School-based professional community is a concept that portrays teachers as working together towards a set of shared goals of improved professionalism for themselves and increased learning opportunities for students. Attempts to put this into practice in urban schools in the United States have met with varying degrees of success. Using case studies, the contributors to this book examine the reasons for this inconsistency, focusing on the structural, social and human relations conditions of schooling.
| PART ONE: PROBLEMS AND CONCEPTS - Karen Seashore Louis, Sharon D Kruse and Anthony S Bryk |
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| Professionalism and Community |
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| What Is It and Why Is It Important in Urban Schools? - Sharon D Kruse, Karen Seashore Louis and Anthony S Bryk |
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| An Emerging Framework for Analyzing School-Based Professional Community |
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| PART TWO: CASES FROM URBAN SCHOOLS - Mary Anne Raywid |
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| Professional Community and Its Yield at Metro Academy - Jean A King and Daniel A Weiss |
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| Thomas Paine High School |
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| Professional Community in an Unlikely Setting - Sharon Rollow and Anthony S Bryk |
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| Catalyzing Professional Community in a School Reform Left Behind - M Peg Lonnquist and Jean A King |
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| Changing the Tire on a Moving Bus |
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| Barriers to Professional Community at Whitehead School - Daniel A Weiss, Karen Seashore Louis and Jeremy Hopkins |
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| Dewey Middle School |
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| Getting Past the First Stages of Restructuring |
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| PART THREE: REFLECTIONS ON PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITY IN URBAN SCHOOLS - Sharon D Kruse and Karen Seashore Louis |
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| Developing Professional Community in New and Restructuring Urban Schools - Karen Seashore Louis and Sharon D Kruse |
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| Getting There |
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| Promoting Professional Community in Urban Schools |
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Karen Seashore Louis is the Rodney Wallace Professor of Educational Policy and Administration at the University of MinnesotaTwin Cities. Her area of expertise includes improvement in K12 leadership and policy over the last 30 years, particularly in urban secondary schools. Louis also conducts research on organizational changes within higher education, with particular attention to faculty roles, and on international comparative policy in educational reform. A past president of Division A of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), she is a widely published author in the field. Recent books include Organizing for School Change, Leadership for Change and School Improvement: International Perspectives, Handbook of Educational Administration, Second Edition, and Organizational Learning in Schools. Louis earned a bachelors degree in History from Swarthmore College and a doctorate in sociology from Columbia University. Dr. Sharon D. Kruse is Academic Director and Professor at Washington State University- Vancouver. Her scholarship broadly addresses two concerns, (1) to help teachers and school leaders better understand the key role leadership plays in schools and (2) to explore how education is currently structured and influenced by social and organizational complexity. Kruses work focuses on understanding how schools can be better places for the children who attend them and the teachers who work in them. By focusing on the ways issues are framed, decisions are made and problems are identified she seeks to understand how schools can better educate and meet the needs of students. Kruse has served as a project level evaluator for six Teaching American Historygrants, and PI for evaluation of the Ohio Department of Education Supplemental Educational Services program. Kruses expertise in qualitative methods, developing interview and focus group protocols, data collection and analysis tools and interpretation contributes to the growing body of knowledge concerning organizational practices and outcome measures. Her recent publications include Building Strong School Cultures (with Karen Seashore Louis, 2009), Decision making for educational leaders: Under-examined dimensions and issues (with Bob L. Johnson Jr. 2009). She co-edits the Journal of Research on Leadership Education with Gordon Gates.
WSU link: https://education.wsu.edu/sharon-kruse/
