Professional community among teachers, the subject of a number of recent major studies, is regarded as an ingredient that may contribute to the improvement of schools. The research reported in this article is grounded in the assumption that how teachers interact with each other outside of their classrooms may be critical to the effects of restructuring on students. The analysis focuses on the type of professional community that occurs within a school and investigates both the organizational factors that facilitate its development and its consequences for teachers’ sense of responsibility for student learning. The findings suggest that wide variation in professional community exists between schools, much of which is attributable to both structural features and human resources characteristics, as well as school level. Implications for current school reform efforts are discussed.

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Reform efforts increasingly promote collaboration among faculty and staff in schools with the intent to increase student achievement. Central to this literature is a focus on the members of the school's community to learn as individuals and as a community. Called organizational learning, this discussion has most commonly developed notions of knowledge acquisition and use, this study extends existing theory in organizational learning to include the construct of memory as an important organizational tool for staff and faculty to advance innovation and student achievement. Key to the school organization's ability to use memory in ways that foster the potential for change are the organizational member's capacity for using data within the school structure, to develop both information systems and knowledge structures, the group's ability to develop a coherent and shared memory of events and practices and school leader's capacity to apply aspects of wisdom theory to each problem resolving opportunity.If an organization is to learn anything, then the distribution of its memory, the accuracy of that memory, and the conditions under which that memory is treated as a constraint become crucial characteristics of organizing (Weick, 1979, p. 206).

This article presents an analysis of the experiences of four middle schools with interdisciplinary teams. The findings suggest that although teaming is often considered to be a vehicle for the development of community in schools, it may also present tensions for the development of cohesiveness across teams. The findings are presented in the form of dilemmas for middle school administrators who seek to develop a school wide community that can support both teacher and student development.

This study tested the role of enabling school structures, collegial trust and academic emphasis in the development of professional learning communities (PLCs) in a low-income school district. The empirical study was based upon the perceptions of teachers and principals as provided by survey responses ( N = 67 schools). While enabling school structures, collegial trust and academic emphasis simultaneously contributed to the explanation of PLCs, only structure and trust had a unique effect on PLCs with structure having the larger contribution.