{"id":302,"date":"2025-07-16T10:31:44","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T10:31:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mssqlguide.com\/?p=302"},"modified":"2026-01-22T09:53:55","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T09:53:55","slug":"how-communities-of-practice-can-drive-school-improvement-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mssqlguide.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/16\/how-communities-of-practice-can-drive-school-improvement-opinion\/","title":{"rendered":"How Communities of Practice Can Drive School Improvement (Opinion)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The two of us have a pretty simple goal when facilitating professional learning. Keep things simple, mix research with practice, understand our impact, and ask questions that allow us to learn from our participants as much as they, we hope, learned from us. <\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t always seem to be the norm in professional learning. In education, professional learning often feels more like an event than a process. In our experience as facilitators, we learned long ago that there are educators who are \u201cvoluntold\u201d to attend a session. Other times, we have seen educators who attend large conferences, experience a sit-and-get, and then head back to their schools implementing very little of what was thrown at them. <\/p>\n

Professional learning needs to be approachable, personal, and empathetic to the needs of the people in the room.<\/p>\n

We have found in our roles as teachers, building leaders, and Michael as a district leader that what impacts educators the most is when they are engaged in learning that has elements of coaching, research, and true practice from individuals who have actually spent time in the classroom or leading a school or district. <\/p>\n

A while ago, the two of us began engaging in a Communities of Practice (CoPs) during our long-term work with educators and leaders. Communities of Practice is a model rooted in the work of Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner<\/a>. They say, \u201cA CoP is formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor.\u201d <\/p>\n

At their core, CoPs are not just groups that get together and talk about schedules and adult issues. They are social learning systems. They form when people come together around a shared challenge and evolve through relationship-building and continuous meaning-making. The theory is powerful, when done correctly. <\/p>\n

Translating Theory to Practice<\/b>
In 1972, Odetola\u2019s research<\/a> found that students feel alienated from schools for two reasons. One, they don\u2019t feel like they have a voice in their own learning, and two, they don\u2019t feel an emotional connection to their teacher or school. These days, we know that many adults working in schools feel the same way, which partly contributes to the teacher-attrition issue school leaders are dealing with around the world. <\/p>\n

In our work with leadership teams across states and districts, we\u2019ve discovered the real power of CoPs lies in making that theory actionable. In their books, the Wenger-Trayners give permission for participants in a CoP to have flexibility within a structure. It\u2019s about taking ownership over our own learning. <\/p>\n

In our book Lead Collectively: From Belief to Action to Impact<\/a>, we introduce a simple but powerful framework: the three-legged stool of collective leader efficacy. The three legs are shared understanding, joint work, and evidence of impact, which are rooted in collaborative inquiry. <\/p>\n

The three legs of our stool aren\u2019t just key components of strong leadership; they mirror the core elements of the Wenger-Trayners\u2019 CoP theory.
For example:<\/p>\n