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Adam Gamoran

January 2006

When teachers have a strong sense of professional community their morale is better and teacher commitment is higher. Professional community helps support teaching practices, and helps teachers address the uncertainty that accompanies nonroutine teaching of the sort encouraged by many school reform initiatives.

Is the quality of teachers' professional community constant across the school, or are there smaller pockets of professional community within the school? If professional community were a schoolwide entity, and if it were measured well, we would expect most of the variance to be found from one school to the next, and little variation within schools. Just the opposite is the case. Recent research shows that most (81%) of the variance in professional community is within schools, according to Adam Gamoran and colleague Eric Grodsky.

Their study also found that professional development opportunities are most likely to increase teachers' sense of professional community if they are school-wide, while programs in which individual teachers participate without other teachers from their school are unlikely to do so.

Gamoran and Grodsky analyzed the Schools and Staffing Survey of 1993-1994 (National Center for Education Statistics) which includes a nationally representative sample of more than 50,000 teachers in more than 10,000 schools in the U.S. Their study measured teachers' professional community as the mean of seven standardized measures: shared values (2 items), collaboration (3 items), and teacher influence (2 items).

Earlier research had proposed that a school's climate affected student and teacher outcomes through the school's communal organization: shared values and norms, common standards of conduct, and shared expectations. Gamoran and Grodsky refined this approach: Rather than treating the school community as a whole, their research on professional community focuses on the community among adults, particularly among teachers, as the mechanism by which school effects are achieved.

Professional development and student learning

In addition to enhancing the human capital of participating teachers, professional development can also contribute to the school's social capital. In this view, professional development may enhance student learning through its effects on teaching practices.

Gamoran and Grodsky proposed that one effect of professional development at the school level may be the creation or enhancement of professional community. This could occur in two ways: First, effective professional development contributes to the professional skills of participating teachers, thereby increasing the pool of human resources available to a school. Second, professional development may strengthen teachers' social ties, contributing to the school's social resources when two conditions are met:

1. The professional development must be based in the school, or at least must include several members of the school's instructional staff.

2. Professional development must be reflective. Teachers must communicate openly with one another about instructional issues. Professional development programs that do not encourage such dialogue may still enhance the human resources of teachers, but will do little to improve the school's social resources.

Stronger professional communities

The study found that teachers who participate in school-based professional development reported stronger professional communities. A school in which all teachers participate in school-sponsored professional development could be expected to enjoy an advantage in professional community over a school in which no teachers participate in school-sponsored professional development activities. Combining the study's teacher- and school-level results suggests that professional development can have a meaningful effect on professional community. As expected, however, professional development sponsored by non-school entities has no statistically significant effect on professional community at either the school or teacher level.

Conclusions

Gamoran and Grodsky encourage re-evaluating the usefulness of schoolwide professional community as a concept. It may be the case that professional community in most primary schools exists in within-school networks rather than at the school level. Professional communities may form at the grade level, or across grades by area of subject specialization, or by preferred pedagogical approach, across schools, and so forth. A more precise specification might recognize that, within a loosely knit school community, there are more tightly knit subcommunities of teachers.

Some material in this article previously appeared in different form in School Effectiveness and School Improvement 2003, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 1-29.

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