Connect the Dots: A Dedicated System for Learning Links Teacher Teams to Student Outcomes

Establishing school-based professional learning appears so simple and straightforward during inspiring presentations at summer workshops, but keeping collaborative work focused on teaching and learning in such a way that it produces consistent results is a highly underestimated task. Investigations and experience from a group of researchers at the University of California Los Angeles and Stanford University suggest that the likelihood of maintaining such focus and coherence might be significantly increased when there is a clear system of dedicated settings and assistance for each level of leadership and learning--teacher teams, teacher leaders, and administrators. A firmly established system of cascading settings and assistance links is perhaps the most important distinction of successful schools and districts the research team has studied over the last two decades. These schools have solidified nonnegotiable times and places for learning and continuous improvement. Ongoing support for these settings is intentionally provided over a period of years so that teachers and administrators can jointly persist with identified learning goals until they begin to see results.