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B E S T
PRACTICES
NEA RESEARCH

WORKING
PA P E R

Professional Community and
Professional Development in the
Learning-Centered School
Judith Warren Little
University of California, Berkeley
December 2006

B E S T
PRACTICES
NEA RESEARCH

WORKING
PA P E R

Professional Community and
Professional Development in the
Learning-Centered School
Judith Warren Little
University of California, Berkeley
December 2006

The views presented in this publication should not be construed as representing the policy or
position of the National Education Association
...


A limited supply of complimentary copies of this publication is available from NEA Research
for NEA state and local associations, and UniServ staff
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Telephone, toll free, 1/800-229-4200, for price information
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Reproduction: No part of this report may be reproduced in any form without permission from
NEA Research, except by NEA-affiliated associations
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Address communications to Editor,
NEA Research
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Copyright © 2006 by the
National Education Association
All Rights Reserved

National Education Association
1201 16th Street, N
...

Washington, DC 20036-3290

The Author
Judith Warren Little is Carol Liu Professor of Education Policy in the Graduate School of
Education at the University of California, Berkeley
...

Dr
...


iii

Contents
The School’s Stake in Teacher Learning
...


2

Why Focus on the School?
...


4

Problems of Practice and the Instructional Triangle
...


6

Building Subject Knowledge for Teaching and Learning
...


8

Preparing for Student Diversity
...
14
What Professional Community Is and Why It Matters
...
16
Linking Professional Development and Professional Community
...
20
Conclusion
...
23

v

F

or more than two decades, research has shown that teachers who experience frequent,
rich learning opportunities have in turn been helped to teach in more ambitious and

effective ways
...
1 More typically, teachers experience professional development as episodic, superficial,
and disconnected from their own teaching interests or recurring problems of practice
...
An
important part of this enduring story centers on the schools and districts where teachers
work and whether they are positioned well to foster professional learning opportunities that
enhance the quality of teaching and learning
...

As will become apparent, the research is uneven (for a
recent review, see Borko 2005)
...
Its purpose is to marshal research evidence
that can be used productively to enhance professional
learning and thereby to nourish such a school
...
It is addressed to
school leaders—especially teachers and administrators—
who must identify priorities for professional development
and allocate scarce professional development resources in

1

The evidence is consistent on this point
...


1

2

Professional Community and Professional Development

workplace learning
...
We know more about the benefits of strong student
assessment practices than we do about how to help teachers incorporate such practices into daily instruction
...
The research provides more guidance for schools in
some areas than in others—or, put another way, the lessons from research do not map neatly or completely onto
the professional learning needs or interests of a given
school
...


The School’s Stake in Teacher Learning
The basic premise of this paper is that a school is more
likely to be effective in supporting high levels of student
learning and well-being when it also plays a powerful,
deliberate, and consequential role in teacher learning
...

Four Goals for Teacher Learning
The school’s stake in teacher learning may be expressed in
terms of a set of four broad, ambitious goals that join the
needs and interests of individual teachers to the collective
needs and interests of the school
...
Some of these problems and goals arise out of a
broad policy agenda affecting all schools—raising the bar
of educational achievement and closing the achievement
gap
...
Finally, some problems and
goals arise out of the specific circumstances of each school
...

A well-wrought school plan would show evidence that professional development forms one part of a larger strategy
for pursuing ambitious levels of teaching and learning in
this school, with these students, in this community, and
with these resources
...
Sound hiring practices offer one resource in this
respect, but hiring well-qualified teachers will not be sufficient to meet this goal
...
Thus, one test of effective professional development is
whether teachers and other educators come to know more
over time about their subjects, students, and practice and
to make informed use of what they know
...
Schools whose staff
members espouse a shared responsibility for student
learning and are organized to sustain a focus on instructional improvement are more likely to yield higher levels
of student learning
...
Effective professional development might thus be
judged by its capacity for building (and building on) the
structures and values, as well as the intellectual and leadership resources, of professional community
...
Here, the test
of professional development lies in teachers’ access to professional opportunities that afford them satisfaction, support, and stimulation appropriate to their stage of career
and that make good use of their acquired expertise and
experience
...
These studies draw attention to
overlooked intersections of professional career and professional development (e
...
, how particular teaching assignments build on, stimulate, or frustrate teacher learning)
...

Why Focus on the School?
Despite talk of “site-based staff development,” most
organized professional development activity takes place
outside the school
...
Yet an alternative
vision of teacher learning is emerging from the research
...

Why focus on the school?
First, and most simply, the school is where the work of
teaching and learning resides
...
To focus on the
school is to sustain attention to improvements in teaching
and learning and to signal a broad conception of professional development encompassing “the full range of activities, formal and informal, that engage teachers or administrators in new learning about their professional practice”
(Knapp 2003, p
...
The school looms large not because
it is the site of formal professional development activity
(although it may be) but because its staff have a stake in
thinking wisely and strategically about whether and how
the school is organized to invest in professional learning
...
Students bear those costs in the
form of inadequate instruction and high teacher turnover
...
In contrast, schools that are
well organized for professional learning stand to reap the
benefits of demonstrable student gains and enduring
teacher commitment
...
Schools that support teacher learning and foster a
culture of collegiality and continuous improvement are
better able to support and retain new teachers, pursue
innovation, respond effectively to external changes, and
secure teacher commitment (Johnson and others 2004;
Little 1982, 2003; Little and Bartlett 2002; Louis and Kruse
1995; McLaughlin and Talbert 1994, 2001; Rosenholtz
1989)
...
We have moved from a model that
emphasized the acquisition of discrete skills and behaviors
to a more complex vision of teacher thinking, learning,
and practice in particular subject domains
...
We have
acknowledged the ways in which teachers’ career experience and teaching commitments are shaped by the quality
of the workplace environment and by the nature and
extent of their professional ties
...
Plans that were once a laundry list of activities are more often framed in terms of explicit links
between student learning goals and expenditure of professional development resources
...
The most
ambitious examples of powerful teacher learning remain
relatively rare and modest in scale
...
Indeed, many would readily report being “in-serviced” in ways that do little justice to their experience, interests, and circumstances
...
Large districts are more likely than
smaller ones to offer intensive, sustained professional
development
...
Yet meaningful shifts are evident
...

Of course, no school exists in a vacuum
...
In particular, school
districts have assumed growing importance as a context
for professional learning and as a source of both resources
and requirements for teaching
...


Professional Development Rooted in Goals
And Problems of Teaching and Learning
Educators and researchers have lambasted the scattered,
shallow, fragmented array of activity that so often makes
up the professional development landscape, reserving special criticism for activities that seem remote from teachers’
priorities and problems of practice
...
10):
Rarely do…in-services seem based on a curricular view of teachers’ learning
...
…
Hence, we propose new ways to understand
and use practice as a site for professional learning, as well as ways to cultivate the sorts of
inquiry into practice from which many
teachers could learn
...
3–4, 6, emphasis added
...
The instructional
triangle encompasses the dynamic, fluid, and complex
interactions by which teachers help children learn challenging subject content and pursue other important intellectual and social goals
...
Drawing from her 5th grade classroom, Lampert showed how teaching mathematics
required that she solve problems related not only to her
goals for students’ content learning but also—and simultaneously—to her goals for building a classroom culture
in which children can reason and argue about mathematics, learn how to work both independently and collaboratively, build up “intellectual courage,” and develop a sense
of their own growing understanding and accomplishment
...
” Throughout the
book, the children’s encounters with problems in mathematics helped Lampert, as teacher, expose and work on the
problems of teaching
...
It also suggests the crucial
importance of professional learning opportunities that are
rooted firmly and specifically in problems of practice
...

Consistent with the principle of organizing professional development in and from practice, then, a school organized for teacher learning would promote systematic attention to teaching and learning in multiple ways
...
School staff
would develop the habit of collectively examining evidence of student learning and investigating the sources of
students’ progress or difficulties
...
Partnerships
with organizations or groups outside the school would be

In the Learning-Centered School

5

Table 1
...


Focus on the “instructional triangle”:
I

Pedagogical content knowledge

I

Student thinking, learning, and assessment

I

Understanding and responding to student
diversity
...

Strategies have characteristics associated with
effectiveness: collective participation, active learning, coherence, sustained duration
...


Little attention by school leaders
to building strong professional
community

Cultivating professional community is a focus for
school leaders
...


Multiple external professional development
opportunities link school professional communities with
I

New advances in knowledge about subject
content, learning, and teaching

I

Opportunities to understand students and
their diverse communities

I

Externally developed tools and materials
...

From Problems of Practice to
Professional Development
Working from the image of the instructional triangle, the
following sections take up three entry points for professional learning
...
The instructional triangle is useful as a strategic guide that provides a clear focus for the
content of professional development
...
Professional Development and the
Instructional Triangle
Contexts of teaching

Content

Teachers’
knowledge of
subject content
for teaching

LEARNING

Teacher

Teachers’
knowledge of
students’
thinking and
content learning

Student

Teachers’
knowledge of
diverse
students

Source: Adapted by the author from Cohen, Raudenbush, and Ball (2003)
...
A substantial
body of research now supplies evidence that teachers benefit from in-depth understanding of subject-specific concepts and from an understanding of how to help students
learn them
...
In particular, these programs may help teachers transform basic
subject knowledge into the practical knowledge required
for teaching, or what Shulman (1986) termed pedagogical
content knowledge
...
This relationship puts students’ interaction with the content of the curriculum into the foreground
...
In all of these activities, an underlying assumption is that systematic attention to student learning—and
to students’ responses to the instructional activities
intended to promote that learning—will foster teacher
learning and improve instructional decision making
...
Of the three starting points for
professional development, this relationship presents the
broadest terrain by encompassing the many sources of
student diversity—cultural, linguistic, cognitive, and
more—that present resources and challenges for teaching
and learning
...

As Figure 1 suggests, these three relationships intersect
and intertwine in practice
...
Subject-specific professional development focuses principally on the depth of
teachers’ subject-teaching expertise and how it might serve
as a scaffold for children’s learning, aided by well-designed
curricula and instructional resources
...

Finally, professional development focused on student characteristics and conditions highlights teachers’ knowledge of
how those characteristics and conditions affect students’
success in learning and how teachers’ response matters
...


In the Learning-Centered School

Building Subject Knowledge for
Teaching and Learning
In the last decade and a half, perhaps the most important
developments in teaching and professional development
center on expertise in specific domains of subject teaching
...
Nor is familiarity with a generic set of pedagogical routines sufficient for teachers to manage the
subject-specific complexities that arise as students grapple
with new concepts or skills
...

Broadly defined, pedagogical content knowledge is the
practical knowledge that enables teachers to transform the
content and epistemology of a subject discipline for purposes of teaching
...
Together, these experimental and survey-based studies support certain conclusions about the importance of subject-focused professional development and about the most effective features of
professional development design
...
Project
researchers developed three professional development configurations
...
The most significant effects on student learning and the most uniform shifts in teaching practice were associated with the group having the most intensive and integrated approach to looking at mathematics,

7

children’s understanding, and assessment
...
2
Large-scale survey studies reinforce the findings from
these small-scale, program-specific experimental studies
...
g
...
Schools where teachers reported the most ambitious practices of mathematics
instruction were also those with higher student achievement in mathematics
...

In a three-year study of teachers in 30 schools in five states,
researchers investigated the extent to which professional
development accounted for reported changes in classroom
practice
...
Taken together,
these studies underscore the likely benefits of contentfocused professional development compared with other
emphases
...

Sustained Focus on Subject Teaching
Professional development with a sustained focus on subject teaching—strongly tied to the curriculum, instruction, and assessment that students would encounter—
produces the most consistent effect on subject teaching
and student learning
...

Among the research reviews, see Wilson and Berne (1999); Kennedy (1998);
Little (2004); Randi and Zeichner (2004)
...
More recent
research suggests that the depth of student learning is related to the depth
and subject-specificity of teacher learning
...


8

Professional Community and Professional Development

emphases, such as using hands-on activities, organizing
cooperative small groups, taking steps to increase gender
equity, or preparing teachers for leadership roles, certainly
respond to widespread interests and concerns
...
Only the professional development
focused on subject knowledge for teaching does so
...
In the Eisenhower
evaluation studies cited above (Desimone and others
2002), individual participation had less of an influence
than participation by a group of teachers from the same
school, department, or grade level
...
The
authors sum up:
Professional development is more effective in
changing teachers’ classroom practice when it
has collective participation of teachers from
the same school, department, or grade; and
active learning opportunities, such as reviewing student work or obtaining feedback on
teaching; and coherence, for example, linking
to other activities or building on teachers’
previous knowledge
...
102, emphasis
added
...
However, just as subject focus
alone is insufficient to enhance teacher knowledge and
practice, so must greater investments of time be coupled
with other strategic and design choices
...
The study’s authors emphasized that “time
spent had a potent influence on practice,” but only if the
time was spent on content, curriculum, and student tasks
(p
...


Similarly, the national survey of teachers conducted for
an evaluation of the Eisenhower professional development
programs (Garet and others 2001) found that the “duration” of professional development (defined both in terms
of total contact hours and span of time over weeks or
months) achieved its effect primarily through the greater
likelihood that teachers would experience active forms of
professional learning and a coherent link between new
professional learning, prior professional learning, and student learning standards in their state, district, and school
...
This pedagogical content knowledge is most effectively developed through professional
development that combines a number of key features
...

Focusing on Students’ Thinking and
Evidence of Learning
Students produce a mountain of work in school each year,
but only a fraction of those data are mined for instructional
guidance
...
13
...
Yet few say they have the time or resources to stand
back from the daily fray and articulate what they have
learned—or how they have learned it
...
Even where such dialogue occurs, it may be narrowed and constrained by an
emphasis on measured achievement that limits consideration of the nuances of students’ thinking
...
As one recent review (Grossman, Schoenfeld,
and Lee 2005) put it:
Effective teachers know much more than their
subjects, and more than “good pedagogy
...
e
...


In the Learning-Centered School

(and misunderstand) their subjects; they
know how to anticipate and diagnose such
misunderstandings and they know how to
deal with them when they arise
...
205
...
A first category of research involves collaborative
classroom assessment studies, in which teachers and
researchers have worked together to develop and validate
assessments embedded in curriculum in core academic
areas
...
Based on a review of collaborative assessment research and other quasi-experimental studies of
professional development, Little (2004) concluded that
These studies…provide evidence that groups
whose members systematically examine student work and student thinking were associated with higher student learning gains, more
self-reported and observed change in teaching practice, and more growth in teacher
knowledge than comparison groups where
looking at student work was not a central
activity
...
104–05
...
These studies show how
teachers’ fund of pedagogical content knowledge deepens
as they pay closer attention to evidence of students’ thinking as revealed both in classroom talk and in the work students produce
...
6
A final category of studies has developed in the context
of whole-school reform efforts in which improved student
assessment plays a pivotal role
...

6
For examples of studies situated in formal programs of subject-specific
professional development, see Kazemi and Franke (2004); Richardson
(1994); Franke and others (2001)
...


9

examples of whole-school, grade-level, and classroom
assessments, together with accounts of how changes in
assessment helped to advance an agenda of schoolwide
reform and boost student achievement
...

Examples range from the collective use of the Primary
Language Record to chart and support children’s language
development in elementary schools to the public presentation and review of student portfolios or senior projects at
the high school level (Darling-Hammond, Ancess, and
Falk 1995)
...
Altogether, this body of research
points schools toward more frequent and focused discussion of student learning data from a variety of sources that
range from standardized test results to teachers’ accounts
and artifacts of what children do, say, and produce in the
course of everyday instruction
...
One is to expand the quality
and variety of formative assessments at the classroom
level; a second is to promote and organize collective
inquiry into and discussion of student progress and
achievement based on a range of evidence, including but
not restricted to standardized achievement measures
...
(Black and others 2004, p
...
)
Formative assessment occurs in and through instruction, with the fundamental purpose of providing teachers
and students with information on the progress of learning
...

These studies range over age groups from
5-year-olds to university undergraduates,
7
For a collection of examples, see Darling-Hammond, Ancess, and Falk
(1995)
...
(p
...
)
Based on what they characterized as a “wealth of evidence,” these authors (Black and Wiliam 2004) concluded
that the accumulated research strongly warrants an investment in professional development aimed at expanding the
use of formative assessment in classrooms and schools:
Such improvements [in formative assessment], produced across a school, would raise
a school in the lower quartile of the national
performance tables to well above average
...
(p
...
)
Scholars in the United States also advocate a substantial
increase in the use of formative assessment as a means to
strengthen instruction and boost student learning
...

To yield such powerful benefits for teaching and learning, formative assessment must be closely integrated in
instruction and must rest on a strong foundation of pedagogical content knowledge in the subjects being assessed
...
Shepard and others (2005)
warned that the majority of teachers have limited knowledge of formative assessment strategies, tending to think
of assessment primarily for purposes of grading (see also
Herman and others 2005)
...
141) observed
that the gains in student learning associated with
increased use of formative assessment require practices
that remain relatively scarce in “normal” classrooms
...
146)
...
Projects under way
in England and the United States provide some guidance
regarding effective professional development for formative
assessment
...
Teachers participated
in nine one-day professional development events over a
period of 18 months, interspersed with opportunities to try
out new approaches and to discuss their experiences and
ideas with project researchers
...

46) and that they attributed those changes to the professional development in which they had participated
...

Fostering Schoolwide Conversation about
Student Learning and Achievement
At the school level, teachers increasingly are being asked to
consider evidence of student learning as a basis for establishing instructional priorities
...
Symonds (2003) compared
schools that had made progress in closing the achievement
gap, as measured by California’s Academic Performance
Index (API), with schools that had not
...

Schools in Symonds’ (2003) study differed dramatically
in the frequency with which they assessed student progress
and with which they based staff discussions on student
performance evidence
...

Teachers in the gap-closing schools were much more likely
to work with school leaders who actively encouraged
inquiry into the nature of the achievement gap and to
receive professional development that helped them craft
instructional responses to the problems targeted by the evidence in hand
...
Rather, they built a habit of assessment
designed to gauge growth in student learning and to help
teachers refine instruction
...

In a study of America’s Choice schools completed by the
Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE;
Supovitz and Klein 2003), researchers found teachers and
administrators making extensive use of multiple sources of
student learning data
...
Of these, school leadership teams reported the
classroom- and school-based assessments as most useful
and the state and district assessments as less helpful—
mainly, it appears, because states and districts do not provide timely feedback
...
2, 18)
...
Classrooms are
inevitably diverse places, and each class presents its own
new possibilities, resources, and challenges
...
232)
...
8 Those vignettes—about the school’s
response to a child’s developmental and learning difficulties; about feedback to a student who has produced troubling work; and about the special needs of English language
learners—illuminate the magnitude of the task that teachers face in preparing to teach students whose backgrounds
and perspectives may be very different from their own
...
Of course, enduring inequities
have roots in political, social, and economic conditions
outside the school
...
Because
schools and teachers matter, for good or for ill, and
because tackling the disparity in outcomes proves so difficult, schools have a stake in knowing what contribution
investments in professional development might make
...

Studies of teachers who are effective in teaching students
of color, children from poor families, children learning
English as a second language, or children with learning
disabilities supply concrete images of effective practice
and help to shape an agenda for professional development
...

In a synthesis of the research on the knowledge, skills,
and experiences needed for teaching diverse learners,
Cochran-Smith (1997) also emphasized the importance of
foundational subject-matter knowledge linked to teachers’
shared commitments to students
...


8

Teaching “diverse learners” may take the form of teaching in heterogeneous
classrooms or schools or teaching in settings in which the student enrollment is fairly homogeneous but the background of the students is different
from that of their teachers
...
In that study, “teachers who
were most successful teaching for meaning [in highpoverty schools] were those with a deep knowledge of
subject matter as well as a conception of students as active
participants in learning whose prior knowledge must be
connected to school subject matter” (Cochran-Smith
1997, p
...
In the classrooms of the most successful
teachers, students learned basic skills as tools to aid them
in more ambitious tasks, such as writing extended texts,
rather than as discrete, decontextualized skills
...

The students were also more positive about
mathematics, they took more mathematics
courses and many more of them planned to
pursue mathematics at college
...
By their
senior year, 41 percent of Railside students
were taking calculus compared with about 27
percent of students in the other two schools
...
In interviews, the students told us that
they learned to respect students from other
cultures and circumstances through the
approach used in their mathematics classes
...
(Boaler
and Staples 2005, p
...


The more classrooms focused on teaching for
meaning—that is, geared reading instruction
to comprehension, and writing instruction to
composing extended text—the more likely
students were to demonstrate proficiency
in…reading comprehension and written
communication, all other factors being equal
...
(p
...
)
These studies have special import when they demonstrate how shifts in classroom practice enhance students’
success in “gatekeeper” domains such as early literacy and
secondary mathematics that tend to make or break students’ chances for future opportunity
...
The researchers examined the
nature of teaching that students experienced, the students’
attitude toward mathematics, and the students’ mathematics learning
...
9 Within two
years, the Railside students were significantly

Boaler and Staples (2005) attributed Railside’s favorable
student outcomes to a complex combination of practices and
conditions, both in the classroom and among the teachers as
a department
...
10 The teachers
focused especially on algebra, creating a common curriculum in which core concepts were taught through problems
with multiple solution paths
...

9

The example of “Railside” school actually draws from two complementary
studies of the same school and teachers
...
“Railside” is used throughout as a matter of convenience
...


In the Learning-Centered School 13

In addition, the research findings at Railside are consistent with studies that point to the importance of collective
participation in professional development and to shared
responsibility for student learning and mutual support
among colleagues
...
The teachers credit their ability to transform
the student culture of the math classroom in large part to
their professional development experience in adapting the
equity principles of Complex Instruction in combination
with their membership in a strong network of reform-oriented math educators and participation in reform-oriented mathematics professional development outside the
school
...
The Railside math department is
similar to departments described by Gutierrez (1996) as
“organized for advancement,” that is, organized to enhance
students’ access to and success in rigorous academics
...
245)? In answering that question, we are
hampered by certain difficulties
...
In
a report by the National Education Association (NEA
2003), only 40 percent of teachers surveyed reported having participated in professional development for “managing diversity in the classroom,” compared with 82 percent
who reported participating in subject-matter professional
development, with substantially more participation by
minority teachers (55%) than white teachers (38%)
...
Much of the professional development (and corresponding research) targeted toward stu-

dent diversity has the effect of turning the instructional
triangle into a set of parallel lines
...
As Cochran-Smith (1997) observed in a review
of the research, “the teacher’s knowledge of subject matter
is given little attention in the literature on teaching diverse
populations
...
38)
...

Even programs with extensive research on classroom
implementation and student outcomes (e
...
, Cognitively
Guided Instruction or Success for All) tend to offer little or
no research on teachers’ professional development experience or teacher learning outcomes
...

The growing body of research on teaching diverse
learners provides some clues for professional development
in part by helping to specify the nature of the challenges
teachers face and by identifying the kinds of knowledge,
skill, and dispositions evident in successful classrooms and
schools (e
...
, Stodolsky and Grossman 2000)
...
As McDiarmid (1991) noted more than a
decade ago, “Teachers’ capacity to evaluate the appropriateness of representations they make of their subject matter depends, then, on their view of learners as well as on
their understanding of the learners’ relationship to the
subject matter” (p
...

On the one hand, it seems unlikely that teachers working only to strengthen their subject-teaching expertise will
be able automatically to detect, appreciate, and build on the
diverse cognitive, cultural, and linguistic resources that students bring to the classroom
...
” By “culturally responsive,” the
authors meant classrooms organized to support the learning of children from diverse racial, ethnic, linguistic, and
socioeconomic backgrounds
...
Both
notions emphasize building on children’s knowledge and
strengths, accepting and capitalizing on differences, and
creating a classroom environment that is physically and
emotionally safe for learning
...
Professional development is likely to be limited in
its classroom effects if focused primarily on teachers’ awareness, attitudes, and generic pedagogical strategies
...
Most teachers
reported having developed a new level of awareness
regarding student diversity, becoming more sensitized to
differences among students and more knowledgeable
about multicultural education ideas
...
Overall, however, the proposed teaching
strategies appeared only sporadically and rarely in the
context of a core content area: “Few teachers substantially
reconstructed their teaching in any discipline over the 2year period” (p
...
Furthermore, an analysis focused
specifically on mathematics teaching found virtually no
effects of the professional development on teachers’ conceptions of mathematics curriculum or their instruction
...
686)
...

11
Reviews by Banks and others (2005) and Cochran-Smith (1997) both offer
numerous examples and citations to classroom research that spans several
decades
...


To create more responsive and inclusive classrooms, it
appears, requires that professional development help teachers explicitly develop inclusive and culturally responsive
practices relevant to students’ success with the core subjects
they teach
...

Everything we know about the nature of ambitious and
successful classroom teaching points toward taking the
instructional triangle seriously as the point of departure
for professional learning
...
The sheer magnitude of the task, and the fact that it is never-ending,
points our attention toward the way in which the school
itself is organized to facilitate teachers’ individual and collective efforts to deepen their teaching knowledge, foster
inquiry into student learning, and develop meaningful
supports for all students
...
(Meier
1992, p
...
)
It does not take a newcomer long to take stock of
whether the school’s professional environment is consistent with professional learning
...
Ideally, professional communities within schools are fundamentally oriented to problems of classroom practice and linked to a variety of external sources of knowledge and support for teacher learning
...

13

For discussion of the broader range of workplace conditions that bear on
professional learning opportunity and teacher retention, see Johnson and
others (2004) and Little (1999)
...
Linking Professional Community and Professional Development

Professional
development
focused on
subject teaching
knowledge,
student learning,
and student
diversity

Classroom
teaching as a
source of
problems of
practice and
insights into
student
learning

School-based
professional
communities
with common
goals for
learning from
practice and
improving
instruction

Out-ofschool
professional
community:
Networks,
partnerships,
and informal
contacts

Source: Author
...
Although there are some variations
from study to study in how researchers define and characterize professional community, most definitions encompass the elements shown in Box 1
...
In one early example
of such research, Little (1982) found that schools with
“norms of collegiality and experimentation” were more
likely to adapt successfully to a major change (courtordered desegregation) and to record higher levels of student achievement than schools where teachers worked in
isolation and where norms of privacy and noninterference
prevailed
...
They spoke in
focused, specific ways about classroom practice and

Box 1
...


Source: Grodsky and Gamoran (2003); Louis and Kruse (1995);
McLaughlin and Talbert (2001); Secada and Adajian (1997)
...

Other studies produced similar results, showing that
schools benefited when teachers achieved high levels of collaboration and adopted a norm of “continuous improvement
...
Those in the learning-enriched category—with robust learning environments for teachers—
were also more likely to have strong profiles of student
achievement
...
14
Over a decade or so, educators and researchers have
gradually shifted from a language of “collegiality” and
“collaboration” toward language centered on notions of
“community,” linking a “community of learners” in the
classroom and “professional community” among teachers
...
” As Wenger defined it, a community of practice
exists when individuals are mutually engaged in a joint
enterprise and over time develop a “shared repertoire of
ways of doing things” (p
...
Wenger described local communities of practice, but he also envisioned “constellations” of professional communities that link local communities together with broader networks in shared enterprises
...

Cultivating Professional Community for
Teacher Learning and School Improvement
As the research on teachers’ professional community has
evolved and matured, it has tackled a series of questions of
14

A thorough review of this literature is beyond the scope of this paper
...


importance to school leaders: Are all forms of “professional community” beneficial for teachers, students, and
schools? What conditions enable professional communities to form and be productive? What goes on inside
teacher communities that provides resources for teacher
learning? Each of these questions yields insights for cultivating professional community
...
However, in
schools, as in other organizations or in society more generally, strong cultures are not necessarily innovative cultures
...

Based on extensive research in public and private secondary schools, researchers at Stanford’s Center for
Research on the Contexts of Teaching (CRC) found that
professional communities vary in significant ways
...
They further distinguish between two types of strong professional
community
...

Teachers in these groups are held together by conservative
views of a subject discipline, school curriculum, and
instruction, but display little in the way of collective
responsibility for student learning
...
Such communities embrace collective obligations for student success and well-being and develop collective expertise by employing problem solving, critique,
reflection, and debate (see also Gutierrez 1996; Horn 2005;
Louis and Kruse 1995; Talbert 1995)
...
In one analysis of a national data
set, Lee and Smith (1995) found measures of staff cooperation to be unrelated to student achievement, even though a
spirit of cooperation is no doubt desirable from a workplace
perspective
...
Collective responsibility was defined in
terms of teachers’ expressed view that it was their responsibility to ensure that students learned and to help prevent
them from dropping out or failing
...
The available research,
although relatively small in quantity, points consistently to
certain perspectives and practices that must develop over
time and to the leadership required to nurture them
...
In one recent study of teacher study groups
(“critical friends groups”), looking closely at examples of
student work became the means by which teachers gained
a deeper appreciation for dilemmas that they and their
students faced (Little and others 2003)
...
Shelby was not satisfied that the
essays had captured what she had hoped students would learn from the unit
...
” In
15
In this case, the term collective refers to the aggregate of individual measures, but commonality of views (a high mean level and low variance on the
reported items) suggests that a shared norm may be operating
...

16
For more detail on this case, see Curry (2003)
...


examining the student essays, they began to
realize that they had an incomplete grasp of
what it meant for students to produce a persuasive essay—and for teachers to assign and
assess one
...
)
(Little and others 2003, p
...
)
Second, teachers move toward more robust forms of
teacher community if and when they find ways to air and
explore disagreement, acknowledge their differences, and
tolerate conflict
...
In its initial stages, the
authors said,
A group may deny differences and proclaim a
false sense of unity
...
With
such recognition comes the ability to use
diverse views to enlarge the understanding of
the group as a whole
...
989
...
Grossman, Wineburg, and
Woolworth (2001) noted that teacher communities
become venues for cultivating teacher leadership
...
On a novice teacher’s “mayhem” problem, teachers talked about what might have
produced students’ unexpected response
...
(Little and others
2003, p
...
)
Creating Resources for Learning inside
Teacher Community
Not all schools or groups that are committed to learning
and improvement necessarily possess or create resources
sufficient to act productively on those commitments
...
Although this research remains in its early stages, it
has begun to illuminate how even “collaborative” groups
vary in the variety and density of resources that teachers
marshal in their interaction with one another, and thus
vary in their ability to sustain their focus on teaching practice and student learning
...
What stood out in this
group of math teachers—all teaching algebra in detracked
classrooms—was the sheer density of human and material resources on which the teachers relied to focus their
attention productively on teaching and learning
...

I Expectations and routines for extended talk about teaching, or what Horn (2005) has called “episodes of pedagogical reasoning
...
Problems raised by individuals (“I started the geo-boards today and it felt like
mayhem
...
”) became the
focus of further “unpacking” questions and extended
talk about possible interpretations of the problem and

When they get upset and they seem to be off
task and acting goofy, it usually is motivated
by “I’m so confused and the last thing I want
to do is admit I’m confused so I’m instead
I’m going to find a way to distract myself or
distract others so that I don’t have to face the
fact that I don’t know how to do something
...
(I may pretend
to) be mad, like “You guys aren’t working!
What are you doing?” And then I try to take a
step back and think what are they afraid of,
how can I make them feel comfortable with
that fear, what can I say or do to make them
feel like this is a safe place
...

I

I

Frequent and purposeful use of curricular resources
...

With a pile of transparencies ready at hand, they used
the overhead projector to display problems and map
out approaches to teaching them (“So this graphic up
here sort of illustrates…”)
...

Plentiful, detailed examples of student work and teaching
practice
...


Fostering Professional Community at
Multiple Levels and Locations
Where might teacher community best be constituted if
it is to foster professional learning and influence student
learning? Huberman (1993) has speculated that

In the Learning-Centered School 19

professional community seems most likely to take root in
grade levels, departments, or teams “where people have
concrete things to tell one another and concrete instructional help to provide one another—where the contexts of
instruction actually overlap” (p
...
Yet schoolwide
improvement teams have also become widespread
...

In a two-year study of one innovative elementary
school, Stokes (2001) showed how the staff of Will Rogers
Elementary School structured opportunities to offer precisely such multilevel inquiries
...

The entire school staff engaged in what Stokes described as
“whole-school assessment of learning outcomes,” developing common benchmark assessments of students’ literacy
learning and devoting a full week in midyear to examining
the data
...
This form of inquiry had an important motivational effect but could not supply teachers with sufficient insight to attack the gap and gauge their effectiveness
...
This form of
activity provided the kind of mutual support and peer
pressure needed to persist with a difficult task
...
It was within a third inquiry context, which
Stokes characterized as “individual reflection with smallgroup support,” that individual teachers created a more
private, voluntary forum in which they took up their individual concerns and problems
...
148)
...

No one approach encompasses all of the work of teacher
learning and instructional improvement
...
150–51)
...
As Stokes observed, “inquiry generates
powerful learning—but also guilt and conflict” (p
...

Staff continually navigated a tension familiar to observers
of (or participants in) professional community—the tension between individuality and the common good
(Hargreaves 1993), or, put another way, between individual and collective autonomy (Little and McLaughlin
1993)
...

Making the Most of External Ties
Schools are busy places that easily become insular places
...
The strongest and
most generative professional communities appear to benefit from ties to external sources of ideas, material, and
assistance
...

The growing pressure on schools to reduce the persistent achievement gap heightens the significance of external
ties
...
The teachers worked
hard, and students appeared engaged in learning
...
The school staffs did everything they knew how to do
...
” To continue moving to
higher levels of performance, according to Elmore, these
schools needed external help and support for capacity
building commensurate with the demands being placed on
them
...


20 Professional Community and Professional Development

In sum, robust teacher learning communities stand out
for their relentless focus on student learning, student
experience, and student success; their willingness to take
(and tolerate) initiative on matters of teaching practice;
and the value they place on the ideas, feedback, and
resources they derive from ties to individuals, groups, and
organizations outside the school
...

Linking Professional Development and
Professional Community
At their best, high-quality professional development and
vibrant teacher community intersect to form strong foundations for the learning-centered school
...
This and
other studies suggest that no matter how well designed a
structured program of professional development, its track
record of success in the classroom owes a debt to the quality of professional community and other supports at the
school level (Wilson and Berne 1999; Stein, Silver, and
Smith 1998; Little 1984)
...
In one recent summary of surveybased research (Grodsky and Gamoran 2003), the authors
concluded:
Positive effects of school-sponsored professional development on professional community obtain at both the school and individual
teacher levels, suggesting that teachers who
participate in school-sponsored professional
develop benefit not only from their own participation, but from the participation of their
colleagues as well
...
1
...
e
...

Overall, then, both case study and survey research suggest
that the relationships between professional development
and professional community are likely to be reciprocal, with

good professional development stimulating or strengthening professional community and professional community
providing fertile ground for participation in professional
development
...
One element of
the strategy focuses on investing time and money in
teachers’ access to high-quality professional development
both inside and outside the school
...
174)
...
This element entails a mindset among
school leaders that is consistently attuned to the importance of teacher learning and to the various ways in which
learning opportunities might be constructed in the fabric
of everyday work
...
These programs or
activities deepen teachers’ subject-teaching knowledge;
equip teachers to attend carefully to student thinking and
to collect evidence of their learning progress; and prepare
them to understand and respond to student diversity
...

In-Depth, Sustained Professional Development in
Selected Subject Areas
Teachers often reserve high praise for professional development that is sufficiently concentrated (as in summer
institutes) and sufficiently sustained (periodic, continuous
opportunities across a school year or years) to achieve new
understanding and to develop new patterns of classroom
practice
...
g
...

Such institutes and other long-term activities permit a
measure of content depth together with the kinds of professional exchange that are rarely possible in other kinds of
workshop settings
...

School or Teacher Networks
Teacher collaboratives and networks grew in size, visibility, and influence during the 1980s and 1990s
...
Lieberman and Miller (1996) posited that networks
fill a need created “because schools are organized in ways
that often do not encourage the kind of frank discussion
that is necessary for inventing new modes of working with
students” (p
...
In these “intentional” but “borderless”
learning communities, outside their own bureaucracies,
teachers “find it easier to question, ask for help, or ‘tell it
like it is,’ rather than be fearful that they are exposing their
lack of expertise in a given area” (p
...

Building Teacher Learning into the
School Workplace
Schools join professional development and professional
community by strengthening the various naturally occurring niches where professional community might flourish—grade level groups, departments, and teams—and by
allocating time, space, and dollars to other kinds of activity that expand the opportunities for teacher learning in
the course of ongoing school life
...

The following paragraphs, without constituting an
exhaustive set of possibilities, indicate some of the most
commonly described approaches to organizing teacher-toteacher learning opportunities at the school level
...
In
some cases, teachers are encouraged to frame research topics tied to school goals, priorities, or problems
...
Examples include the Critical
Friends Groups initiated by the Coalition of Essential
Schools, and the teacher study groups developed as an
integral part of the Atlas Communities school improvement model
...
It engages teachers in collaboratively planning
a lesson on a key concept and in relation to shared goals
and then observing, critiquing, and refining the lesson
together
...
On the premise that “students can do no better than the assignments
they are given,” the SIP process joins a review of student
work with scrutiny of the corresponding classroom assignment (Education Trust 2003; see http://www2
...
org/
EdTrust/SIP+Professional+Development)
...
They
begin by completing the assignment themselves and then
analyzing the learning demands embedded in it and the
degree to which it is linked to relevant standards
...
” The eventual aim of reviewing student work is
to turn attention back to instructional strategy—specifically to the design of appropriate academic tasks
...
For example, see
studies of Critical Friends Groups by Nave (2000), Matsumura and Steinberg
(2001), and Curry (2004)
...

18

The Lesson Study Research Group at Teachers College, Columbia University
(http://www
...
columbia
...
For a list of the
Research Group studies, see http://www
...
columbia
...
html
...
19 Several have developed structured protocols to help teachers look closely at student
work for evidence of student reasoning and understanding
...
According to one online summary, “a protocol creates a structure that makes it safe to
ask challenging questions of each other” (see Looking at
Student Work, n
...
, http://www
...
org/protocols
...

Research shows that protocols serve to organize and guide
an unfamiliar and potentially threatening discussion—but
the discussion may lose its generative edge when protocols
are treated more like a script and less like a flexible
resource, adaptable to teachers’ own interests and goals
...
(An example of a subject-specific protocol is the Protocol for Looking at Student
Work in Reading Apprenticeship Classrooms, developed by
the Strategic Literacy Initiative at WestEd
...
WestEd
...
)
Peer Observation
Classroom and school visitations figure prominently in
teachers’ accounts of “getting started” with new ideas—
especially when teachers are able to visit several different
classrooms (or visit one classroom on several occasions)
and spend time talking with the colleagues whom they
have visited
...
Yet observing and being observed remain rare, and careful analysis of
teaching episodes is even more so
...

19
The Annenberg Institute for School Reform, together with the Chicago
Learning Collaborative, Harvard Project Zero, and the Coalition of Essential
Schools, has developed Web pages and practical guides to help teachers collaboratively examine student work
...
lasw
...
d
...


Video Clubs
Video technology is a relatively underexamined resource
for teachers’ professional learning
...
” Video clubs demonstrate the benefit that teachers derive from a series of conversations
focused on evidence from ongoing, situated classroom
activity
...
One recent study found that “over time, discourse in the video clubs shifted from a primary focus on
the teacher to increased attention to students’ actions and
ideas
...
Furthermore, teachers began
to reframe their discussions of pedagogical issues in terms
of student thinking
...
Schools
interested in this approach might find Teaching for
Understanding: A Guide to Video Resources (Segal,
Demarest, and Prejean 2006) a useful tool
...
Its basic premise
is that when a school systematically supports professional
learning it is more likely to be effective with students
...
In these schools, teacher learning arises
out of close involvement with students and their work;
shared responsibility for student progress; access to new
knowledge about learning and teaching; sensibly organized time; access to the expertise of colleagues inside and
outside the school; focused and timely feedback on individual performance and on aspects of classroom or school
practice; and an overall ethos in which teacher learning is
valued and professional community cultivated
...
g
...
Since that time, video has emerged as a more
integral part of preservice and in-service teacher education (Lampert and
Graziani 2003; Sherin and Han 2004; Sherin, in press)
...


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