Building and Connecting Learning Communities

Book excerpt: "Taking your school from great to greater—this compelling book gives you tools to use with staff for reflecting on and refining professional practices. You and your team will find tools for taking learners to the next level of improvement!" —Lynn A. Kaszynski, Principal Harrison Street Elementary School, Sunbury, OH Networked learning communities: A powerful school improvement strategy for school leaders! Ideal for school leaders and superintendents leading change efforts, this book describes how separate professional learning communities can be linked across schools by common instructional and learning issues to create dynamic networked learning communities (NLCs). Drawing on their work with schools throughout North America and England, Steven Katz, Lorna M. Earl, and Sonia Ben Jaafar show how participants in NLCs can share professional knowledge that ultimately improves performance at the school and district level. Through a sample school narrative, the book illustrates how NLCs can significantly enhance instruction, increase student performance, and empower local professional learning communities. This resource examines: Collaborative inquiry as a process that challenges teachers′ thinking, generates new learning, and fosters trusting relationships The development of formal and informal leadership roles in NLCs How NLCs support systematic data analysis and accountability Demonstrating how NLCs—small or large, local or statewide—can promote critical reforms while strengthening the work of individual professional learning communities, this invaluable resource reveals how educators can join forces across school and district boundaries to generate deep, meaningful, and sustainable change.