Professional Learning Communities: Communities of Continuous Inquiry and Improvement

With encouragement about such school-based professional structures, and with the need for increased understanding of these structures, this literature review was initiated. The review seeks (1) to define and describe what the literature is calling the professional learning community; (2) to describe what happens when a school staff studies, works, plans, and takes action collectively in behalf of increased learning for students; and (3) to reveal what is known about how to create such communities of professionals in schools.  — Shirley M. Hord, 1997