Shared Values and Purpose (Vision):
A shared set of goals, commitments, and practices enacted throughout the school. Common goals in a school serve as a basis for decision-making (i.e., “How does that decision fit with what we believe in?”) and give individuals an enhanced sense of purpose. They make individuals part of a bigger cause – a cause beyond one’s self. Shared values and common purposes are translated into what actually happens in the classroom through the development of core learning principles. Core learning principles focus on teaching and learning and what teaching and learning should look like in the classroom, and consequently guide decisions about student learning and school practices (Glickman, 1993).

Vision, Leadership and Change (Southwest Educational Development Laboratory)
This paper focuses on vision, its definition, and how it is demonstrated in educators. Further, it provides a process for the collaborative development of a shared vision resulting in a vision statement.

Forward-Thinking, Shared Vision (North Central Regional Educational Laboratory)
This article discusses how the education system building a shared, community-based vision that prepares students to learn, work, and live successfully in the Digital Age? What does it mean to be "educated" in today's knowledge-based digital age?

Inspiring A Passion for Quality Work (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development)
Read about a project-based learning program called Expeditionary Learning/Outward Bound (ELOB), a comprehensive New American Schools design for K–12 public schools that transforms curriculum, instruction, assessment, and school culture and is intended to enable all students to achieve at high levels. Through professional development and technical assistance, a school's entire staff becomes involved to make Expeditionary Schools safe and engaging communities where all students are expected to achieve more than they thought possible.

Promising Futures (Maine Department of Education)
The Maine Commission on Secondary Education’s goal was to make comprehensive recommendations to the public education community that would enhance the quality of learning for secondary students in Maine. Following a summary of observations about the future of Maine’s secondary students, core principles and core practices are listed to address the school learning and improvement implications of the observations.

Common Goals (Core Principles):

The Foxfire Approach to Teaching & Learning: Core Practices (Foxfire)
Guided by the eleven Core Practices and supported through formal and informal connections to Foxfire, these teachers create classrooms with strong community connections where learning grows out of student interest and where high standards for student achievement are both set and met. In the Foxfire Approach, learning environments are characterized by student involvement and action, by thoughtful reflection and rigorous assessment, by imagination and problem solving, by applications beyond the classroom for what is learned, and by meaningful connections to the community.

ThinkQuest for Tomorrow's Teachers - Core Principles (ThinkQuest T3)
See an example of core learning principles and core components of ThinkQuest for Tomorrow's Teachers program that combines the practice of the Guiding Partner Approach (GPA) student-centered constructivist pedagogy with a structural approach to curriculum-based, Internet-enriched activity design to provide an ideological basis for systems change in preservice education by emphasizing exploration, collaboration, and facilitation based upon a core set of principles. Taken together the program components constitute a holistic pedagogy based approach to the integration and use of digital and Internet technologies as tools in the teaching and learning process.

District Directions Core Principles (District Directions)
An example of a large, Canadian school district’s core learning principles.

Technology:
Technology and Change in Education: Culture Is The Key
Focuses on cultures that may potentially embrace technological improvements within schools. Discusses how empowering and supportive environments will foster modification of values, norms, and beliefs that will allow cultural members to effectively integrate technology into their curriculum. Transformed cultures will be able to develop the capacity for change, which leads to beneficial improvements, including those which involve technology.

The School Portfolio Tool Kit: A Planning, Implementation, and Evaluation Guide for Continuous School Improvement
As those in public education look toward the implementation of high stakes testing and the implementation of No Child Left Behind, it is imperative that data be used to show student progress. Dr. Victoria Bernhardt shows what data are most useful and how the data can be used to help improve student achievement at all levels.

  Action Plan Example for Practice 1:    WORD   PDF
Action Plan Example 2 for Practice 1:   WORD   PDF