Principals and Teachers: Continuous Learners

This article discusses how three principals were able to transform their schools into communities of professional learners. It focuses on how the principals demonstrated their own learning and how they nurtured learning in their staffs. It offers a brief profile of each principal and how she incorpo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIssues...about Change Vol. 7; no. 2
Main Author Fleming, Grace L
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published 1999
Subjects
Change Strategies
Educational Administration
Educational Change
Educational Improvement
Elementary Secondary Education
Instructional Leadership
Learning Communities
Learning Strategies
Principals
Professional Development
Teacher Administrator Relationship
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Summary:This article discusses how three principals were able to transform their schools into communities of professional learners. It focuses on how the principals demonstrated their own learning and how they nurtured learning in their staffs. It offers a brief profile of each principal and how she incorporated continuous learning into her life. All the principals used similar strategies to achieve increased staff capacity. They developed collegial staff relationships, focused on student success and continuous learning, and viewed teachers as decision makers and implementers. They also nurtured new ways of operating their schools and demonstrated the meaning of a professional learning community by constantly sharing their own learning with their staffs and by orchestrating opportunities for their staffs to incorporate the same practices. Accordingly, staff members responded individually and as a whole to take on those practices and the principals were able to tap the teacher's new-found expertise. Some of the themes that were evident in each school were the following: look for ways to improve learning conditions for students, trust colleagues, ask other teachers for advice, take responsibility for the operation of the school, and value teamwork. (RJM)