This paper reviews Professional Learning Communities at Work: Best Practices for Enhancing Student Achievement by DuFour, Eaker, and Baker (1998). It examines the book's central argument that locally generated Small Learning Communities (SLCs), guided by Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) of educators and administrators, can meaningfully improve student achievement across entire schools. The review gives particular attention to the book's treatment of the principal's role — as strategic planner, bridge figure, and facilitator of professional development — in building a shared culture of learning, encouraging teacher self-reflection, and sustaining the school's collective mission.
Professional Learning Communities at Work: Best Practices for Enhancing Student Achievement attempts to answer the often vexing questions that plague those in the educational profession: what policies are best suited to enhancing collective student achievement on a school-wide level, as opposed to policies that merely improve individual student performance within a single classroom? The book advocates a "best practices" approach — identifying what works and what does not — by instituting school learning communities built around the specific needs of a student body, developed in dialogue with the concerns and ideas of teachers, administrators, and parents. The authors argue that this united approach is essential to making concrete strides toward reviving the so-called "excellence movement" to improve public education for every student (DuFour, Eaker & Baker, 1998, p. 6).
Despite the national context in which their research is situated, authors DuFour and Eaker stress the need for locally generated, small learning communities rather than offering specific curriculum prescriptions. They propose new modes of staff organization rather than a wholesale new approach to specific subject matter. At the core of the book is the idea that Small Learning Communities (SLCs) of individuals within a school, united by Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) of educators and administrators, can bring about meaningful change. Principals, as delineated in Chapter 9 of the text, are especially important in creating cultural changes and facilitating dialogue between teachers and parents.
Principals serve as a kind of bridge figure between the occasionally competing needs and desires of different actors within individual classrooms, and they are often the school's primary representatives to the broader parent community. DuFour, Eaker, and Baker state that principals also play a critical internal role in fostering staff development, enabling teachers and administrators to communicate effectively and create a common culture of learning and professional growth within the school.
It is necessary that principals provide an objective perspective during disputes and when reviewing data used to gauge student performance as part of new, school-driven initiatives. Principals are instrumental in sparking professional dialogue among teachers and encouraging critical self-reflection. All of these elements of reflection and reflexiveness are essential during staff meetings for a true Professional Learning Community to function as it should.
A good principal is willing to provide an honest evaluation of how the school is progressing in its mission and does not allow the school's reputation to rest on past laurels. A principal functions as the strategic planner who determines the long-term goals of the school and the short-term goals, or benchmarks, the school must reach to achieve them. By setting goals and helping generate a collective sense of mission for all members of the school community, principals create the necessary atmosphere for more effective practices.
"Mentorship and ongoing teacher learning under principals"
"Balancing big-picture mission with daily school needs"
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