An Action Science Approach to Creating and Sustaining Professional Learning Communities as a Vehicle for Comprehensive School Reform (original) (raw)
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2003
This paper reports the progress and second year findings that flow from a multi-year action research strategy aimed at comprehensive school reform in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A learned helplessness model is presented as an explanation for why schools continue to struggle with implementing comprehensive reform strategies. An alternative model is offered as a blueprint for empowerment and learned efficacy. Examples from action research projects implemented during the 2002-03 academic year provide evidence that substantial progress can be made in building a learning community within the real world setting of an urban public school system.
Teacher Learning, Professional Community, and Accountability in the Context of High School Reform
This report investigates professional knowledge and learning demands associated with high school reform initiatives, and corresponding opportunities for teacher development, emphasizing literacy and mathematics. It examines how teachers' learning in selected reform-specific areas is facilitated or impeded by internal school features and by the nature and extent of teachers' ties to external sources of expertise. The research uses intensive case studies of teachers' knowledge, practice, and learning in two comprehensive high schools. It includes existing case study data on restructuring high schools, supplemented by intensive multi-level case studies in new Sites. These sources provide three configurations of high school reform, professional development, and accountability, reflecting a range of school improvement conditions at a point in time and a trajectory of reform and policy conditions over the past decade. This report summarizes research completed in the first 2 years of a 3-year study of teacher learning in the context of high school reform. Section 1 locates new cases in a regional context of professional development and other forms of assistance. Section 2 introduces the two case study sites and summarizes preliminary findings. Section 3 comments on discoveries to date and priorities for subsequent analysis. (Contains 31 references.) (SM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.
Powerful Learning: Creating Learning Communities in Urban School Reform
2003
This article uses qualitative data to describe how administrators and teachers in one urban middle school, Woodsedge, 1 shared leadership tasks to develop an authentic learning community. This middle school, which serves a multiethnic student population representing extremes of the economic spectrum, was one of 88 schools participating in a school-based reform initiative in a major city in the southwestern United States. The reform focused dollars on high-quality professional development for administrators and teachers. By engaging in their own powerful learning, teachers at
Action Research on Change in Schools: A Collaborative Project
1983
Action research, a term first used in the 1940's by Kurt Lewin, implies the application of tools and methods of social science to immediate, practical problems, with the goals of contributing to theory and knowledge in the field of education and improving practice in the schools. Collaborative action research suggests that each group represented in the process shares in the planning, implementation, and analysis of the research; and that each contributes different expertise and a unique perspective to the process. Problems in conducting collaborative action research include initiating a collaborative project betWeen school and university; addressing the concerns of all participants; and participating in the processes of collaboration which occur between the project's inception and the production of its results. The Action Research on Change in Schools project proposes to examine the relationships among teachers' developmental stages, action research in schools, and individual teacher change. (BW)
2015
The purpose of this action research study is to examine the use of extra-curricular activities and professional learning communities to create a school culture ready for academic change. This unique approach to implementing change, in a historically failing urban middle school, utilizes a two pronged approach focusing on personalizing strategies specific to the school based on student and staff expressed needs. The study takes place at Sonia Middle School located in the United States\\u27 fifth most dangerous and impoverished city, Bartlett, New Jersey. Numerous academic reform models have failed to improve teaching and learning. The researcher hypothesizes these programs failed because they were not designed to meet the specific needs of the Sonia community. The school community is rift with stakeholder disengagement and apathy. This is reflected in high rates of student and staff absenteeism, an increase in behavior referrals, violence, high student transfer rate, and lack of paren...
Guidelines for facilitating systemic change in school districts (89)
Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 1998
This paper opens by addressing the emerging need for systemic change in K-12 school systems, with consideration given to requirements for new mindsets on educational change. Given the history of less than successful attempts at educational change, the need exists for a guidance system which helps change facilitators to guide school districts and communities through a systemic change process. The paper describes the characteristics and elements of a systemic change guidance system which builds on the principles of process facilitation and systems design. It examines in detail the integral values or beliefs related to facilitation and systemic change, the types of events (sets of activities) typically needed, and the processes which form the guidance system. Also discussed is the process used to create the guidance system. Increasingly, educators are recognizing that the conditions and educational needs of their communities are becoming dramatically different from what they were in the 1950's and 1960's. Those changing conditions and educational needs include: • a society in which there is greater need for citizens who can understand and utilize the advancements of new technologies, sustain and advance a democratic way of life, accept the responsibility of protecting the environment, and ensure the future, • a workplace in which there is greater need for employees with initiative, cooperative skills, communication skills, problem-solving skills, life-long learning skills, and diverse perspectives,
School Improvement and Action Research: Two Paradigms
1996
School reform in the 1990s has been focused on school-based restructuring, with local efforts shown to be more successful than earlier central or remote control approaches. Success has followed changes in teachers' classroom behavior, in the structure of the school, and its school culture. The local school
Guidelines for facilitating systemic change in school districts
Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 1998
This paper opens by addressing the emerging need for systemic change in K-12 school systems, with consideration given to requirements for new mindsets on educational change. Given the history of less than successful attempts at educational change, the need exists for a guidance system which helps change facilitators to guide school districts and communities through a systemic change process. The paper describes the characteristics and elements of a systemic change guidance system which builds on the principles of process facilitation and systems design. It examines in detail the integral values or beliefs related to facilitation and systemic change, the types of events (sets of activities) typically needed, and the processes which form the guidance system. Also discussed is the process used to create the guidance system. Increasingly, educators are recognizing that the conditions and educational needs of their communities are becoming dramatically different from what they were in the 1950's and 1960's. Those changing conditions and educational needs include: • a society in which there is greater need for citizens who can understand and utilize the advancements of new technologies, sustain and advance a democratic way of life, accept the responsibility of protecting the environment, and ensure the future, • a workplace in which there is greater need for employees with initiative, cooperative skills, communication skills, problem-solving skills, life-long learning skills, and diverse perspectives,