Building communities of practice: creating small learning communities of school leaders that support teacher development has a transformational effect on student achievement.

There's an old expression (one that may not be entirely politically correct), "What's good for the goose is good for the gander." In the case of building communities of practice among teachers and school leaders, we think that this expression applies.

Over the course of the past few years, many schools and school districts have invested heavily in establishing collaborative practice among teachers. Where these learning communities are making a contribution to student achievement, teachers have regular, well-facilitated discussions for the purposes of reviewing evidence of student learning, determining student needs and designing interventions to address those needs.

The establishment of similar communities of practice among school administrators lags well behind what has been achieved among classroom teachers. It's worth noting that the same school leaders who go to great lengths to ensure that their teachers meet together regularly to discuss practice often avoid making the same commitment for themselves.

There is a substantial body of literature that describes models for achievement-focused teacher collaboration and evaluates the impact of the process. The benefits of teacher collaboration are experienced at a variety of levels. At the school level, a culture of collaboration and a focus upon instruction is transformational: it infuses the institution, impacting productivity, morale, teacher retention, public perception and, ultimately, student achievement.

Teachers benefit through improved pedagogical and interpersonal knowledge and skills, by experiencing the increased motivation that comes with increased efficacy, and though the efficiencies that come with sharing work. Ultimately, students benefit when teachers hone their practice in collaboration with one another.

The primary responsibility of the classroom teacher is to maximize the efficacy of each and every student in his or her class. A parallel responsibility of the school principal is to maximize the efficacy of each and every teacher in his or her school. At the best schools, teachers work together on a regular and structured basis to examine the need and progress of their students, to problem-solve and share strategies and resources with one another, and to collaborate in order to meet student needs. What would a parallel process look like for school principals?

For a number of years now, the New Teacher Center at University of California Santa Cruz has been helping school administrators to sharpen their skills as supervisors. We believe that a site administrator's most important responsibility is to ensure that teachers are successful, and that administrators do this by ensuring the existence of supportive conditions, clear goals, accountability systems and a supervision process that contributes to teacher growth. Unfortunately, most supervision processes fall far short of their potential, and most principals have had very little practical training as supervisors of classroom instruction.

We have worked in typical training settings with thousands of California principals to help them understand the California Standards for the Teaching Profession, to reflect on adult learning and the characteristics of effective supervision, and to examine student work and many data sources beyond the formal observation as they play the supervision role.

We watch classroom videos and calibrate our observations to the CSTP, and we role-play coaching conversations. We plan conferences with reluctant teacher learners, and we ask principals to share real case studies from their own sites.

All of this has been very well received and has changed practice in schools and school districts. However, leadership training absent site-based collegial practice falls short. We can't expect it to be any more effective than an isolated teacher in-service that is not followed up by some form of practice and accountability.

Fortunately, a number of school districts around the country have recognized the importance of effective supervision and the value of ongoing, focused professional development, and have worked with the New Teacher Center to develop communities of practice with their leadership staffs.

Through these collaborations, we have designed a very simple model for leadership professional development around supporting classroom instruction that has the following characteristics:

1. It is focused and ongoing. These districts have made the commitment to concentrate their leadership professional development around one focus area for one or more years. Professional development activities are periodic and relatively brief; for example, sessions are one day long or shorter and occur on a monthly or quarterly basis.

2. Participants are exposed to new research, perspectives and methods. Participants learn new content and skills, often in traditional in-service settings. For example, many districts choose to focus on brief classroom visits as a tool for data gathering and impacting instruction. In Bellingham, Wash., a team of 80 administrators all read Marzano's "Classroom Instruction that Works" and selected two best practices to focus on during the 2003-2004 school year: "similarities and differences" and "setting objectives and providing feedback."

3. The input portion includes "guided practice." Effective professional development allows participants to begin to assimilate new learning by applying it to practice by, for example, observing and analyzing videotaped classroom instruction or role-playing post-observation conferences.

4. Central office staff participates. If our goal is to build a learning community, it is essential that central office staff fully participates in all sessions. In our successful districts, all central office instructional staff, with the occasional exception of the superintendent, were equal and active participants in all aspects of the professional development work.

5. The input portion is followed by site-based practicum sessions. Shortly after training sessions, administrators go out to sites in small groups to apply the concepts discussed at the trainings. These group sessions are normally scheduled for about three hours each and include about six participants. The groupings, however they are made, should be stable over time so that participants can build trust with one another and can serve as knowledgeable and continuous sounding boards.

6. Practicum sessions follow a protocol and are facilitated. In the box above we share a sample protocol for a practicum focused upon conducting quick visits. In this example, teams of administrators visit six to eight classrooms in an attempt to identify the application of checking for understanding strategies. After the visitations the principals meet to share their observations and discuss the implications of what they saw compared to their readings and understandings.

The box on page 22 contains a protocol used in observing a formal observation cycle. This requires a volunteer principal and teacher, and seems daunting. But in our experience, as trust is built within the administrator group and as teachers are led to understand that the goal of the process is professional growth, reluctance to participate melts away.

The power of the cohort 

Moving professional development out of the training room and into school classrooms has had a significant impact. Eighty-four percent of participants report that they have changed their supervision practices as a result of the in-service and practicum program. Participants often cite the process as one of the very best learning experiences they have had as administrators.

There are added benefits when central office staff participates with site administrators. The participation of district personnel responsible for human resources, categorical programs and special education leads to better district support to sites, as in the case when a district coordinator and a principal observed at one school and later returned to spend a full day with the principal as he shared new ideas for interventions to improve student achievement.

We have worked with both vertical slice cohorts and leaders from grades K-adult and grade-level-alike groups, and there are advantages to both approaches. Vertical slice teams allow for informal dialogue that addresses grade-level articulation issues, and can be a genuine eye opener for administrators who rarely leave their sites, let alone their grade levels. We believe that high school leaders particularly benefit from exposure to middle school and elementary classrooms, where they are more likely to encounter innovative pedagogy than they are at their own sites.

On the other hand, grade-level-alike cohorts allow leaders to share common issues of curriculum and assessment, and to problem solve around shared concerns. There is clearly a place for both approaches to cohort organization.

Changing the culture of isolation

We have made great strides in breaking down the isolation that has limited teacher professional efficacy and growth for so long. In our experience, it is well worth the effort to do the same for school leaders. The creation of small learning communities that focus upon supporting teacher development through the supervision process is one effective way of initiating this important change in professional culture.

Quick visit protocol

For quick visits, here are the discussion protocol for principal learning community site visitations:

PRE-VISIT:

* Ground rules and process

* Background

* What are we looking for?

VISIT:

* In groups of no more than four persons, visit six classrooms for approximately five minutes each.

POST-VISIT:

* What evidence did we collect?

* Questions

* Relation to professional teaching standards

* Relation to content standards

* Alignment

* Evidence of best practices

1. Checking for understanding

* Are we seeing the same things? (Calibration)

* What might be next steps?

1. For principal and teacher (including quick visit note to teacher)

2. For site

3. For our administrative team

* Debrief entire process

Formal observation protocol

Fishbowl formal observation and post-observation conference.

For these practicum sessions, volunteer principals and teachers will allow us to observe a lesson and post-observation conference.

OUTCOMES:

* Participants will deepen their understanding of best practices in instruction and supervision through collegial experiences in classroom observation and post-observation conferencing.

* Volunteer principals will receive direct feedback on their supervision practices.

NORMS:

* Confidentiality

* Focus upon supporting administrator professional development

* Apply coaching skills

BASIC STEPS:

* Team gathers with principal for briefing. Key questions:

1. Background information

2. Content of pre-conference

a. What does the teacher want support around?

b. Planned lesson objectives and methods

c. Data-gathering protocols

3. What does the principal want us to focus upon?

* Team gathers in classroom for 30- to 60-minute lesson observation.

* Team gathers with principal to de-brief observation

1. Share data

2. Plan post-conference

* Post-conference (fishbowl)

* Facilitated de-brief of post conference

1. Teacher reaction

2. Principal reaction

3. Observer data and response

4. Next steps

* De-brief process

References

Fink, E. R., Lauren B. (2001). "Developing Principals as Instructional Leaders." Phi Delta Kappan.

Protheroe, N. (2004). "Professional Learning Communities." Principal. National Association of Elementary School Principals: Alexandria, VA.

Schmoker, M. (2001). The Results Fieldbook: Practical Strategies from Dramatically Improved Schools. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development: Alexandria, VA.

Gary Bloom is associate director and Robert Stein is outreach coordinator at the New Teacher Center at University of California Santa Cruz They can be reached through the NTC Web site, www.newteachercenter.org.