This paper explores how a professional learning community (PLC) redesigns high school mathematics lessons towards a shared commitment. We describe the nature of a PLC's collective curricular vision to illuminate how teachers can come to new understandings as a group in order to shift the ways students experience mathematics. Using the curricular…

Due to the growing interest of school leaders in implementing learning communities as a way to build capacity for and sustain change, a better understanding of how the concepts of professional learning communities (PLCs) and communities of practice (CoPs) are related will aid educators in their quest to implement these concepts. This paper…

Educational reform is not easy. As school leaders search for a format that leads to improvement on many fronts concurrently, data teams is one such promising practice. The data team design not only involves sensemaking of data as evidence of effective teaching and learning, but also builds a professional learning community, distributes leadership,…

This presentation addresses three topics: (1) the assessment of professional learning communities in schools; (2) the design and development of professional learning communities in schools; and (3) the effects of professional learning communities in schools. The purpose of this brief document is to share descriptions, processes, and materials…

The goal of the Accelerated Schools Project (ASP) is to develop schools in which all children achieve at high levels and all members of the school community engage in developing and fulfilling the school's vision. But to fully implement the ASP model, a school must become a learning community that stresses relationships, shared values, and a…

A team of preservice and inservice teachers, an administrator, and a university professor planned and implemented a collaborative action research study in a suburban middle school that was part of a Professional Development School. This study documented the growth of the group as a professional learning community. Data collection involved pre- and…

This study was conducted to explore the characteristics of and interrelationships between teacher efficacy and professional learning community in 19 schools participating in the Quest project at AEL, Inc. The Quest project is an applied regional research project that assists schools with educational reform efforts. The School Professional Staff as…

An analysis of school-university collaborative efforts to establish partnerships and professional development schools (PDSs) suggests that most of these efforts focus on the induction of student teachers, interns, and beginning teachers. Little attention is devoted to helping university-based teacher educators or experienced school faculty study…

A general analysis of professional development school (PDS) efforts indicates that, overall, the partnership efforts that were studied devote significantly less attention to ideas about the nature of schools, learning, teaching, the knowledge base for teaching, and teacher learning and professional development than they devote to establishing…

This paper is a case study of a middle school in the Midwest that was involved with a national project over a 3-year period in trying to create a professional learning community. The case study includes background, areas of focused reflection, a school profile, case questions to stimulate dialogue and problem-solving, and author's reflections. The…

This paper describes summative evaluation of the Quest project conducted at four case-study schools. The schools were selected for their high involvement in Quest, varied interpretations and uses of the project, and diverse locations and demographic constitutions. Data collection included participant observation, individual and semistructured…

This study examined how professional learning communities develop, using cross-subject teams within the context of HUMANITAS, a program designed to promote teachers' professional growth and effectiveness by creating a voluntary "community of learners" for teachers and students. Data were gathered from teacher interviews, team…

This paper summarizes the first 2 years of a school improvement effort in a low-performing rural school district in southern Virginia that involved developing a balanced K-12 curriculum aligned with the state's standards of learning. Project evaluation focused on changes in the school environment and in teaching and learning that resulted from the…

For the past decade, the federal government has supported comprehensive school reform as a way to improve under-performing schools (US Department of Education 1998). Thousands of schools across the country are now implementing scores of different whole school reform models with the hopes of improving school culture and raising student performance.…

There is a growing literature about conducting an action research that could help achieving significant changes in teachers' practices. Although an action research can contribute obtaining improvements, this process is not straight-line and without obstacles. The text elaborates three problems the author faced with while dealing with the action…