Professional Learning Communities: Leadership, Purposeful Decision Making, and Job-Embedded Staff Development

This article reports the results of a preliminary study of how schools involved in a national project are developing structures critical to becoming professional learning communities. The study investigates the characteristics that distinguish schools at a high level of readiness for the development of a professional learning community from those at a low level of readiness. Based on interviews of principals and teachers in 20 schools, three characteristics emerged that were evident in the high readiness level schools.