Stakeholder Stan
You are interested in working with principals to establish a professional
learning community. But, you want to be clear about exactly what it is you want
principals to do so that you can coach them in the process. Your task is
to find the five most common characteristics of a professional learning
community and prepare a draft presentation for the board president describing
what a learning community is (describing the five most common characteristics)
and how it will benefit students.
Leadership resources have been identified as follows:
Southwest Educational
Development Laboratory (SEDL)
Shirley Hord and the researchers at SEDL have investigated the change process
and school improvement. They have done extensive research on Professional
Learning Communities and regularly review that research in "Issues for Change"
that can be found on the SEDL website. Of particular interest for this study is
the article Professional Learning Communities: What are they and why are they
important? The article can be found at:
www.sedl.org/change/issues/issues61.html.
Go to Edvantia (formerly AEL) and review the summary of A Study of
Low-Performing Schools, High-Performing Schools, and High-Performing Learning
Communities by Merrill L. Meehan & Kimberly S. Cowley
http://www.edvantia.org/publications/index1.cfm?§ion=publications&area=publications&id=508
"Is this school a learning
organization? Ten ways to tell" by Ron Brandt Provides guidance for schools is
determining characteristics of a functioning learning community and provide
quidance for implementing technology into the school. Go to
http://www.nsdc.org/library/publications/jsd/brandt241.cfm.
The Milken Family website considers how schools can use technology to become a
learning community, bringingstakeholders along through the process. Go to
"Becoming A Learning Community: article at
http://www.mff.org/edtech/article.taf?_function=detail&Content_unid1=289
This Electronic School website article shows examples of how technology can
forge links between home and school.
http://www.electronic-school.com/0197f3.html
Collaboration with children, families and schools describes how participation in
a consortium fosters collaboration.
http://www.nwrel.org/cfc/publications/actualschool.html