Leadership Strategies For Building Schools As A Professional Learinig Community

The professional learning community(PLC)is one of the most talked-about ideas in education today.Many schools are working to become professional learning communities,hoping that student learning will improve when adults commit themselves to talk collaboratively about teaching and learning and enhancing student learning and achievement.Leadership is an essential part of developing an influential professional learning community.School leaders foster a school's improvement,improve its overall effectiveness,and promote student learning and success by developing staff's capacity to function as a professional learning community.In education,teachers' individual and collective efforts are so crucial to improve student learning and realize reforms successfully.In this respect,capacity development is significant at every school.Capacity development is a complex state based on motivation,skill development,learning,positive organizational culture,and support mechanisms.Professional learning communities develop capacity and improve students' learning at schools.To build capacity and maintain it,establishing professional learning communities at school is one of the organizational roles that school principals should fulfill.Professional Learning Communities(PLCs)are groups of educators committed to working collaboratively in ongoing collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results.Researchers and experts agree that PLCs are critical to the overall success of schools.The problem is that implementing PLCs with fidelity to an inquiry process is a real challenge.In Afghanistan,most schools do not have a systematic or comprehensive approach to guide their PLC process and implement the traditional professional development model,which is largely ineffective.These models typically rely on short-duration workshops,school in-service programs,and presentations by outside experts.This qualitative case study investigated two schools focusing on how a professional learning community operates and functions in Besat high school and Koshan high school and how the principal's leadership supported the development and maintenance of a professional learning community.Participants included two principals and ten teachers from these two schools.Data were collected through interviews with two principals and ten teachers and analyzed by hand-coding.Interviews and observations at these two case-study schools showed that although these two schools represented two different levels,I found many similarities in these schools.Sharifi,the principal of Besat High School,focused on professional learning community practical implementation,approaching topics such as time,group structuring,school context,and institutional plan attentiveness.On the other hand,Mohasil,the principal of Koshan High School,addressed more subjectively about professional learning community formation,such as when he argues about sharing views on education.Also,findings indicated that the principal is a transformational and instructional leader and can recognize leadership qualities in others.It is essential to the development and maintenance of a professional learning community.So the result of a leadership team is central to the overall success of a professional learning community;communication and collaboration are related to the development and maintenance of a professional learning community.They are practical tools for developing a better learning organization,and a learning organization that promotes growth,learning,and empowerment relates to the success of a professional learning community.