As they write about the Learning Communities standard in Reach the Highest Standard in Professional Learning: Learning Communities, authors Ann Lieberman and Lynne Miller consider why communities have gained widespread attention and support and summarize the established research base about them. They also describe three contexts in which professional learning communities have been enacted and consider the challenges professional learning communities face, concluding with an examination of the “questions professional communities raise and the implications they pose for school reform in general and the role of teachers in the reform agenda in particular” (Lieberman, Miller, Roy, Hord, & von Frank, 2013).

This excerpt from their full chapter shares rationale and findings from research about learning communities.

Professional learning that increases educator effectiveness and results for all students occurs within learning communities committed to continuous improvement, collective responsibility, and goal alignment.

Lessons Learned From Practice

If there are any implications for the future of professional learning communities, they are best derived from lessons learned from practice:

• Develop and nurture a professional teaching culture that provides an alternative to the norms and values of the bureaucratic culture of schools.
• Learn how to navigate between the two cultures and leverage bureaucratic mandates for authentic teacher learning.
• Dedicate time and resources to the work.
• Routinize structures for inquiry, reflection, and collaboration.
• Provide vehicles and supports for making teaching public.
• Maintain control of the agenda in the face of pressures to do otherwise.
• Embrace expansive definitions of teacher development and student learning.
• Practice patience and take time to navigate the fault lines that emerge.
• Take on issues of equity and accountability and make them your own.
• Make an effort to be inclusive rather than exclusive and to share practices and insights with a larger community of educators.

About the Book

Lieberman, A., Miller, L., Roy, P., Hord, S.M., & von Frank, V. (2013). Reach the highest standard in professional learning: Learning Communities. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. Excerpted with permission.

Ann Lieberman is the senior scholar and interim executive director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education at Stanford University. Lieberman is widely known for her work in the areas of teacher leadership and development, collaborative research, networks and school-university partnerships, and the problems and prospects for understanding educational change.

Lynne Miller is professor of educational leadership and executive director of the Southern Maine Partnership at the University of Southern Maine. Miller has written widely in the field of teacher development and school reform and is an active participant in local and national reform efforts.