There is great interest internationally in the potential of professional learning communities for enhancing educational reform efforts and sustaining improvement. This international collection, with contributions from researchers and those leading initiatives in five countries, aims to broaden and deepen conceptions and understanding of professional learning communities, as well as highlighting frequently neglected complexities and challenges. The introduction sets the stage, defining and characterizing professional learning communities, locating them in current and shifting contexts, and framing what follows. The purpose of professional learning communities is explored from a range of different perspectives and interpretations by contributors to the first section. While traditional conceptions of professional learning communities focused exclusively on teachers and school leaders, attentive to a fast changing world and policy environments, these authors broaden the frame of reference to involve support staff, the wider community, learning networks of schools and international learning communities of school leaders. The book is aimed at "thinking" professionals internationally: practitioners (within and supporting schools), policymakers, academics and research students. This book contains the following fourteen chapters: (1) Professional Learning Communities: Framing the issues (Louise Stoll and Karen Seashore Louis); (2) Inclusive Learning Communities: The Involvement of Support Staff (Ray Bolam, Louise Stoll, and Angela Greenwood ); (3) Extending the Learning Community: A Broader Perspective (Larry Sackney and Coral Mitchell); (4) From Professional Learning Community to Networked Learning Community: Lateral Capacity Building for System Learning (David Jackson); (5) International Professional Learning Communities for Educational Leaders: New Contexts for Building Internal Capacity (Louise Stoll, Lynn Butler-Kisber, Jan Robertson, Sylvia Sklar, and Tom Whittingham); (6) A Distributed Leadership Perspective on Creating Professional Community in Schools (Richard Halverson and James P. Spillane); (7) Resources for Professional Learning in Talk about Teaching: From "Just Talk" to Consequential Conversation (Judith Warren Little and Ilana S. Horn); (8) The Role of Organizational Memory in Professional Learning Communities: The Dynamics of Adaptation, Trust, Sense-Making and Change (Sharon D. Kruse and Karen Seashore Louis); (9) Using Assessment Tools as Frames for Dialogue to Create and Sustain Professional Learning Communities (Kristine Kiefer Hipp and Jane Bumpers Huffman); (10) Transforming Practice from Within: The Power of the Professional Learning Community (Marian Lewis and Dorothy Andrews); (11) The Challenge of Building Professional Learning Communities in High Schools (Joan E. Talbert and Milbrey W. McLaughlin); (12) Building Social Capital in Professional Learning Communities: Importance, Challenges and a Way Forward (Bill Mulford); (13) The Challenge of Sustainability in Professional Learning Communities (Andy Hargreaves); and (14) Reflection (Ann Lieberman).