COLLABORATIVE INSTRUCTIONAL PRACTICE
Schools are full of good players. Collegiality is about getting them to play together about growing a professional learning community. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. Improving Relationships Within the Schoolhouse, ASCD |
PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES
Effective professional development nurtures the development of self-sustaining professional learning communities. |
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A professional learning community is a collegial group of administrators and school staff who are united in their commitment to student learning. They share a vision, work and learn collaboratively, visit and review other classrooms, and participate in decision making. The benefits to the staff and students include a reduced isolation of teachers, better-informed and committed teachers, and academic gains for students. As an organizational arrangement, the professional learning community is seen as a powerful staff-development approach and a potent strategy for school change and improvement. North Central Regional Educational Laboratory
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Creating learning communities for adults requires a form of professional development that not only affects the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of individual teachers, administrators, and other school employees, but also alters the cultures and structures of the organization in which those individuals work. Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline popularized the concept of the ‘learning organization’ and inspired educators as they began transforming and reculturing their schools. According to Senge, learning organizations are those through which people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together. There are five disciplines that converge to innovate learning organizations: systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, and team learning. All the disciplines are concerned with a shift of mind from seeing parts to seeing wholes, from seeing people as helpless reactors to seeing them as active participants in shaping their reality, from reacting to the present to creating the future |
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ARTS LEADERSHIP TEAM SCEA advocates forming an Arts Leadership Team providing structured opportunities for instructional leaders to meet regularly to discuss arts and education issues, plan strategies, and observe and assess arts education initiatives in action. Members of the team should include administrators, arts specialists, and lead teachers from each grade level and subject area to guide the vision and execute the logistics and management of a strategic plan that articulates needs and challenges, and establishes goals for developing an arts education program that includes both dedicated arts classes and arts integration throughout the entire curriculum. |
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At the end of the school year, the team should complete a self-assessment and discusses progress, barriers, and next steps as they review and update the strategic plan. Maintaining ownership among stakeholders is critical to a program’s long-term success. The Arts Leadership Team provides a forum in which all educators have a voice in the management and execution of the arts education initiative. |
