Developing the SCDN Professional Learning Community

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Developing the SCDN Professional Learning
Community

• SCDN
• December 6, 2007

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Facilitated by

• Giselle Martin-Kniep
• Communities for Learning
• Leading Lasting ChangeTM
• Learner-Centered Initiatives, Ltd (LCI)
• 516-502-4231, and 516-502-4232
• www.lciltd.org
• www.communitiesforlearning.org
• gmklci_at_aol.com

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Outcomes

• Explore the relationship between leadership style
  and professional learning communities
• Develop a vision for the SCDN professional
  learning community using leadership style as an
  entry point
• Assess the SCDN organizational readiness to
  support professional learning communities
• Identify interventions to promote the capacity of
  SCDN to support professional learning communities

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Exploring our leadership style(based on
Hargreaves, 2007)

• Who are you most of the time in your place of
  work?

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Autocratic

• You will.
• Delegating what we hate to do
• Promotes resistance

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Traditional delegation

• Maximizes existing structure
• Maintains or improves the existing management of
  an institution
• Convenient

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Progressive delegation

• Changing structures to create different kinds of
  conversations
• Feels like change (i.e., multi-age teams
  co-teaching job sharing)

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Guided distribution

• Necessary if there is no collaborative structure
  in the organization
• No no go area

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Emergent distribution

• Creates a culture where leadership comes forward
• Genuinely shared vision

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Assertive distribution

• Shared vision and arguments over best way to
  achieve it
• Hard to follow this style

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Anarchy

• Anything goes

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Skillful leadership is flexible and
differentiated (balancing purpose, style and
needs)Andy Hargreaves Chris James
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Grouping activity
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Visioning activityParts 1 and 2
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So. what is a Communities for Learning
professional learning community?
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Communities for Learning Definition
Collective forums that share a purpose, a vision
and goals related to developing schools as
learning organizations
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Participants may include

• Teachers
• Students
• Parents
• Principals and other building administrators
• District administrators

• Professional developers
• Board members
• Community members
• School counselors
• University faculty
• School specialists

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Why multiple roles?

• Access to multiple perspectives
• De-politicized discourse
• Better access to the complex nature of teaching,
  learning and school systems

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What differentiates one professional learning
community from another?
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Communities that Learn

• Include individuals whose primary focus is
  learning to increase understanding about an issue
  or topic or area of interest related to teaching
  and learning.

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Communities that Lead

• Comprise participants who are committed to
  leading the learning of others. They remain
  learners, but their learning is focused on
  deepening their own leadership and facilitation
  skills.

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Communities that Last

• Focus on sustaining the learning and work of the
  community and organization. Their learning
  revolves around systems dynamics, strategic
  planning and organizational development.

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Visioning Activity

• Parts 3 and 4

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How might leadership style relate to professional
learning communities?
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Core Elements of Communities that learn, lead
and last
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Identification, Cultivation and Use of
Expertise/Experience
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Alignment of Individual and Organizational
Passions, Needs and Vision
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Development of Dispositions of Practice

• Commitment to Understanding
• Intellectual Perseverance
• Courage and Initiative
• Commitment to Reflection
• Commitment to Expertise
• Collegiality

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Activity with Dispositions
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Commitment to Understanding

• Looks like
• pursuing questions and developing ideas related
  to teaching and learning
• using research and evidence
• accessing multiple perspectives

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Intellectual Perseverance

• Looks like
• considering ideas or questions for a period of
  time to improve our work
• revising and revisiting our work and our thinking
  to improve it and to reach high standards
• withholding the need to finish work before its
  the best that it can be

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Courage and Initiative

• Is
• discussing uncomfortable topics or issues,
  including own values and questions
• accepting the discomfort that stems from the need
  to change
• seeking or accepting new or unfamiliar roles,
  responsibilities or challenges

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Commitment to Reflection

• Looks like
• sharing our thinking to develop and evaluate it
• thinking about our thinking and learning to set
  goals, assess and understand ourselves, our work
  and our organization
• producing work that results from goals, actions
  and strategies that are grounded in the analysis
  of past learning

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Commitment to Expertise

• Is
• refining and expanding our current professional
  knowledge and skills
• disseminating our knowledge and expertise within
  and outside our own organization
• engaging in learning and work that addresses
  organizational or professional needs

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Collegiality

• Is
• learning with and from others
• acting on the belief that learning and working
  with others increases our expertise
• producing work that results from engaging in
  collaborative learning and problem solving

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Defining the distance between our vision and our
current reality
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Assessing SCDNs Organizational Readiness
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Identification of Interventions to Increase
Organizational Readiness