Professional Learning Communities at Work TM. Robert Eaker
adopt a similar model to produce the kinds of workers that industry required.
For the most part, educators needed little prompting. Much enamored with the industrial model, leading educators were enthusiastic about applying its principles to their enterprises. An ardent advocate of the industrial model, William T. Harris was one of the most influential school superintendents in the United States in the late nineteenth century, serving as the president and director of the National Education Association, the president of the National Association of School Superintendents, and the United States commissioner of education. He wrote:
Our schools are, in a sense, factories in which the raw materials (children) are to be shaped and fashioned in order to meet the various demands of life. The specifications for manufacturing come from the demands of the twentieth century civilization, and it is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down. (quoted in Fiske, 1992, pp. 32–33)
Ellwood Cubberly, a professor at Stanford University and one of the nation’s foremost educational thinkers of his time, reflected the opinion of his contemporaries when he wrote the following in 1934:
The public schools of the United States are, in a sense, a manufactury, doing a two billion dollar business each year in trying to prepare future citizens for usefulness and efficiency in life. As such we have recently been engaged in revising our manufacturing specifications and in applying to the conduct of our business some of the same principles of specialized production and manufacturing efficiency which control in other parts of the manufacturing world. (p. 528)
The uniformity, standardization, and bureaucracy of the factory model soon became predominant characteristics of the school district. The key was to have the thinkers of the organization specify exactly what and how to teach at each grade level and then to provide strict supervision to ensure that teachers did as they were told. Decisions flowed from state boards of education down the ladder of the educational bureaucracy to local school boards, superintendents, and principals. Eventually, decisions would be directed to teachers who, like factory workers, were viewed as underlings responsible for carrying out the decisions of their bosses. Students were simply the raw material transported along the educational assembly line. They would be moved to a station where a teacher would “pour” in mathematics until the bell rang; then they would be moved to the next station where another teacher would “assemble” the nuts and bolts of English until the next bell rang, and so on. Those who completed this 13-year trek on the assembly line would emerge as finished products, ready to function efficiently in the industrial world.
Unfortunately, many of the principles of this factory model still prevail within the structures of American schools. Schools continue to focus on procedures rather than results, following the assumption that if they adhere to the rules—teaching the prescribed curriculum, maintaining the correct class sizes, using the appropriate textbooks, accumulating the right number of course credits—students will learn what they need to know. Less attention is paid to determining whether or not the learning has actually occurred. Instead, schools remain preoccupied with time and design, organizing the class period, school day, and school year according to rigid schedules that must be followed. In many schools, teachers and their opinions are still considered to be insignificant. Above all else, the factory model has established a conservative tradition in American schools. Taylor’s concept of the one right system has led to a credo of “get it right—then keep it going.” As a result of this philosophy, many educators seem unable to embrace a concept of continuous improvement that has the significantly different credo of “get it right, and then make it better and better and better.”
In defense of nineteenth-century educators, the factory model may have indeed served schools well when they were not intended to educate large numbers of students to a high level. In 1893, for example, when the Committee of Ten issued the report that was to shape the high school curriculum for decades, 1893), less than three percent of American students were actually graduating from high school. Even as late as 1950, the majority of students continued to drop out of high school before graduation. In this way, the factory model did indeed function as it was intended by sorting and selecting students. The model continued to work reasonably well as long as dropouts had ready access to unskilled jobs in industry, regardless of their educational level. The number of unskilled jobs in industry has declined significantly, however, and the most enlightened corporations—even many factories—have abandoned this model (Blankstein, 1992).
The factory model is woefully inadequate for meeting the national education goals of today—goals that call for all students to master rigorous content, learn how to learn, pursue productive employment, and compete in a global economy. If educators are to meet these challenges, they must abandon an outdated model that is contrary to the findings of educational research, the best practices of both schools and industry, and common sense. They must embrace a new conceptual model for schools. The issue then becomes identifying the model that offers the best hope for significant school improvement.
The School as a Professional Learning Community
Researchers both inside and outside of education offer remarkably similar conclusions about the best path for sustained organizational improvement. Consider the following findings:
Only the organizations that have a passion for learning will have an enduring influence. (Covey, 1996, p. 149)
Every enterprise has to become a learning institution [and] a teaching institution. Organizations that build in continuous learning in jobs will dominate the twenty-first century. (Drucker, 1992, p. 108)
The most successful corporation of the future will be a learning organization. (Senge, 1990, p. 4)
Preferred organizations will be learning organizations.… It has been said that people who stop learning stop living. This is also true of organizations. (Handy, 1995, p. 55)
The new problem of change … is what would it take to make the educational system a learning organization—expert at dealing with change as a normal part of its work, not just in relation to the latest policy, but as a way of life. (Fullan, 1993, p. 4)
The Commission recommends that schools be restructured to become genuine learning organizations for both students and teachers; organizations that respect learning, honor teaching, and teach for understanding. (Darling-Hammond, 1996, p. 198)
We have come to realize over the years that the development of a learning community of educators is itself a major cultural change that will spawn many others. (Joyce & Showers, 1995, p. 3)
If schools want to enhance their organizational capacity to boost student learning, they should work on building a professional community that is characterized by shared purpose, collaborative activity, and collective responsibility among staff. (Newmann & Wehlage, 1995, p. 37)
We argue, however, that when schools attempt significant reform, efforts to form a schoolwide professional community are critical. (Louis, Kruse, & Raywid, 1996, p. 13)
Rarely has research given school practitioners such a consistent message and clear sense of direction. But even if educators are persuaded that creating a professional learning community offers the best strategy for school improvement, difficult questions remain. The best way to initiate consideration of these questions is to “begin with the end in mind” (Covey, 1989, p. 95)—that is, to describe the characteristics of a professional learning community, the conduct and habits of mind of the people who work within it, and its day-to-day functioning. A clear vision of what a learning community looks like and how people operate within it will offer insight into the steps that must be taken to transform a school into a learning community.
Characteristics of Professional Learning Communities
1. Shared mission, vision, and values. The sine qua non of a learning community is shared understandings and common values. What separates a learning community from an ordinary school is its collective commitment to guiding principles that articulate what the people in the school believe and what they seek to create. Furthermore, these guiding principles are not just