The Underlying Assumptions of This Book
This book is based on four assumptions:
1. The school’s primary purpose is to ensure high levels of learning for all students.
2. The most promising strategy for fulfilling that purpose is to develop the staff’s capacity to function as a professional learning community (PLC).
3. The principal’s role is to lead a collective effort to create a PLC that ensures high levels of learning for students through recursive processes that promote adult learning.
4. Principals play a vital role in creating the conditions that lead to improved learning for both students and the adults in their schools.
The idea that principals should serve as leaders of a learning community is not new. In 2001, the National Association of Elementary School Principals articulated the professional standards for principals in its publication Leading Learning Communities: Standards for What Principals Should Know and Be Able to Do. What has become more evident in the time since that publication are the strategies and processes principals must implement in order to create high-performing PLCs in their schools. This book is intended to provide clarity regarding specific, research-based, and actionable steps you can take to develop and lead a PLC.
Visit go.solution-tree.com/plcbooks to see “Why Is Principal Leadership So Important?” for a sampling of the research on principal leadership.
It may seem from the progression of the chapters in this book that the PLC process is sequential and linear: first do this, then do that, and so on. In reality, however, transforming a school into a PLC is neither sequential nor linear. In most instances you must address several issues simultaneously and you will almost inevitably need to return to correct or improve upon your initial efforts. Therefore, do not think of this book as providing you with a recipe, but rather, consider it a resource you can turn to for ideas as you confront a specific challenge.
Although the ideas presented in this book are grounded in research, we have opted to be more conversational than scholarly in tone. We do, however, provide readers with access to relevant research as well as reproducible tools and templates, all available at go.solution-tree.com/plcbooks. Throughout the book you will see feature boxes (like the one above) that refer you to these materials. In addition, www.allthingsplc.info is a tremendous free resource for those interested in implementing the PLC process in their school. This site also will provide you with more information on any of the schools we reference in this book, including contact information for readers who have questions for those schools.
Chapter 1 offers strategies for initiating the PLC process and laying the solid foundation that supports high-performing PLCs. Chapter 2 considers the steps principals take in creating the structures to support the collaborative team process. Chapter 3 draws a distinction between groups and teams, identifies the defining characteristics of effective teams, and presents specific tools for helping educators in a school make the transition from a group to a team. Chapter 4 stresses the importance of helping collaborative teams focus their efforts on factors that impact the learning of students. It also presents ideas for bringing new staff onto existing teams. Chapter 5 examines how effective principals monitor the work of the teams in their school and provides teams with the clarity, resources, and support to be successful at what they are called upon to do.
Chapter 6 is devoted to helping a school develop a key characteristic of a PLC: a results orientation. It explores how schools are using evidence of student learning to drive a continuous improvement process that represents the most powerful form of professional development. Chapter 7 provides keys to creating intervention systems that ensure any student who struggles to acquire an essential skill or concept will receive additional time and support for learning through a process that is timely, specific, directive, and systematic. It presents common mistakes that schools are making as they attempt to implement a response to intervention (RTI) process and suggests how to avoid those mistakes. Chapter 8 offers a tool to help principals reflect on the effectiveness of their communication, including strategies for addressing staff members who resist any effort to align the practices of their school with the PLC process. Chapter 9 outlines three keys for sustaining a school improvement initiative. Finally, chapter 10 argues that one of a principal’s most important responsibilities is helping others to believe in their ability to accomplish important objectives in spite of the obstacles they confront. It offers keys to creating this sense of collective efficacy among a staff.
What Is a Professional Learning Community?
In order to lead a PLC, principals must have a deep understanding of what constitutes a PLC and what does not. The growing recognition of the potential of the PLC process to impact student achievement in a powerful and positive way has helped bring the term professional learning community into the common vocabulary of educators throughout the world. While the term has become widespread, the underlying practices have not, and many of the schools that proudly proclaim to be professional learning communities do none of the things PLCs actually do. It will be difficult to implement the PLC process in schools when the principal and staff recognize what the process entails: it will be impossible to do so when there is ambiguity or only a superficial understanding of what must be done.
Some educators approach the PLC process as if it were a program—simply one more addition to the school’s existing practices. It is not a program to be purchased or an appendage to the existing structure and culture of a school but a process that profoundly impacts the existing structure and culture. Others regard it as a meeting, as in, “We do PLCs on Wednesdays from 9:00 to 10:00 a.m., and then we return to business as usual.” It is not a meeting. Still others equate a PLC to a book club, as in, “We all read the same book and talk about it.” It is not a book club. It is “an ethos that infuses every single aspect of a school’s operation” (Hargreaves as cited in Sparks, 2004, p. 48) that calls on all educators in the school to redefine their roles and responsibilities.
The following section, adapted from DuFour and Marzano (2011), attempts to clarify the three big ideas that drive the PLC process. Each of these ideas has a significant implication for educators.
1. The first big idea is that the fundamental purpose of our school is to ensure that all students learn at high levels. In order to bring this idea to life, educators work together to clarify the following.
› What is it we want our students to know? What knowledge, skills, and dispositions must all students acquire as a result of this grade level, this course, and this unit we are about to teach? What systems have we put in place to ensure we are providing every student with access to a guaranteed and viable curriculum regardless of the teacher to whom that student might be assigned?
› How will we know if our students are learning?