Notes from “Learning by Doing” - Dufour, R



Instructor’s Notes

Learning by Doing:

A Handbook for Professional Learning Communities at Work

DuFour, R. , DuFour R., Eaker, R. & Many T. (2006)

Raymond B Williams, Ed. D.

Notes from “Learning by Doing” - Dufour, R. et. al. (2006)

Chapter I - Guide to Action for PLCs at Work

“Clarity precedes competence” (Smoker, 2004)

Redundancy is better than ambiguity. P. 2

A. Focus on Learning

The very essence of a learning community is a focus on and a commitment to the learning of each student. P. 3

If the organization is to become more effective in helping all students learn, the adults in the organization must also be continually learning. P. 3

B. Collaborative Culture with a Focus on Learning for All

Collaboration does not lead to improved results unless people are focused on the right issues. Collaboration is a means to an end. P. 3

A PLC is composed of collaborative teams who work interdependently to achieve common goals linked to the purpose of learning. P. 3

C. Collective Inquiry into Best Practice and Current Reality

Collective inquiry enables team members to develop new skills and capabilities that in turn lead to new experiences and awareness. Gradually, this heightened awareness transforms into fundamental shifts in attitudes, beliefs, and habits, which over time transform the culture of the school. P. 4

D. Action Orientation

The most powerful learning always occurs in a context of taking action. P. 4

E. Commitment to Continuous Improvement

The goal is not simply to learn a new strategy, but instead to create conditions for perpetual learning – an environment in which innovation and experimentation are viewed not as tasks to be accomplished or projects to be completed but as ways of conducting day-to-day business, forever. P. 5

F. Results Orientation

Our efforts must be assessed on the basis of results rather than intentions. P. 5

“Terms travel easily… but the meaning of the underlying concepts does not” (Fullan 2005, 67). P. 6

“Good is the enemy of great” (Collins, 2001)

All schools have cultures: the assumptions, beliefs, expectations, and habits that constitute the norm for a school and guide the work of the educators within it. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that educators do not have school cultures, but rather that the school cultures have them. P. 8

Capacity building is not just workshops and professional development for all. It is the daily habit of working together, and you can’t learn this from a workshop or course. You need to learn it by doing it and having a mechanism for getting better at it on purpose. (Fullan, 2006, 69). P. 8 - 9

It is the dialogue about the struggle with problems at the school that results in the deepest and greatest commitment for teachers and administrators. P. 10

The leader of the past knew how to tell. The leader of the future, however, will have to know how to ask. P. 12

Chapter II - Clear and Compelling Purpose

It is a mistake to launch an improvement initiative without support of a guiding coalition.

“No one individual is ever able to develop the right vision, communicate it to large numbers of people, eliminate all obstacles, generate short-term wins, lead and manage dozens of change projects and anchor new approaches deep in an organization’s culture. A strong, guiding coalition is always needed – one with a high level of trust and shared objectives that appeal to both the head and heart. Building such a team is always an essential part of the early stages of any effort to restructure a set of strategies.” (Kotter, 1996, 52) P. 15

A principal benefits by working through the issues with a small group of key staff members and securing them as allies before engaging the entire faculty. The creation of a guiding coalition or leadership team is a critical first step in the complex task of leading a school. P. 15

Time spent up front building shared knowledge results in faster, more effective and most importantly, more committed action later in the improvement process. P. 16

Build consensus one small group at a time. P. 16

Members of a learning community learn together, When all staff members have access to the same information, it increases the likelihood that they will arrive at similar conclusions. Without access to pertinent information, they resort to debating opinions or retreating to a muddied middle ground. P. 16

The words of a mission statement are not worth the paper they are written on unless people begin to do differently. P.19

Characteristics of improving schools:

a) Safe and orderly environment

b) Clear and focused academic goals for each student

c) Frequent monitoring of each student’s learning

d) Additional opportunities to learn for those who struggle initially

e) A collaborative culture

f) High expectations for each student

g) Strong leadership

h) Effective partnerships with parents P. 19

Specific actions that a principal and staff can take:

a) Initiating structures and systems to foster qualities and characteristics consistent with the school they are trying to create.

b) Creating processes to monitor critical conditions and important goals

c) Reallocating resources to support the proclaimed priorities.

d) Posing the right questions.*

e) Modeling what is valued.

f) Celebrating progress.

g) Confronting violations of commitments. P. 20-22

* The FOUR questions:

1. What knowledge and skills should every student acquire?

2. How will we know when each student has acquired the essential knowledge and skills?

3. How will we respond when some students do not learn?

4. How will we respond when some students have clearly achieved the intended outcomes?

P. 21

“To truly reform American education we must abandon the long-standing assumption that the central activity is teaching and reorient all policy making and activities around a new benchmark: student learning.” (Fiske, 1992, 253) P. 22

Mission, vision, values & goals P. 23-26

Mission – Why do we exist?

Vision – What must we become in order to accomplish our fundamental purpose?

Values – How must we behave to create the school that will achieve our purpose?

Goals – How will we know if all of this is making a difference?

“One of the most effective ways leaders communicate priorities is by what they pay attention to.”

(Kouzes & Posner, 1999) P. 28

Celebration is a particularly powerful tool for communicating what is valued and for building community. P. 28

Good stories personify purpose and priorities. They put a human face on success by providing examples and role models that can clarify for others what is noted, appreciated and valued. P. 29

An effective celebration program will convince every member of the staff that he or she can be a winner and that is or her efforts can be noted and appreciated. P. 31

Make teams the focus of recognition and celebration. P. 114

A commendation should represent genuine and heartfelt appreciation and admiration. If that sincerity is lacking, celebration can be counterproductive. P. 32

Stages of the PLC Continuum:

1. Pre-initiation

2. Initiation

3. Developing or Establishing

4. Growing

5. Sustaining P. 32-33

Tips for Moving Forward P. 37-39

The objective is action - not perfection!

All staff should have access to user friendly information on the current reality of the school as well as access to best practices and best thinking.

Align all proposals with the school’s purpose.

Eliminate any practices that are inconsistent with the school’s purpose.

Translate the school’s purpose (vision) into stories that engage other emotionally and intellectually.

Keep value statements direct by stating our commitments as behaviours.

Focus on what you can do, not on what others should do.

Recognize that the process is nonlinear, nonhierarchical and nonsequential.

Forget the label PLC and concentrate on the key assumptions and critical practices.

Chapter III - Creating a Focus on Learning

Create a school culture that is simultaneously loose and tight. P. 45

One expectation the school must establish is that every teacher will be called upon to work collaboratively with colleagues in clarifying the questions:

1. What is it we want our students to learn?

2. How will we know when each student has learned it? P. 46

The constant inquiry into these questions is a professional responsibility of every faculty member. Nor can the responsibility be left to each teacher to address on his or her own. P. 46

I. In answering the first question the process should be specifically designed to eliminate content from the curriculum. … Collaborative teams of teachers would work together to build a shared knowledge regarding essential curriculum. P. 47.

Questions that identify essential curriculum are:

1. Does it have endurance?

2. Does it have leverage?

3. Does it develop student readiness for the next level of learning?

Curriculum that does not satisfy these questions may still be taught but should not detract from the essential curriculum. We should also create a list of topics that we stop doing because, while we may enjoy teaching them, they are not essential. P. 48

KEEP, DROP, CREATE

3. Frequent monitoring of each student’s learning is an essential element of effective teaching, and no teacher should be absolved from that task or allowed to assign responsibility for it to provincial test makers, district learning specialists, or textbook publishers. P. 48-49

This means that the system must enable teachers to:

• Create a specific minimum number of common assessments.

• Demonstrate how these assessments are aligned with course outcomes.

• Specify proficiency standards for essential content and skills.

• Set out consistent testing practices.

• Align common assessments with other non-school assessments.

• Assess a few key concepts frequently rather than many concepts infrequently.

P. 49

Teachers should have the autonomy to complete the common assessment process but be responsible to show that common assessment correlates with student performance on non-school assessments. P. 50

Benefits of teacher collaborative study of essential learning:

• Promotes meaning and clarity of standards

• Promotes consistency in the effort placed on standards

• Provides for alignment in instructional pacing necessary for common assessments

• Prevents curriculum overload

• Creates curriculum ownership among teachers

P. 51-52

Ownership and commitment are directly linked to teacher engagement in the decision-making process, which correlates with improved results. An attempt to bring about significant change in a school without first engaging those who will be called upon to do the work for the change creates a context for failure. P. 53

Power of Common Assessments

While formative assessments can be likened to a routine physical check-up, summative assessment is your autopsy. Which is most useful to you as the patient?

Formative assessments:

• are assessments for learning

• measure a few things frequently

• guide on-going practice

• identify areas that require more support for learning

• can be used to motivate student engagement

• provide student with specific feedback

• can help build student confidence

Summative assessments:

• are assessments of learning

• determine if learning is meeting deadlines

• measure many things infrequently

• identify strengths and weaknesses of curricula and programs

• promote institutional accountability

• can be used to motivate teacher engagement

• provide teachers with specific feedback

P. 55

Team-developed formative assessments are such a powerful tool that no team of teachers should be allowed to opt out of creating them. They are:

• more efficient than assessments created by individual teachers

• more equitable for students

• more effective in determining whether the essential curriculum is being taught and learned

• inform individual teacher practices

• build teacher team’s capacity to improve its program

• facilitate a systematic, collective response to students who experience difficulty

P. 55-57

Working with colleagues is an ongoing professional responsibility from which no teacher should be exempt. P. 58

Review Pages 65-67 “Tips for moving forward”

Chapter IV - How Will We Respond When Some Students Don’t Learn?

Professional learning communities create a systematic process of interventions to ensure that students receive additional time and support for learning when they experience difficulty. The intervention processes must be timely and students are directed rather than invited to utilize the system of time and support. P. 71

In a best case scenario, with the traditional model of schooling the individual teacher is the only person in the school who even realizes the student is having difficulty for the first 9 weeks of the school year. P. 74

Schools need a schedule and the resources to ensure that students will receive the extra time and support for learning in a timely, directive, and systematic way. P. 75

When schools make time and support for learning constant, the variable will always be student learning. To make learning constant, time and support must become the variables. P. 76

For too long learning has been a prisoner of time with students and teachers being held captive by the clock and calendar. Schools must come to regard time as a tool rather than a limitation. P. 77

The lack of systematic response to ensure that students receive additional opportunities for learning reduces the assessment to yet another summative test administered solely to assign a grade. The response that occurs after the test has been given will truly determine whether or not it is being used as a formative assessment. P. 77

Individual teachers working in isolation as they attempt to help all of their students achieve at high levels will eventually be overwhelmed by the tension between covering the content and responding to the diverse needs of their students in a fixed amount of time with virtually no external support. P. 77

It is disingenuous for any school to claim its purpose is to help all students learn at high levels and then fail to create a system of interventions to give struggling learners additional time and support for learning. … Furthermore, we cannot meet the needs of our students unless we assume collective responsibility for their well being. P. 78

The paradigm must change from “these are my kids, my room, and my materials” to “these are our kids and we cannot help all of them learn what they must learn without a collective effort”.

P. 78

Review Pages 81-85 “Tips for moving forward”

Chapter V – Building the Collaborative Culture of a Professional Learning Community

Individuals oppose providing educators with time to collaborate. They typically frame their objection by arguing the time a teacher spends collaborating with their colleagues is time that could have been spent teaching students, and thus represents unproductive time. Research from both organizational development and education refute that position. Effective organizations and effective schools built time for reflection and dialogue into every process. The goal is not merely to do more of what we have always done, but to create a culture of continuous improvement, forever. P. 108

Why is it so important to organize staff into collaborative teams rather than continue the long-standing tradition of teacher isolation? “Interdependence is what organizations are all about. Productivity, performance, and innovation result from joint action, not just individual efforts and behaviour” (Pfeffer & Sutton, 2000).

Collaborative time can be squandered if educators do not use that time to focus on issues most directly related to teaching and learning. P. 108

The fact that teachers collaborate will do nothing to improve a school. The purpose of collaboration can only be accomplished if the professionals engaged in collaboration are focused on the right things. P. 91

1. What is it that we want our students to learn?

2. How will we know if each student has learned it?

3. How will we respond when some students do not learn it?

4. How can we extend and enrich the learning for students who have demonstrated proficiency? P. 91

Team Building

The task of building a collaborative culture requires more than bringing random adults together in the hope they will discover a topic of conversation. We must bring together people whose responsibilities create an inherent mutual interest in exploring the four critical questions. P. 93

It is imperative that teachers be provided with time to meet during their contractual day. It is insincere and disingenuous for any school district or any school principal to stress the importance of collaboration and then fail to provide time for collaboration. P. 95

One of the ways that organizations demonstrate their priorities is the allocation of resources, and in schools, the most precious resource is time. If teachers and administrators alike are often reluctant to lose precious instructional time so that teachers can meet in teams, we must revisit the norms that dictate how team meetings are conducted. P. 95 – 96

Professional Learning Communities depend upon a collaborative teaming model.

Team – a group of people working interdependently to achieve a common goal for which members are held mutually accountable. A collection of teachers does not truly become a team until they must rely upon one another (and need one another) to accomplish a goal that none of them could achieve individually. P. 98

Collaboration – a systematic process in which educators work together interdependently to analyze and to impact their professional practice in order to achieve better results for their students, their team, and their school. P. 98

Those who develop systematic practices do not hope things happen a certain way: they create specific structures to ensure certain steps are taken. P. 98

The reason teachers are organized into teams and provided time to work together, the reason they are asked to focus on certain topics and complete specific tasks, is so when they return to their classrooms they will possess and utilize an expanded repertoire of skills, strategies, materials, and ideas in order to impact student achievement in a positive way. One of the most effective ways to enhance team productivity is to insist that they produce artifacts related to the team’s collective inquiry into the four critical questions. P. 99

Teams need timelines, protocols, and articulated expectations (SSMART Goals). P. 99

Critical Issues for Team Consideration – P.100-101

The Importance of Explicit Norms for Cohesive and High Performing Teams

Norms are needed to:

• Build trust to overcome fear of being perceived ineffective by peers.

• Promote productive conflict and insightful inquiry.

• Promote mutual commitment and accountability

• Focus on results P. 102

Team norms are not intended to serve as rules, but rather as commitments. When done well, norms can help establish the trust, openness, commitment, and accountability that move teams from trivial to substantive (efforts). P. 107

Seven norms (Garmston & Wellman, 1999) P. 104

Pausing

Paraphrasing

Probing for specificity

Putting ideas on the table

Presuming positive intentions

Paying attention to self and others

Pursuing balance between advocacy and inquiry

Protocols for Advocacy and Inquiry

|Advocacy | |

|State your assumptions |Here is what I think |

|Describe your reasoning |Here are some of the reasons why I came to this conclusion |

|Give concrete examples |Let me explain how I saw this work in another situation |

|Reveal your perspectives |I acknowledge that I see this from a ___________ perspective |

|Anticipate other perspectives |Some individuals are likely to see this as _______ |

|Acknowledge areas of uncertainty |I’m not sure about _____ / You may be able to help me with ______ |

|Invite others to question your assumptions and conclusions |What is your reaction to what I have said? How do you see this? |

| | |

|Inquiry | |

|Gently probe underlying logic |What led you to that conclusion? |

|Use non-aggressive language |Can you help me understand your thinking here? |

|Draw out their thinking |Which aspects of what you have proposed do you feel are most significant or |

| |essential? |

|Check for understanding |I think what you are saying is ________ |

|Explain your reason for inquiring |I’m asking about your comment because I feel ___ |

Teams increase their likelihood of high performance when they clarify expectations of one another regarding procedures, responsibilities, and relationships. P. 103

In high performing teams, members:

• willingly consider matters from others’’ points of view

• demonstrate accurate understanding of spoken & unspoken feelings, interests, and concerns of other members

• speak up when an individual violates the team norms

• confront others in a caring manner aimed at building consensus and shared commitment

• communicate respect and appreciation

• self evaluate their effectiveness

• seek external feedback

• maintain a positive working environment

• take initiative to resolve issues

• understand the team’s connection to the larger organization

• establish relationships with others who can help them achieve team goals P. 103-104

Chapter VI – Creating a Results Orientation

Organizations do not focus on results: the people within them do, or they do not. (Mintzberg, 1994). P. 119

Goals are important motivators, but only if teams receive feedback. (Kouzes & Posner, 1999). P. 143

Law of Initiative Fatigue – veteran teachers become hardened to the sheer volume of frequent, fragmented, and uncoordinated new projects, programs, and reforms that wash over them in waves. P. 120

District offices often have a tendency to send mixed messages, thereby creating a cacophony of competing interests. They must begin to work as a unified team working interdependently to achieve a limited number of essential goals. They should communicate the importance of these goals by pursuing them with constancy and shielding schools from competing interests and initiatives. P. 121

Limiting district goals and initiatives is a necessary step in creating a results orientation, but it is not sufficient. Steps must be taken to ensure that district goals guide the work of individual schools and their classrooms. We must insist that school create goals that are specifically linked to district goals. Before this can be done there must be agreement between the district and schools on the goals. P. 122

The next critical step is for each collaborative team to translate one or more of the school goals into SSMART goals that drive the work of the team. P. 126

See blank copy of SSMART Goal Worksheet on P. 133 AND then read the statement below!

Effective team goals will focus on intended outcomes rather than on the strategies to achieve the outcomes. P. 134

There is no evidence that strategic planning leads to improved results. Effective leaders are skillful in making the complex simple; strategic planning almost inevitably makes the simple complex. P. 135

Strategic plans often serve as a barrier to the relentless action orientation of effective organizations. P. 135

The biggest factor in the ineffectiveness of formal strategic planning rests on its faulty underlying assumption: some people in organizations (the leaders) are responsible for thinking and planning while others (the workers) are responsible for carrying out those plans. This separation of thought and action is the antithesis of a learning community, which requires widely dispersed leadership and strategic thinkers throughout the organization. P. 135

Helping teams translate long-term purpose into specific, measurable short-term goals, is one of the most important steps leaders can take in building the capacity of a group to function as a high-performing collaborative team. (Katzenbach & Smith, 1993) P. 136

Tyranny of OR - Genius of AND

A Balance between Attainable Goals and Stretch Goals

Attainable Goals are those that document incremental progress and build momentum and self-efficacy through short-term wins.

Stretch Goals are those that inspire, capture imagination, stimulate creativity and innovation, and unify. They are not mission statements because they set specific targets rather than vague expressions or beliefs.

Stretch goals typically require significant changes in current organizational practices. P. 136

Review Pages 141-142 “Tips for moving forward”

Number 8 is very important!

Chapter VII – Using Relevant Information to Improve Results

Relevant, timely information is the essential fuel necessary for the continuous improvement process. P. 145

For too long schools have focused on process and inputs, operating under the faulty assumption that improved learning is guaranteed if we select the right curriculum, create the right schedule, buy the right textbook, increase graduation requirements, extend the school year, and so on. This assumption has repeatedly, consistently, and invariably proven to be incorrect. … It is through the collective examination of results – tangible evidence of student learning – that teacher dialogue moves from sharing opinions to building shared knowledge (skills and dispositions) which leads to enhanced student learning. P. 147

DRIP Syndrome - Data Rich but Information Poor

The best way to provide powerful feedback to teachers and to turn data into information that can improve teaching and learning is through team-developed and team-analyzed common formative assessments. P. 148

The school must create systems to ensure that each teacher receives frequent and timely feedback on the performance of his or her students, in meeting an agreed-upon proficiency standard established by the collaborative team, on a valid assessment created by the team, in comparison to other students in the school attempting to meet that same standard. P. 149

When teams work together to establish measurable goals, collect and analyze data regarding their progress, and monitor and adjust their actions, they produce results that “guide, goad, and motivate groups and individuals” (Smoker, 1996). P. 151

Review Pages 158 -160. “Tips for moving forward”

Chapter VIII – Consensus and Conflict in a Professional Learning Community

Every organization will experience conflict, particularly when the organization is engaged in significant change. Every collective endeavour will include instances when people fail to honour agreed-upon priorities and collective commitments. The ultimate goal is to create a culture that is so strong and so open that members throughout the organization will use the violation as an opportunity to reinforce what is valued. … It is typically the responsibility of the leader to communicate what is important and valued by demonstrating a willingness to confront when appropriate. Nothing will destroy leader credibility more than an unwillingness to deal with these violations. P. 168

Leaders are always in a better position to confront when they act as the promoters and protectors of decisions, agreements, and commitments of the group (Klein, Medrich, & Perez-Ferreiro, 1996). P. 171

The best leaders will create a ‘critical mass’ of those willing to act and will then move to action without expecting universal support (Evans, 1996, Burns, 1978) P. 171

Decision making is easier, more effective, and less likely to end in disputes about process when a staff has a clear operational definition of consensus. P. 167

Consensus – when all points of view have been heard and the will of the group is evident even to those who oppose it. P. 165

If we want everyone to agree before we can act we give every member of the team the power to veto. This subjects us to constant inaction and a state of status quo. P. 165

The real strength of a PLC is determined by the response to the disagreements and violations that inevitably occur. P. 167

Listening is not only the skill that lets you into the other person’s world; it is the single most powerful move you can make to keep the conversation constructive. P. 169

Successful groups know how to fight gracefully – they embrace the positive aspects of conflict and actively minimize the negative aspects … Conflict is an important resource for forging better practices. P. 170

A culture that squashes disagreement is a culture doomed to stagnate, because change always begins with disagreement. Disagreement can never be squashed entirely. It gets repressed, only to emerge later as a sense of injustice, followed by apathy, resentment, and even sabotage. P. 171-172

Conflict is an inevitable by-product of the substantive change processes in schools (Louis, Kruse, & Marks, 1996). The absence of conflict suggests that changes are only superficial because “conflict is essential to any successful change effort” (Fullan, 1993). P. 172

Day after day in schools, change initiatives, instructional improvement, and better results for children are blocked, sabotaged, or killed through silence and inaction … this lack of follow-through results from the avoidance or inability to face conflict openly and make it a creative source of energy among educators (Saphier, 2005) P. 176

All that is necessary for the triumph of those who resist school improvement is for educational leaders to do nothing. P. 177

Effective leaders will surface the conflict, draw out and acknowledge the varying perspectives, and search for common ground rather than focusing on how to kill it or avoid it. When managed well, conflict can serve as an engine of creativity and energy that builds shared knowledge, clarifies priorities, and develops stronger teams. P. 172

Factors that Change People’s Thinking (Gardner, 2004) P. 173

1. Reason – appealing to rational thinking and decision making.

2. Research – building shared knowledge of the research supporting a position.

3. Resonance – Connecting to the person’s intuition so the idea ‘feels right’.

4. Representational Re-descriptions – Changing the way the information is presented (analogies, stories instead of data).

5. Resources and Rewards – Providing incentives.

6. Real-World Examples – Sharing anecdotal stories of how ideas worked in other places.

Resistance must be identified and dealt with rather than ignored, and that direct confrontation of resistance is an important seventh factor in changing someone’s mind. P. 173

Persuasion, consensus building, and all the other arts of influence don’t always do the job. Sometimes it simply comes down to using the power of one’s position to get people to act. A common failing of leaders is the failure to be emphatically assertive when necessary (Goleman, 1998). P. 177

When confronting resistance, don’t focus on the attitude – focus on the behaviour. It is easier to behave one’s way into new beliefs than to believe ones’ way into new behaviours. P. 174

Leaders must persist and follow through on the specific consequences that have been outlined to those who violate the collective commitments. They must keep in mind that the goal in addressing these violations is not only to bring about change in the resistor, but also to communicate organizational priorities. P. 174

The goal in confronting saboteurs is not to remove them, but to reduce their relevance in the decisions regarding the direction the group is headed. P. 175

Vital Smarts Password is password

Chapter IX – The Complex Challenge of Creating PLCs

When a school moves from traditional practice to create a PLC it undergoes a seismic cultural shift. P. 185

Becoming a PLC “changes everything”: It also changes everyone. Every teacher, counselor, principal, central office staff member, and superintendent – will be called upon to re-define his or her role and responsibilities. People comfortable working in isolation will be asked to work collaboratively. People accustomed to hording authority will be asked to share it. People who have operated under certain assumptions their entire careers will be asked to change them. P. 186

The impulse of most leaders is to accept the system as it is and lead it. Those that hope to serve in any capacity in building PLCs must overcome that impulse. Leaders must commit to creating the conditions in which educators can continue to grow and learn as professionals. P. 185

Widely dispersed leadership is essential in building and sustaining PLCs. P. 185

The introduction of PLCs is a second order change because it requires a cultural shift in how schools operate. It is a break with the past and is inconsistent with existing paradigms, conflicts with prevailing practices and norms, and requires new knowledge and skills. P. 186

COPY pages 187 – 189 – These pages capture the breadth of change required to transform traditional schools into professional learning communities.

The fact that a concept is backed by research, evidence, and logic does not mean it will be embraced by those called upon to abandon the comfort and security of their known practices in order to implement that concept. P. 190

The response to any significant change is typically not logical; it is emotional. Even when that change is recognized as positive, it is accompanied by a sense of loss and causes a kind of bereavement. We react defensively if our assumptions are called into question. Change challenges our competence and causes us anxiety as we move outside our comfort zone. We become confused as we replace predictability with uncertainty. It is daunting to take risks while being held accountable for something as important as children’s education. P. 190

We know of no instances in which a school-wide PLC was created and sustained without the effective leadership from the principal. Deep reform requires both support and pressure. P. 191

“Bottom-up as possible, Top-down as necessary” (Evans, 1996).

If leaders allow participation in PLC processes to be optional, they doom the initiative to failure. Substantive change that transforms a culture will ultimately require more than an invitation. P. 191

Leading a PLC Initiative

• Link the change initiative to current practices and assumptions when possible.

(Honor rather than demean the past)

• Focus first on the “Why” of change, then focus on the “How”.

(Maintain the moral purpose in the face of obstacles)

• Align actions with words.

(Avoid cynicism by behaviours that reinforce commitments)

• Be flexible on implementation but firm on the essence of the initiative.

(Identify and remember what is loose and what is tight)

• Build a guiding coalition and move forward without unanimity.

(Share leadership with a team of respected teachers)

• Expect to make mistakes and learn from them.

(Setbacks are opportunities to gain new insights)

• Learn by doing

(Do more working than training – those who do – learn) P. 192-198

The school leadership has an essential role in promoting teacher self-efficacy. They must not only keep the faith personally; they must foster hope throughout the organization. Leaders of PLCs must consistently communicate, through their words and actions, their conviction that the people in their school and district are capable of accomplishing great things through their collective efforts. P. 199

Hope and self-efficacy are not simply innate – they can be learned AND they are contagious. For the sake of their students, teachers need to believe that their collective efforts can make a difference. P. 199

Smart is not something you are … smart is something you get. This applies as well to teachers as it does to students. P. 200

The efforts to create PLCs should be a tri-level effort that involves the province, the district, and the individual school and community working together. P. 206

The most common failure to close the knowing-doing gap is not conflict with others, but conflict from within. We fail to do what we recognize we should do simply because it is easier to continue an unquestionably ineffective or bad practice than it is to adopt a new one. P. 206

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are insignificant compared to what lies within us. (Emerson). P. 207

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