This article considers how documentation as a professional development tool acts as a change agent for teachers and how collective engagement in the documentation process mediates the inherent tensions of working and learning in a group. Three groups of educators, at three distinct schools, used Reggio Emilia-inspired documentation as the…

This article explores the leadership of school principals with respect to faculty study group development as a key element of the professional learning community. Questions asked concern the approaches that principals use to facilitate study group processes that, in turn. foster teacher learning and student achievement, and ways in which…

Traditional schools are notorious for being isolated, inflexible, and reluctant to change. This lack of professional dialogue among educators remains a significant barrier to successful school improvement, resulting in teachers' practices becoming stagnant and student achievement suffering. The K20 Center for Educational and Community Renewal at…

Building faculty or professional learning communities is an idea that has come of age. This article describes work being done within the Brigham Young University (BYU)-Public School Partnership to form and sustain such communities across higher and public education and in ways consistent with the four aims of the Agenda for Education in a…

This article describes an effort to create a teacher learning community in which university and local school teachers worked together to improve the teaching of writing at elementary and secondary levels. I describe how a university's National Writing Project (NWP) engaged in developing a cadre of selected teachers to share understandings about…

This article is a descriptive account of a professional learning community established among university professors, university teacher candidates, a school district instructional supervisor, the high school principal, a high school literacy coordinator, and teachers of a Mid-Atlantic high school in the United States. This learning community…