Bridging the real and ideal: A comparison between learning community characteristics and a school-based case study

While a growing body of literature advocates the importance of school-based, collaborative action research, less attention has been focused on how these projects are developed and implemented in the early stages. This study, therefore, examines a small Canadian school's initial attempt at promoting a “learning community” approach and compares it to the ideals of collaborative teamwork set out by recent scholarship. Our findings suggest that collegiality holds promise for change in teachers' practice and meaningful professional development if the school's administrator accepts the learning community philosophy and is willing to take the lead in initiating the reform. As well, we found that all ideal characteristics set out in the literature need not be in place from the outset for a project of this sort to be successful.