department was far away from the frustration and disengagement of the non-collaborative Social Studies teachers. There is other research to suggest that authentic learning communities may act as a partial buffer against the conditions that cause people to leave the profession early. Community in the form of interdisciplinary teaching teams has been shown to increase job satisfaction (Pounder, 1999), as have teacher study groups (Scribner, Cockrell, Cockrell, & Valentine, 1999). What Huberman (1993, 1999) terms "sustained interactivity" between researchers and teachers has a similar effect on both groups. Rosenholtz (1991) found that teachers who collaborate with one another have more confidence and less uncertainty about their classroom practice. The importance of professional learning communities to teacher career patterns may be even more important in the future. Susan Moore Johnson (2000) points out that the current beliefs we hold about teacher recruitment and retention in the United States have been formed from research with those who will be retiring. The job market and career context for everyone today, however, is changing. We now face a generation that is growing up in a new and global economy with different expectations. For example, when she asked in the United States what public education would have to look like to attract today's potential teachers, one of her five answers was "schools would be organized to promote teamwork rather than solo practice." Other studies suggest that teachers' sense of community may be particularly important during the induction period, when teachers make up their minds about a permanent commitment to the profession (Rust, 1999; Weiss, 1999). There is therefore significant support for the importance of professional learning communities to teachers' work lives. Wenger and Snyder (1998) capture this personal dimension of positive workplaces: "Communities of practice should not be reduced to purely instrumental purposes. They are about knowing, but also about being together, living meaningfully, developing a satisfying identity, and altogether being human" (p. 134). The importance of teachers experiencing a sense of school community may be magnified by the contemporary, worldwide historical context in which geographic mobility, uncertainty about meaning, changing family structures, and the loss of traditional neighborhoods have created a void in many people's lives (Phillips, 1997). car~er

2.

TEACHERS'LEARNING: Schools require professional learning communities to help foster deep and ongoing improvements in teacher practice

Substantive change in what teachers actually do in their classroom has been the most elusive goal of school improvement efforts (Elmore, 1995; Louis, Toole, &


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Hargreaves, 1999; Stigler & Hiebert, 1999; Tyack & Cuban, 1995). Perhaps the core argument for the development of professional learning communities is the presumed link between a school's social organization and the ability to make transformative changes in the classroom. 2 Until recently, little research has existed to directly connect the two. In a large federal study in the U.S. about teachers learning how to use "teaching for understanding" pedagogy, McLaughlin and Talbert (1993, 2001) found that faculty polarized into three distinct responses to today's students. One group of teachers didn't adapt (i.e., they taught as they had always taught and blamed the students for not learning), and a second group adapted negatively (i.e., by lowering standards). Both of these teacher groups felt that what was wrong with schools today lay in student deficiencies. In the third group, however, teachers diagnosed the problem of poor performance in the lack of fit between traditional classrooms and contemporary students. These teachers found new ways to teach high standards and engage students. Why did this third group react differently? How were they able to make deep and adaptive changes in their classroom practice? In a speech to the National Staff Development Council, McLaughlin (1996) explained: "Every single one of them - and I say that as a card-carrying social scientist - without exception, belonged to some manner of learning community. Not one of them across states, district settings, who was able to engage and sustain these kinds of classrooms was an isolate." Further evidence of the links between professional learning communities and deep teacher change emerged from another major federal American study at the University of Wisconsin's Center on Restructuring Schools (CORS). The CORS study reported that higher levels of professional community were linked by quantitative and qualitative data to: 1) the development of a school culture that supported: authentic pedagogy and the intellectual quality of student learning; that provided teachers with increased opportunities for technical help with implementing the innovation; and that strengthened teacher commitment (Louis, Marks, & Kruse, 1996; Louis & Marks, 1996; Marks, Doane, & Secada, 1997); 2) significant positive effects on both authentic student achievement and standardized test scores (Louis & Marks, 1996; Newmann & Wehlage, 1995); and 3) an increase in staff collective responsibility for student learning (Louis, Marks, & Kruse, 1996). Other research also suggests that instruction is more effective in schools where norms of collegiality and continuous improvement are established (Little, 1982; Rosenholtz, 1991). A Dutch study of highly innovative and less innovative secondary schools indicates that the former were characterized by cultures that we would describe as professional learning communities, a finding replicated in primary schools (van den Berg & Sleegers, 1996; Gijsel, van den Berg, & Sleegers, 1999). Briscoe's (1997) intensive analysis of professional development for science teachers indicated that: " ... collaboration facilitates change because it provides opportunities for teachers to learn both content and pedagogical knowledge ... encourages teachers to be risk takers in implementing new ideas,

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and supports and sustains the process of individual change in science" (p. 51). These findings reinforce Rosenholtz' (1991) conclusion from studying different work cultures, ''All of this means that it is far easier to learn to teach, and to learn to teach better, in some schools than in others" (p. 104).

3.

ORGANIZATIONAL IMPROVEMENT: Schools require professional learning communities to make significant and lasting organizational improvement. Culture predates and affects all school change activity

The third rationale is that professional learning communities are critical instruments for substantive, long-term cultural change in the organization. McGinn (1999) underlines the differences between the second and third rationales: "Two kinds of changes take place during reforms. Most familiar are changes in the behavior of individuals whom we ask to take on new practices. Less obvious and harder to assess are changes in the organizations that carry out reform" (p. 7-8). Senge (et aI., 2000) calls school culture the domain of "enduring change." The relationship of school culture and school improvement is one of circular causality (Toole, 2002). As suggested by Figure 1, the existing professional learning community predates and influences the outcomes of school improvement efforts, but each school improvement effort in turn influences the professional learning community. They are both continually cause and effect of each other. Schools that have strong, healthy cultures therefore have a head start when they tackle new projects. This fits Fullan's (1999) comment that: "Culture allows us to recognize, value and build in ... advantages over time." (p. 7). Professional learning communities have built-in attitudes and practices that support innovation, inquiry, and improvement. What Fullan does not say, however, is that weak cultures build in disadvantages over time. This helps explain Farson's (1996) maxim that "Organizations that need help the most will benefit from it least" (p. 85). Some schools simply do not have the organizational capacity to support successful innovation. In the language of international development, this is a dimension of "absorptive capacity." This does not mean that schools need to be passive victims of their cultures. Cultures are living ecosystems that are constantly changing within and without. How schools implement innovations feeds back into and changes the existing culture (i.e., they can either strengthen or fracture professional communities) (Toole, 2002). Even in dysfunctional cultures, leaders can model new norms and capabilities that then start to affect how people think and act in the culture. Toole (2002) documented how the implementation of service learning proceeded in markedly different ways in two schools with contrasting levels of professional learning community. The school with the stronger social bonds was able to create greater agreement about a shared purpose, more support for change leadership, higher staff participation and ownership, more shared learning, less political conflict, less structural tensions, and better communication. The end result was that, although both schools were receiving


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