The role of conversation, contention, and commitment in a professional  (Page 6/6)

• Publicly address the subject of contention in faculty meetings—let teachers know up front that disagreements are not just okay, they’re expected.
• Talk about consensus with the faculty and ask teacher teams to determine how they will reach consensus in their groups arounddifficult decisions, including practices such as majority vote, unanimity, or thumbs up (in which each participant uses a thumb upto indicate agreement, a sideways thumb to indicate reservations but willingness to move on, and a thumbs down to indicate strongreservations with a need for more conversation).
• Stick to your guns—if you are going to expect teachers to deal with difficult topics in productive ways, then do not beafraid to raise and discuss thorny topics yourself.
• Remember that consensus does not mean agreeing with you—sometimes teachers will achieve consensus with which you disagree, but unless you are willing to empower teachers to makedecisions (even if you do not always agree with those decisions), they will disengage from the process.

The ultimate c: commitment

As stated earlier, schools are highly complex organizations, with individual teachers and small groups ofteachers constantly moving in and out of work relationships with one another, trying new ideas, moving in different directions, butall still connected through the common work of teaching and learning. This complexity, however, leads to a difficult challenge:if schools are such complex organizations, with people moving in different directions at different times, how is it possible tocreate a professional learning community in which teachers are working together, dealing with contention, and collaborating tomake good decisions for students?

The answer is commitment. By getting all of the participants to commit to schoolwide goals and a process ofcollaborative decision-making, you can accept the complexity while still moving in a common direction. That is what the first schoollacked in the story above, a common commitment, and that is what made the difference in the second school. Purposeful conversationswill inevitably lead to some level of contention, but in a professional learning community the participants can ultimatelydeal with contention by relying on an underlying level of commitment to common goals. For a true professional learningcommunity, these are likely to include a commitment to ensuring student learning, a belief in the power of true collaboration, amodel of distributed leadership and decision-making, and an ongoing process of reflection and inquiry.

Getting to this level of commitment is no simple matter. As a school leader, try to create formal andinformal opportunities for participants to discuss the principles that they are willing to commit to, to debate them and translatethem into practical ideas and statements. Make sure that you have created opportunities for doubting members to share their doubts.In the story above, John should be given the opportunity to share hisconcerns openly, but commitment ultimately means working through concerns and identifying common beliefs, and not justaccepting the least-common-denominator decision. In many schools, this process begins with a small group of participants who arewilling to commit themselves to a set of principles, and then that small group becomes champions for those principles as they spreadthroughout the school. As a school leader, recruit these champions and do what you can to both encourage and support them.

Purposeful conversations focused around curricular and instructional practices are the lifeblood of anysuccessful learning community—fostering those types of conversations is one of the first steps that any school leadershould take towards creating a PLC. But purposeful conversations inevitably evoke deep-held beliefs and philosophies, beliefs andphilosophies that will vary across a faculty. When differing opinions are brought out into the open, contention will arise. Itis at this point that the successful leader must walk a tight line, encouraging staff members to address contention and work throughit, while recognizing the emotional toll that disagreements can take. Ultimately, it is organizational commitment to a set ofunderlying principles that supports the creation of a PLC. By subscribing and adhering to core beliefs focused around studentlearning and staff collaboration, schools can make the transition from“business as usual”organizations to true learning communities.

References

Achinstein, B. (2002). Conflict amid community: The micropolitics of teacher collaboration. TeachersCollege Record, 104(3), 421-455.

Baird-Wilkerson, S. (2003). A monograph on creating organizational change using a living-systems approach.Aurora, CO: Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning. Retrieved September 15, 2004, from (External Link) .

Darling-Hammond, L. (1996, March). The quiet revolution: Rethinking teacher development. Educational Leadership, 53(6), 4-10.

DuFour, Richard. (2004, May). What is a“Professional Learning Community?”Educational Leadership, 61(8), p.6-11.

McLaughlin, M.W.&Talbert, J.E. (1993). Contexts that matter for teaching and learning. Stanford, California: Center for Research on the Context of Secondary School Teaching, StanfordUniversity.

Rosenholtz, S. (1989). Teacher's workplace: The social organization of schools. New York: Longman.

Senge, P. (1990). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. New York: Currency Doubleday.