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This article presents an analysis of the potential for a school improvement process to foster professional community in three rural middle schools through the processes of organizational learning. The findings of this 2-year qualitative case study demonstrate the tensions schools must negotiate between bureaucracy and professional community and suggest that four organizational factors influence the establishment of professional community: principal leadership, organizational history, organizational priorities, and organization of teacher work. The findings further suggest that double-loop learning is invaluable to sustain professional community.

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This qualitative policy study applies an interactionist framework for policy analysis, especially the concept of intentions, to an examination of the construction of multicultural education policy in a midwestern U.S. school district. Intentions-purposes and goals meant to shape the behavior of actors in the future and at other sites-motivate actors to act in the policy arena, to use policy as a vehicle for realizing their purposes. Initiated in response to a racial conflict in a high school, the policy process entailed the school board's creation of a committee including many African American community members to generate recommendations for improving race relations. During the process, the school board's intentions, and those of many community members, were transformed due to the administration's reinforcement of district conventions and power structures. Race relations became multicultural issues. Community members who misconstrued the process as granting them real policy-making authority were most disappointed with the outcomes.

Columbia. Her specializations include learning communities, American Indian education issues, and preservice teacher education.

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The findings reported in this paper indicate the need for a more robust explanation of communication failure between American Indian parents and school personnel than cultural discontinuity provides. According to the data, conditions that constrain interactions between American Indian families and educators in one consolidated school district lie within the bounds of politics, economics, and social circumstance. The conditions of distrust, racial tension, maintenance of tribal identity, dependence, and isolation inform the perceptual frame that influences the ways American Indian people interact with school personnel. Through “gatekeeping,” American Indian parents act to control the dilemma they face in American public education. Proposed solutions to problematic American Indian educational issues suggest that transformative school leaders must create inclusive learning communities in which American Indian students have opportunities to thrive.