Chapter 7
Facilitating Learning Communities
Math scores are now the highest in the school's history. That's due to the learning community.
— An elementary school principal
Developing and facilitating learning communities is a high-payoff strategy whereby group members engage together in solving common problems directly correlated with improving student achievement and building on the culture. Research has found that such learning communities are “a strong predictor of instructional practices that are strongly associated with student achievement” (Louis, 2009, p. 37).
This strategy goes by many different names. Sometimes called professional learning communities, communities of practice, peer learning, data teams, inquiry groups, learning teams, or other labels, they nevertheless have several characteristics in common. The learning community is ongoing and results oriented. The community defines and contributes model practices, tools, curriculum, or other agreed-on products for use by the community and for others in the school or district. There is a clear vision of an instruction-centered goal. This is active and mutual learning, not learning just for the sake of learning.
It is a real-time strategy in which participants define a problem of practice and devise ways to address it based on what each participant brings to the table. The aim is for everyone to make good use of what is developed to strengthen his or her own ongoing practices. It is continual, job-embedded learning—that refresher we spoke about in chapter 1.
This goes well beyond individual learning and having good, collegial conversations. The learning community should result in products that inform the community members and can also be shared with the full district or school to assist others as well. This happens via regular meetings as well as other activities in-between meetings such as assignments that participants bring back to the group.
The learning community is not an add-on to everyone's work. It is the work. Learning communities are supportive and further the work that everyone is engaged with and helps everyone do his or her job better. For learning communities to work at their best, the culture should support those instruction-centered values described in chapter 4, particularly learning, teamwork, risk taking, trust, and learning from mistakes. If any of these values are not present, the successful learning community strategy helps to build them.
So, by whatever name it is known, let's call them learning communities here and define them as ongoing, coordinated activities geared to learning together to further instructional objectives in the context of the culture.
Purpose and Goals
Because learning communities support the achievement of leading instruction strategy, it is important that the leadership team consider the guidance in chapters 5 and 6 first. Then learning communities know what outcomes they want to address and can decide on their topic, problem(s) of practice, and early wins. Typically they deal with such topics as literacy across the curriculum, writing across the curriculum, improving instruction in the content areas, and using data to define and address common problems of instructional practice.
Learning Methods
Learning communities use engaging and collegial learning methods such as analysis of data, reading books and discussing their implications, teacher demonstration lessons and discussions, focus groups with students, common review of student work, visitation with teachers in other schools, and exploring the latest research, among other methods. Bringing in outside experts from time to time—or sending some learning community members to conferences—is useful because it provides outside perspectives and motivation.
There are strict rules of engagement that center on the commitment of all group members to each other and to the work: meetings must not be canceled (they are top priority), all members attend all meetings, and data (as opposed to unsubstantiated opinion) rules! Often the learning communities ask participants to sign compacts or contracts in which these commitments are made explicit.
Structures
The communities are organized into different groups at different times. It is important that each learning community has the participants needed for the job. It is also important that people experience being in different groups at different times for different perspectives. For example, some learning communities might be organized by discipline, others by grade level, others by “critical friends” members, still others might be a mix of feeder pattern grades (third grade with fourth grade, for example), or a mix of participants from across the school or district.
Some learning communities might have rotating chairs. The principal or district leaders are not always or often the community leaders. They must be sincere in wanting to learn alongside everyone else. The learning communities are an excellent opportunity for listening. Often the leader, however, will provide common templates (see the “Learning Together Templates” in chapter 8) so there is a common structure to all the learning communities and they can come up with the same type of product or result.
The leader makes it convenient for the groups to meet, usually a common meeting time each week. Principals interviewed revealed that some had half-day meetings every Wednesday and others scheduled forty minutes on Monday or Wednesday afternoons. What matters is the consistency of the scheduling—and that all learning community members have the same schedule. Of course, as we saw in chapter 4, leaders need to make sure that the planned learning community time does not conflict with members' other values, such as needing to leave to pick up their children from other settings.
District-Level Learning Communities
Districts can help make this happen for all schools, and the principal can make this happen within the school. District leaders conduct learning communities for school leaders across the district. They may also support school learning communities by facilitating them and serving as outside experts. They may also facilitate visits to other schools within the district.
Not only was the learning community successful but also their idea had been put into action—and student achievement was apparent the very next semester. It was important that something practical emerged from the learning community's analysis and discussions—and that the leadership team was responsive and able to shift resources to its creation. The learning community now has great credibility (and an important symbol of its success in the center). It still meets regularly because they never run out of problems of practice to address!
Advice for Planners and Facilitators
Planning these sessions and the work in-between sessions is different from developing a workshop or course. A course is designed to deliver understanding and use of specific content. Even though the most effective workshops are reality-based and interactive—they are still content-based. Learning communities are different—they are based in problem solving with no prescribed content other than that which participants bring in as appropriate.
Therefore, planning effective learning communities is more dependent on group problem identification and design of a product or resource to help them and others address the problem. The learning is problem-based, not content-based. The learning community needs to go where it needs to go as the needs develop in real time. Adaptability and flexibility are important.
Facilitating such a group entails getting the best out of each participant: thinking on one's feet about what is being said and how each contribution can combine with others to make progress. And, facilitation is firmly about enforcing the ground rules, without which the group is likely to dissolve into chaos:
- The facilitator presents a problem statement.
- Participants speak to the specifics of the topic being discussed.
- Contributions should be based on data and evidence, not opinion.
- No personal statements about anyone are permitted.
- Everyone listens respectfully to each other.
- Ultimately, the question is whether each member can support the group's decision (not whether everyone agrees it is the best approach).
Planners often underestimate the importance of ground rules. Especially for low-readiness groups, ground rules are a must. If people are inexperienced working in learning communities or have had unsuccessful experience, they will not know what to do. They will truly appreciate the structure and guidance. This became apparent to an assistant principal who was trying to conduct a learning community. She reported that the group was meeting, but not moving. What finally unstuck the group was spending a full meeting agreeing on the ground rules. From then on, the work proceeded well and resulted in needed changes to the science curriculum, the group's goal. A year later, the group was still meeting productively.
In the following sections, we'll explore using the building blocks of strategy to lead improvements in instruction, that is, getting buy-in, starting with an early win, and providing ongoing support.
Getting Buy-In: “We're All in This Together”
The leader has goals for students based on the instructional vision of the school. It is, however, important that teachers also are satisfied and fulfilled. One way to build in this “what's in it for me” is through promoting learning and growth for the adults in the community. Many are familiar with philosopher Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a motivational framework that demonstrates that most people have a need to learn, grow, and self-actualize. Therefore, most people are motivated by learning on the job and achieving satisfaction. The learning community is a natural outlet for this to happen. Everyone has an ongoing learning experience that also helps improve their teaching practice. One principal cited as a great moment in the life of the learning community when teachers were able to say “I'm struggling with this.”
In order for this learning and growth to be motivational, however, it has to correspond to the perceived needs of each individual. Each person needs to define his or her own learning needs. These may or may not be the same as what the leader wants the person to learn. A balance point must be reached. Nonetheless, the learning communities need to be based on a combination of what all agree to be the most important learning to achieve the instruction-improvement strategy.
The leader needs to identify those self-perceived learning needs, analyze the similarities and differences between those and what needs to be learned to achieve the instruction strategy result, and plan the learning communities accordingly. The “Participants' Needs Assessment Template” in chapter 8 should help with this.
Starting with an Early Win
The first work product of the learning community is a good example of an early win—not only for the learning community strategy but also for the instructional strategy. It is, therefore, particularly important that the learning community selects an effective early win to pursue. Several principals have remarked that there was some resentment or opposition to the learning community when it was initially proposed, but “once the math achievement/reading achievement went up, the resentment want away.”
Remember that these are not June scores on standardized tests—the early win can be measured by teacher evaluation of student work, portfolio assessment, student presentations, or scores on teacher-made quizzes. The idea is to implement the activity, tool, or teaching practice developed by the learning community and observe the difference it makes for students in the near term.
Because this is an early look, it is possible to invent new activities if it turns out that the first try by the learning community did not result in improved student learning. If that is the case, the next job of the learning community is to ask why and develop new activities to try to address what's missing.
Providing Ongoing Support
A learning community needs several ongoing supports, for example, a regular time to meet and access to timely and accurate data. However, there is one ongoing support that is indispensable—someone who is assigned to be the facilitator (sometimes called a coach).
This is the person who is responsible for monitoring the work plan and making sure that the work is moving along apace and that deadlines are met. The facilitator often does more than give people friendly reminders—he or she often is someone who makes things happen, such as synthesizing responses or data provided by learning community members for the next meeting.
See It in Action: Working with Learning Communities 
An example of how an assistant principal has effectively used a learning community to improve instruction for his students has been developed by Public Broadcasting Service affiliate WNET. It is in the section “Cultivating Leadership in Others,” and may be found at http://bit.ly/highpayoff5.
You'll see the assistant principal of administration lead the school's biology learning community and how the principal coaches him along the way. Through the biology learning community, teachers have made enhancements, student performance has improved, and the assistant principal has learned a great deal about learning communities as a vehicle to lead instruction, both for students and for teachers.
What Can Get in the Way?
A recent survey of principals in North Dakota found that they considered conducting the learning community to be important, but it was their most difficult undertaking. They are right. Here are some reasons why.
Lack of Focus
The single biggest obstacle is that participants often have trouble narrowing the scope of what the group will address. Sometimes these results come from over-enthusiasm for what the group will be able to do; other times it stems from needing to develop a muscle to truly hone in on what is most important and doable. It is the learning community equivalent of “I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one.”
It is easier to talk in generalities than to drill down to specifics—especially in a group setting. The broader the discussion, the easier it is to get consensus. However, what you get is a group that either talks endlessly about its purpose or—if it sets to work on a broad area—gets bogged down in ideas at the expense of accomplishing anything. The key to avoiding this barrier is to have a good facilitator who leads the group to drill down on specifics. The facilitator's template in chapter 8 should help.
Seen as an Add-On
Because learning communities represent an ongoing time commitment, participants will be resentful if what's in it for them is not readily apparent. This commonly results from the work of the learning community being separate and apart from the work participants do on a daily basis. Without alignment—if people can't take what they are doing in the learning community and integrate it with their classes and their students—they will see it as something they are being asked to do “for the good of the school or district” and be less interested and less willing to put forth the effort.
The best way to avoid this potential obstacle is to be very clear and specific about the result—and have all learning community members buy in to that result. Something else that is often effective is to have as a ground rule that the group will often ask the question, is what we are doing directly applicable to our teaching? If the answer is no, the facilitator scraps the rest of the agenda and the group goes on to another topic that is seen as directly applicable.
Not Having the Option to Fail
Learning community members must be permitted to experiment and fail as long as they monitor their work with data. The culture needs to be respectful of risk taking and learning from mistakes so groups feel free to take risks that might push the envelope to solve difficult problems. Playing it safe won't get many innovative solutions. Learning communities need to be adaptable and flexible because their destination and content can't be known at the beginning. They need to go where they need to go as the work evolves.
Leaders Dominate the Discussion
The goal to learn together must be genuine. Learning communities are not a forum for the leaders to share their wisdom and opinions. Everyone is an equal player in these communities; everyone has an important voice. Leaders need to respect this and enable participation and collaboration. When possible, leaders should not be the facilitators of the learning community. These communities are a great chance for leaders to listen and contribute—not to lead or dominate.
__________
What follows in chapter 8 are templates that can guide the planning and conducting of successful learning communities for (1) the participants, (2) the planners, and (3) the facilitator, and a template for keeping track of the decisions made.