Blazing New Trails - Connexions

Professional Learning Communities: A Feasible Reality or a Chimera? 53
Educational Laboratory (NCEL, 2010) pointed out, some common maps of change are faulty;
as such, they impede change. Among these, NCEL listed, “Resistance is inevitable,” “Every
school is unique,” and “Schools are essentially conservative institutions, harder to change
than other institutions.” These may possibly be misconceptions, yet the Southwest
Educational Development Laboratory (1991) was not exaggerating when it concluded,
“Schools are doing a very good job of what they were designed to do—decades ago” (para.
1). This remains equally true today, decades later.
Another issue related to the difficulty of maintaining professional learning
communities in schools is that of sustainability. It would take a considerable number of years
to modify the culture of almost any school to become a professional learning community and
then to establish the relationship between this community and improved student performance.
Over this time period, teachers and administrators are likely to change. Newcomers would
have to be acculturated into the community, generally coming from more hierarchical,
isolated backgrounds. They would also require extensive professional development; yet, the
same professional development would no longer be necessary for the majority of the teachers
in the school. It would take a highly gifted, visionary principal to share the leadership and to
support the development of a professional learning community. Before the results of the
change process can come to fruition and before the community becomes institutionalized
within the school culture, such a principal is likely to be promoted into central office,
recruited by a more attractive district, or to be removed from an improving school to take over
the leadership of a school of much greater concern within the district. The development of
professional learning communities requires the vision, commitment, and financial support of
the district superintendent; however, the average tenure of superintendents is well less than
the time needed for such communities to demonstrate consistent results. Because incoming
superintendents tend to want to establish their own agendas and to move away from projects
perceived to be foci of their predecessors, such support for professional learning communities
may not be forthcoming.
Moving schools toward becoming professional learning communities would require
huge investments of time, energy, and resources. The general public remains increasingly
resistant to making such investments. Certainly, in this era of accountability, the public would
require considerably more research-based evidence that professional learning communities
can produce significantly better student learning outcomes; such evidence is currently not
available. As Schlecty (2005) questioned, moving more decisions to teachers may increase
their commitment to those decisions, but does it necessarily improve the quality of those
decisions?
Teachers and administrators are used to the ongoing, often counterproductive, cycles
of school improvement and reform. Consequently, many may view the push for professional
learning communities through the cynical lens described by Fitzgerald and Gunter (2008), a
disguised form of exploitation to obtain more work from, and force greater responsibility
upon teachers, without compensation in money or time.
THE PRINCIPAL’S ROLE IN ESTABLISHING AND MAINTAINING
PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES
Because the leadership schema of the school must change from a hierarchical,
bureaucratic model to a shared leadership model if professional learning communities are to
develop and succeed, the principal occupies a central, pivotal role in the creation and
development of such communities. To begin with, principals must acquire a solid conceptual