Professional Community in Chicago Elementary Schools: Facilitating Factors and Organizational Consequences

Professional community is receiving markedly increased attention as part of both practitioner and scholarly efforts to promote improvements in instruction and student learning. Interest in this area joins two previously distinct literatures, one dealing with the benefits of communal school organization and another with enhanced teacher professionalism, to formulate a theoretical framework for a school-based professional community. Using data from a large urban school district, this paper tests the impact of structural, human, and social factors on the emergence of school-based professional community and examines the extent to which such developments in turn promote learning and experimentation among faculty.