A District’s Case Study to Sustain Collaborative Learning Dynamics Across Schools: An Organizational Learning Perspective

• In Event: Organizational Dynamics in Educational Effectiveness: Exploring Conditions, Leadership, and Typologies

Abstract

Professional learning communities (PLCs) were touted as critical venues for collaborative staff learning for organizational improvement and enhanced student learning. However, scholarship has yet to adequately explore how school districts sustain collaborative staff learning dynamics within PLCs across schools over an extended period of time. Drawing upon organizational learning concepts of operational and conceptual learning, this case study of a U.S. school district explored critical components to create and sustain a collaborative dynamic that sustains PLCs across schools within a district over time. Data analysis identified three themes as overarching factors to sustain the collaborative staff learning dynamics within a district for 18 years: value, not initiative, structures for sustainability of PLC, and getting the right people on the bus.

Authors

• Joonkil Ahn, University of Arizona

• Osly J. Flores, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign