Conversation and the development of learning communities

Abstract

The process of designing social systems, including educational systems, is most likely to contribute to sustainable systems if the context for the design process is that of community. From a systems perspective, the people who serve the system and those who are served and affected by the system constitute the designing community (Banathy, 1996). The concept of design of professional learning communities for educators is particularly critical as we face the 21st century, given the historically dismal prospects for meaningful, substantive, professional development for teachers and other practitioners (Wilson & Berne, 1999). The purpose of this chapter is to examine the role and nature of conversation in designing professional development communities for teachers and other educators. The context of our exploration is a two-year research/professional development initiative in Southeast Michigan where we (Kinnucan-Welsch and Jenlink) worked with a consortium of twenty-five school districts to design professional development activities related to creating and sustaining inquiry-based communities. Design conversations were an integral aspect of the process, and exploring the conversations themselves provides a unique lens through which to understand the evolution of system design. For the purposes of this chapter, we will first explore conversation as a medium for designing professional learning communities as human activity systems. We then examine the concept of community from a variety of perspectives, including sociological, anthropological, and philosophical, and connect professional learning among educators with the notion of dialogic, inquiry, and design communities. We then draw from our experiences as participants in design conversation to construct a case study of professional learning community design. As a final note, we offer our reflections on the connections between a designing community and a community for professional learning as we experienced in the professional development initiative described in this chapter. © 2005 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc.