Learning Community

The development of a learning community philosophy in SchoolMate.NET schools requires quality time and strategies that enable:

• a learning organisation that:

  • focuses on life-long learning for everyone

  • encourages a sense of belonging

  • encourages partnership of community and school for the sake of the students

  • encourages a shared vision

  • develops a schoolwide culture that reinforces students' achievement
    

• a student-centred approach that:

  • focuses on the needs of the individual student

  • places minimal emphasis on age/grade organisation and encourages smaller organisational unit learning groups

  • emphasises student involvement, belonging and student satisfaction

  • provides innovative programs to support individual learners

  • is outcomes-based and provides effective and responsive instructional programs

  • encourages student engagement in school life
    

• flexibility in:

  • resource management

  • space and time allocation

  • organic structures (non-linear)

  • class arrangements

  • pedagogical practice
    

• open lines of communication between:

  • home and school

  • staff and staff

  • staff and students
    

• shared governance that assists:

  • collaborative decision-making with members of the whole school community

  • appointed councils and boards to actualise decisions made on behalf of the school community
    

• strong leadership that supports:

  • collaborative leadership

  • a 'community of leaders'

  • student leadership

  • creative, innovative and flexible practices

  • public recognition, awards, and incentives
    

• innovative organisations that:

  • are flexible, efficient and effective

  • encourage working 'smarter'

  • innovative change process to improve student outcomes
    

• a sound learning philosophy that:

  • is vision driven

  • centres beliefs

  • is student-centred

  • maintains currency in learning theory

SchoolMate.NET classrooms are wonderful places to learn and succeed in. Currency in terms of pedagogical practice and resource support are highly valued by all members of the school community. For engaged learning to happen, the classroom must be conceived of as a knowledge-building learning community. Such communities not only develop shared understandings collaboratively, but also create empathetic learning environments that value diversity and multiple perspectives. These communities search for strategies to build on the strengths of all of its members. Truly collaborative SchoolMate.NET classrooms, schools, and communities encourage students to ask hard questions, define problems, lead conversations, set goals, have work-related conversations with family members and other adults in and out of school, and engage in entrepreneurial activities.

In SchoolMate.NET schools there is a focus on quality, improvement and accountability as a progressive 'good' for the organisation (Beare,1994; Millikin,1989). There is a clear understanding that as a learning community there "must be effective and efficient systems that will allow the school to have knowledge about its own performance" (Manefield and Wyatt,1,1995).

In SchoolMate.NET schools teams begin to find that old ways of thinking about the future will no longer work. A new organisational structure that encourages "a new way of thinking, as much as a new way of doing things" (Sarros and Beare,12,1988) is required so that these schools can continually expand their capacities to create a desirable future. As part of this process, SchoolMate.NET teams identify a series of 'optimum strategies' that are considered likely to achieve dramatic improvement in terms of student learning outcomes. These teams begin to reflect on the alignment or lack of alignment of the approaches to learning, management and leadership. It is seen as important to remove real and perceived constraints that exist in the school. Having identified whole school needs it becomes easier to identify non value-added activities and to question their relative function. Many traditional practices, structures and mandatory programs can be challenged and in some instances removed or significantly modified.

A flexible structure that supports a 'community of leaders' at school level should be established. The school principal and executive members of staff can provide a team of support (not a hierarchical framework) to staff and community members. Flat line teams are more able to interchange leadership depending on the initiative, modelling collaborative relationships and team commitment. The embracing of a 'team' philosophy in SchoolMate.NET schools means that well informed knowledge-centred decisions about school change progress with healthy discussion, and a sharing of a variety of understandings and prior learnings.

Hard questions about shared leadership, teacher culture, communication channels and participative process need to be addressed; as do consideration to the ways students are grouped and classrooms resourced in terms of learning and behaviour outcomes. Collaborative process and a respect for continual improvement become key elements as SchoolMate.NET schools begin to rethink and redesign structures in the learning organisation. More importantly the SchoolMate.NET community begins to believe that a learning community will culminate in the dramatic improvement of student and school outcomes.

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