Leading Professional Learning Communities: Voices from Research and Practice

Shirley Hord, is Scholar Emerita at the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory in Austin, Texas, where she directed the Strategies for Increasing Student Success Program; she continues to monitor the Leadership For Change Project, and support applications of the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM). In addition, she designs and coordinates professional development activities related to educational change, school improvement, and school leadership. She served as coordinator of Demonstration Schools, a multi-year rural school improvement project in the lab's region.Her early roles as elementary school classroom teacher and university science education faculty at The University of Texas at Austin were followed by her appointment as Co-Director of Research on the Improvement Process at the Research and Development Center for Teacher Education at The University of Texas at Austin. There she administered and conducted research on school improvement and the role of school leadership in school change. This work focused on the concerns and needs of teachers implementing change in their content knowledge and instructional practices, and how leaders support them through structures and staff development interventions during the change process.She served as a Fellow of the National Center for Effective Schools Research and Development, and was U.S. representative to the Foundation for the International School Improvement Project, an international effort that develops research, training, and policy initiatives to support local school improvement practices. In addition to working with educators at all levels across the U.S., Mexico and Canada, Hord makes presentations and consults in Asia, Europe, Australia, and Africa. Her current interests focus on qualitative research into understanding and delivering comprehensive educational reform to schools, and the functioning and creation of educational organizations as professional learning communities and the role of leaders, including teacher leaders, who serve such organizations. Hord is the author of numerous articles and books, the most recent of which are:Hord, S.M. & Sommers, W.A. (in press). Leadership and professional learning communities: Possibilities, practices, and performance. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Hall, G.E. & Hord, S.M. (2006). Implementing change: Patterns, principles and potholes (Second Edition). Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.Hord, S.M. (Ed.) (2004). Learning Together, Leading Together: Changing Schools Through Professional Learning Communities. New York: Teachers College Press.Roy, P. & Hord, S.M. (2003). Moving staff development standards into practice: Innovation configurations. Oxford, OH: National Staff Development Council and Austin, TX: Southwest Educational Development Laboratory.