How did education decide on this additive, piecemeal approach to school improvement? This predisposition to improve things by reorganizing the pieces, adding new pieces, and taking out ineffective pieces dates back to the Newtonian mechanistic worldview of the 17th century. The Newtonian model was built on the idea that the world could be controlled like a big machine (Caine & Caine, 1997). By the 1800s, this mechanistic imagery had influenced not only our thinking in the sciences but also our thinking about organizations. Youngblood (1997), in Life at the Edge of Chaos, comments on this mechanistic perception of organizations:

Normally we view organizations as machines with parts that we can disassemble and reconstruct in any fashion we wish. Organizational change is frequently an exercise in moving parts around until we achieve the magic formula that produces the performance results we desire. We expect to be able to predict the outcomes of these changes and to control them completely (p.76).

It is no surprise that education adopted this predictable, orderly, bureaucratic model of functioning. After all, the charge of the public education system was to provide education to the masses—a task that resembled the mass production that was going on in our factories. So our schools were divided into grade levels, with each grade assigned specific pieces of the curriculum and a teacher to teach it. When pieces of the system failed, the leaders isolated the problem and replaced the broken piece or added another piece to make the system more effective. In this way we got more curriculum, more specialists, and more supervisors.

Dramatic social, economic, and political changes have occurred since this system of education was originally conceived. Diversity, mobility, and technology have emerged as prime forces shaping our daily lives—forces that were minimal to nonexistent 50 years ago. Yet our schools are still laboring under the same bureaucratic mode of organization. What we have is an educational dinosaur, slow to move and unable to adapt, living in a world of rapid-fire change.

It is time for our system of education to change. We no longer need schools designed to educate children “en masse.” We need schools that prepare our learners to lead productive lives in this complex, high-tech, and fast-changing world—schools that are responsive, fluid, and adaptive to emerging needs and opportunities. The next generation of schools must have the capacity for continuous renewal. We must have an ethos that values lifelong learning for staff and families, as well as students.

A New Model for Professional Development in Schools

This book presents ways to create dynamic learning communities for the adults in our schools—communities where individual and organizational growth occurs simultaneously. Two cornerstones of this professional development model are (1) schools as communities and (2) collaborative learning.

The concept of schools as communities provides the context for growth and change—the fertile ground for growth to occur. A school community is a composite of people representing many ages, roles, backgrounds, and dreams. Members of the community are aligned around common goals, shared values, and an agreed-on way of being and doing. This alignment of ideology forms the unique identity of community. It is from this ideological base that communities take action. It is through this community of mind that synergy arises.

Collaborative learning, the second cornerstone of this model, offers a process for simultaneously promoting individual and organizational capacity building. Collaborative learning assumes a shared focus, a shared responsibility to learn, and a disciplined approach to acquiring the desired goal. It demands that individuals shed the expert role and adopt a collaborative approach that recognizes the values, knowledge, and expertise of all community members. The collaborative learning process engages members of the community in a cycle of exploring, experimenting, and reflecting relative to a specific outcome. The knowledge and skills that are generated through collaborative inquiry enriches the knowledge base of the school. From this bank of knowledge and expertise, improved programs and services are born.

The concepts of “schools as communities” and “collaborative learning” interact like an ever-expanding web (see Figure 1.1). The core of the web contains the school community's values, visions, and ways of relating. Collaborative learning represents the potential for growth and capacity building. Multiple opportunities for collaborative learning exist within a community. Community members are free to self-organize around topics of interest to them, yet they are guided by their community's core ideology. The result is a professional learning community connected by shared values and visions while nourished by high levels of energy and forward movement emanating from the work of multiple, self-organized, collaborative learning groups.

Figure 1.1. Building Professional Learning Communities

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This book does not dwell on fixing current problems in our schools, but rather on creating a new future for school communities. John Gardner (1964) in Self-Renewal underscores the need for this future-focused approach to organizational renewal:

No society is likely to renew itself unless its dominant orientation is to the future. There is a readily discernible difference between the society that is oriented to the future and the one that is oriented to the past. Some individuals and societies look forward and have the future ever in mind, others are preoccupied with the past and are antiquarian in their interests. The former have a vivid sense of what they are becoming, the latter a vivid sense of what they have been. The former are fascinated by the novelty of each day's experience, the latter have a sense of having seen everything (p.105).

With this work, we are forging into the future; and we invite you to join us in this collaborative learning adventure.