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Communities of Practice: Jean Lave @ Etienne Wenger

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Communities of Practice: Jean Lave @ Etienne Wenger

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This Infed article explores the importance that communities of practice offer to personal and professional collaborative learning

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infed.org-Jean Lave Etienne Wenger and communities of practice (1)

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This model explores what happens when communities of practice, education and interest overlap or interact

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Communities of Learning Model v3 - completed 'what happens here' model

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A model that explores the range of personal and professional collaborative learning when Communities of Practice, Education and Interest interact with one another

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Communities of Learning Model v3 - completed 'what happens here' model

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Communities of Practice - Jean Lave & Etienne Wenger

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Communities of Practice - Jean Lave & Etienne Wenger

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A document about the importance and relevance of personal and professional learning through communities of practice

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infed.org-Jean Lave Etienne Wenger and communities of practice (1)

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A provocation document designed to stimulate thinking and discussion about collaborative learning and communities of practice

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Communities of Learning Model v3 - completed 'what happens here' model

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Learning in the Community and Community Learning

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Learning in the Community and Community Learning

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This Infed document outlines the practical applications of adult collaborative learning

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infed.org-Learning in the community and community learning

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21st Century Learning - learning in collaboration

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21st Century Learning - learning in collaboration

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A discussion document that explores the meaning, purpose and theory of collaborative learning

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A guidance document from New Jersey, USA

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Professional collaborative learning Toolkit - New Jersey

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Collaborative Professional Learning from theory to practice

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Collaborative Professional Learning from theory to practice

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An article that introduces the concept of Collaborative Professional Learning

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Collaborative Professional Learning from theory to practice

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Solidarity with solidity: the case for collaborative professionalism

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Solidarity with solidity: the case for collaborative professionalism

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Effective collaboration requires teachers to get their heads out of the sand and see what others are doing while relying on expertise to keep the sand out of their heads.
When teachers are stressed and overworked, it's tempting for them to hunker down and bury their heads in the sand, choosing to seclude themselves in their own classrooms rather than take the time to look around and see what their colleagues might be doing. But of course, unless they observe and seek out help from those colleagues, they'll likely never encounter new ideas about instruction or let go of tired old classroom practices. That is, unless they get their heads out of the sand, they'll never get the sand out of their heads.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, and building on Dan Lortie's classic 1975 study Schoolteacher, educational researchers began to give serious attention to professional collaboration in schools, exploring its value in contrast to traditions of teacher individualism and isolation. On average, they found, professional collaboration led to superior results in student achievement (Nias, Southworth, & Yeomans, 1989; Rosenholtz, 1989; Schleifer, Rinehart, & Yanisch, 2017; Talbert & McLaughlin, 1994). Further, strong links between professional collaboration and teacher effectiveness have continued to be observed over time and across various contexts, as confirmed by large-scale studies around the world (e.g., Day et al., 2007; Leana, 2011). For example, in its surveys of Teaching and Learning in Schools (TALIS), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) concluded that professional collaboration tends to yield positive outcomes for student learning and achievement and for teacher motivation and retention (OECD, 2014; see also Papay & Kraft, 2017).

But not all collaboration is equally effective. Notably, Judith Warren Little (1990) has described a continuum of approaches, ranging from weak forms of teacher collaboration (involving, for example, nothing more than just the sharing of stories) to stronger ones involving joint efforts to analyze and solve significant problems of practice. Similarly, Andy Hargreaves and Ruth Dawe (1990) have pointed out that collaborative practices that have been mandated in a top-down fashion, or that seem "contrived," can easily backfire, causing teachers to collaborate even less than before - indeed, this may help explain why many U.S. teachers say they dislike their professional development programs, including those meant to be "collaborative" in nature (Jacob & McGovern, 2015).

So the question is, what can be done to maximize the effectiveness of teachers' collaborative experiences and minimize their flaws?

School and district leaders who want to improve collaboration have no shortage of options. Since the 1990s, professional learning specialists have created a number of approaches - such as data teams, professional learning communities, critical friends circles, and learning walks - designed to make professional collaboration more deliberate and effective. But which design should you choose? And how do you make sure it will fit your school's unique circumstances and culture? The answer is to pay attention to two things: the solidarity of the group and the solidity or substance of its ideas and methods.
Solidarity without solidity
While we were writing this article, one of us visited an elementary school in Europe. Outside, on the stone steps of their outdoor theater, the grade 2 children joyfully sang their school song, featuring lyrics about belonging and togetherness. Inside, we met with the principal, who had been at the school for almost all of her career, along with some of her staff. The teachers said they loved the school and added that few colleagues had ever left their jobs. They supported each other, talked about the children and their teaching, and took an interest in each other's lives. It was a perfect collaborative culture characterized by great solidarity - not the kind we associate with teachers unions (although that is important) but the sense of togetherness expressed in mutual support and the feeling that everyone is in the same boat and doing their best.

About a year ago, these educators decided to push this collaboration deeper by giving each other feedback, including ideas about how to improve. They began by observing each other's classes, awarding a star for one thing that went well, along with two question marks about something to work on.

"How did that go down?" we asked.

"It was dreadful," they replied.

The conversations disrupted the staff's friendships rather than strengthening them. The teachers struggled to move their school culture, marked by strong personal relationships, to a deeper level, where tough questions can be asked, mistakes acknowledged, and alternatives provided in a way that is based on solid expertise concerning how to collaborate and what to collaborate about. Effective collaboration needs specific designs, protocols, structures, and processes to guide conversations so that peers can improve their practice without jeopardizing existing relationships. It needs solid expertise about curriculum, teaching, and learning, too.

Educators should be wary of a trend toward the "death of expertise," in which no member of the group is expected to stand out as an authority.

Consider an example from a study one of us has been involved in (Hargreaves et al., 2018). Like a lot of school systems, Ontario, in Canada, has been focused of late on improving students' learning and achievement in mathematics. Collaborative inquiry was a key component of the system's earlier success in improving literacy instruction, so teachers and administrators decided to employ the same method once more. However, while elementary educators usually feel they already know a lot about literacy, many of them (particularly in North America) lack confidence in mathematics. This created problems because many of the collaborative inquiry groups included nobody with real expertise in the subject area.

In our visits, a number of district coaches and consultants didn't realize that this might undermine their efforts. "Nobody's an expert at anything," they claimed, "and we're just here to learn and grow and be the best that we can be." But, in fact, authoritative knowledge has an indispensable role to play in teacher collaboration. Educators should be wary of a trend toward the "death of expertise," in which no member of the group is expected to stand out as an authority, or in which everybody is assumed to have equally valid experience and knowledge (Nichols, 2017). Not only does this negate the hard-won expertise that some teachers have acquired, but it leaves the larger group adrift, without anybody to ground the inquiry process in solid research and knowledge.
Solidity without solidarity
If solidarity can benefit from more solidity, the converse is true as well. For example, imagine what's likely to happen when a principal comes across an interesting new approach to fostering collaboration . . . and then tells teachers that they will be required to implement it.

According to a study by the Boston Consulting Group (2014), professional learning communities (PLCs) were one of the most disliked forms of professional development among surveyed teachers, even though providers and administrators were highly supportive of the approach. A given PLC model may seem to offer a promising blueprint for collective inquiry and shared decision making. But if teachers see it as (just another) reform imposed on them from above, then they'll likely experience it as such. The protocols and terminology may be new, but they'll grumble about being forced, yet again, to go through the motions of meeting with each other, agreeing on group norms, defining shared goals, and so on.

All too often, PLCs and other efforts to promote collaboration come across as contrived collegiality (Hargreaves, 1994). The research base may be solid, but unless the work is grounded in a strong culture of solidarity among teachers and between them and their administrators, the PLC will be a waste of time.
The meaning of collaborative professionalism
Collaborative professional relationships that positively influence student learning need better tools and deeper trust, clearer structures and stronger cultures, expertise and enthusiasm, knowing what to do and how to be with each other - both solidity and solidarity. Such collaborative professionalism requires what Judith Warren Little (1990) calls "joint work," featuring rigor, dialogue, expertise, and open and honest feedback.

Over the last several years, we have studied and contributed to five examples of collaborative professionalism, located in five different parts of the world (Hargreaves & O'Connor, 2017, 2018):

Collaborative curriculum planning in a network of rural schools (Pacific Northwest, United States)

Lesson study (Hong Kong)

Cooperative learning and working (Norway)

Collaborative pedagogical transformation (Colombia), and

Teacher-led professional learning communities (Ontario, Canada).

Although these designs differ from one another in various ways, each of them demonstrates what it means to combine a solid, rigorous approach to school improvement with efforts to cultivate solidarity among members of collaborative teams. Further, each represents an effort to pursue this sort of work at scale and over a sustained period of time. The collaborative designs we've examined are not limited to brief experiments at individual schools with special resources (extra investment, handpicked staff, or charismatic leadership). Rather, they are multisite initiatives that have been underway for many years.

Collaborative professional relationships need better tools and deeper trust, clearer structures and stronger cultures, expertise and enthusiasm, knowing what to do and how to be with each other.

Specifically, we documented how 30 rural schools across the Pacific Northwest created a thriving network of their own design; how government policy in Hong Kong supported three-year cycles of funding for school innovation over more than a decade; how school system leaders in Norway, Hong Kong, and Ontario made conscious decisions to focus patiently on key initiatives rather than inundating schools with multiple and contradictory reforms; how Ontario has provided meaningful support for collaborative inquiry throughout a system that includes more than 5,000 schools, and how Columbia's initiative to create peace and democracy through education has spread across 25,000 schools within that country and beyond. Further, we learned that when they began this work, these schools and systems did not expect to see immediate results. Rather, they built and scaled up their models gradually - for example, it took five years to cocreate a thriving network in the Pacific Northwest, and school and system leaders worked patiently for almost a decade to refine their approaches in Ontario, Hong Kong, and Norway.

Below, we describe two of these examples in more detail.
Collaborative curriculum planning across rural schools
In the Pacific Northwest, we have worked for almost five years in partnership with Education Northwest, a regional education center, to help build a network linking more than 30 rural and remote schools. Serving many different kinds of communities (some of them facing high poverty, unemployment, and a declining population), their teachers are often the only teachers of their subject or grade level in their schools, and so they have little chance to interact with and learn from similar teachers. As one of them pointed out, "It's hard to collaborate with yourself!"

Informed by examples of other networks from around the world, the Northwest Rural Innovation and Student Engagement (NW RISE) network was founded by the participating states and schools. The network's major activity is to convene job-alike groups of educators (e.g., kindergarten teachers, principals, or math teachers), bringing them together to plan new curriculum units and instructional activities, with an emphasis on increasing students' engagement with their learning and their communities. Participants chose this design, and they resolutely defend it as the core and most productive activity at their twice-yearly meetings.

Between meetings, the job-alike groups use Schoology (a learning management system), Skype, Google Hangouts, and e-mail to keep in touch and check in on their collective progress. The language arts group, for example, has designed curriculum units to enable high school students to improve their argumentative writing about issues such as the use of drones in agriculture and the military, or the use of 1:1 technology in schools. Moreover, not only do the teachers collaborate, but students across the schools also give each other feedback, using a peer-editing rubric, on essays that they post on Schoology.

As one teacher explained, the network offered her solidarity: "It's been nice just to work with other people who have the same frustrations," she said. But there was solidity to the collaboration, too, as knowledgeable peers regularly offered new ideas and insights about instruction that challenged her beliefs and practices. "I've been so isolated as a teacher. I just have gotten used to being my own boss and doing what I want and making my decisions," she observed. "And then I have to come here and hear ideas that don't necessarily go with mine and learn to be flexible and see others' perspectives."

It's important to note, though, that the network wasn't so productive and well designed from the start. It evolved over time, moving in zigzag fashion rather than in a straight line. In the early days, for example, the language arts group was content just to share unit resources; it took months before they began to cocreate units and debate those units' strengths and weaknesses. The math group, too, progressed at a snail's pace for a time, spending months trading examples of simple classroom problems before the conversation leaped forward in sophistication, with participants working together to design challenging activities in which students had to solve equations to open metal boxes with chains and combination locks. Meanwhile, the administrators' group got off to the fast start one might expect from those whose work requires big-picture thinking - until someone pointed out that they were focusing on how to get other people to collaborate rather than on what they should collaborate about among themselves. Their fast start, they realized, had been a false start. After retreating for a while to the safer ground of talking about high school football, they plunged into a serious effort to rethink the purpose of classroom observations and redesign their observation protocols and tools.

In this case, the network's design has been tailored to fit the given participants, their interests, and their needs, but it has also been informed by research into effective professional collaboration, which requires both social solidarity and a solid commitment to working together to identify and solve important educational problems. It took time for this network to mature, though. Teachers collaborated superficially before they began to work together more deeply, and their professional relationships evolved gradually, in fits and starts.

Is this network sustainable? That's always difficult to predict, but it's a good sign that participants have raised this question themselves. As federal resources become harder to procure, they aren't waiting around for a magic money tree to appear. Less than halfway into their five-year project, they had already begun discussing ways to allocate existing funds to provide continuing support for their work.
Lesson study
Fanling Secondary School in Hong Kong is one of a network of 20 schools in the government system that has adapted a process of teacher inquiry, feedback, and collaboration from a 100-year-old tradition known as lesson study in Japan and open class at Fanling.

Fanling's teachers are committed to a complex design for teaching and learning known as self-regulated learning. This approach divides a typical 50-minute lesson into multiple steps involving teacher presentation, whole-class question-and-answer, work in pairs, collaboration in groups of four, editing of each other's comments, and presentations of results to the whole class. Twice a year, around 100 visitors to the school observe classes in groups of 10 or so at a time and then give feedback to the teachers. Some of this feedback can be very critical, pointing to issues like the small number of students teachers called on during the lesson or whether the fast pace of the lesson prevented deeper thinking. But even teachers who used to be upset by such feedback welcome it at Fanling. Why?

First, some observers are specifically directed to give critical feedback - it's part of their role, not their personality. Second, there are clear norms that feedback must be respectful and considerate of the teacher's situation. Last, although one teacher presents the lesson, the whole teacher team has previously prepared, taught, reviewed, and refined it, meaning that it does not belong to one of them, but to all of them.

Lesson study, as implemented at Fanling, looks like another bit of genius design that schools are sometimes eager to adopt. But once again, success with the solidity of the design depends on solidarity among teachers. Too often, administrators take an innovative collaborative design and try to graft it onto their schools without also establishing strong relationships with and among their teachers. At Fanling, though, relationship building has been a focus throughout. As one teacher, a 12-year veteran of the school, recalled, "[At first] there wasn't much interaction between students and teachers," or among teachers themselves. But over many years, the principal has made it a priority to build a more collaborative culture, one where teachers not only work in task-focused teams but also choose to eat together at lunchtime, for example, taking the opportunity to have informal discussions about their teaching, outside of the more formal lesson study process.
Relationships and rigor bring results
Leaders tend to invest in building relationships, on the one hand, or using precise methods to structure and guide collaborative work, on the other. But collaborative professionalism is about integrating relationships and rigor. This principle applies to our other cases, too:

In a Norwegian school where teachers worked together intensively to analyze student data and plan instruction, teachers also chose to reserve time every day for hiking and other informal activities with students outside in nature, even in the depths of winter.

A teacher-led learning community in northern Canada engaged Indigenous students in learning using hockey coaches' insights into teamwork, leadership, and perseverance. The principals felt able to step aside because teachers had learned to collaborate effectively over many years beforehand.

In Colombia, teachers in underserved rural communities tutor each other in methods that give student voice a central role in building peace and democracy in their schools and their country. These strategies have been developed in 25,000 schools over 40 years.

It's easy to adopt a new model of teacher collaboration. But to bring that model to life, teachers must empower themselves and their colleagues to improve school and classroom practice together over time in relationships that are free from fear or threat. This is the heart of what Peter DeWitt (2016) calls collaborative leadership.

At the same time, leaders may be hesitant to adopt a new collaborative model at all, out of fear that this might inadvertently provoke conflict, envy, or resentment among teachers who already seem to be getting along harmoniously enough. But well-designed models include tools meant to reduce such conflicts. For example, critical friends protocols specifically encourage participants to listen nonjudgmentally when colleagues introduce problems of practice (Shirley & MacDonald, 2009). Similarly, collaborative models can provide a protected space where educators can present their work to colleagues without being made to feel they are bragging - for example, the U.S. National Writing Project designates an "author's chair" that participants use when sharing successful practices (Lieberman & Wood, 2003).

Some teachers still want to do everything alone. Others are willing to share but lack the expertise needed to help each other improve instruction. And many school administrators are quick to exploit the idea of teamwork, requiring contrived collaborations that serve no purpose other than to burnish their own reputation for forward-thinking leadership.

But if they aim to improve teaching and learning over the long term, then educators will have to get their heads out of the sand and acknowledge that sustainable improvement requires both solidarity among colleagues and a solid grounding in research, expertise, and well-designed tools and protocols. One of K-12 education's big challenges over the last 20 years has been to increase the frequency and quantity of professional collaboration in schools. The next big challenge is to improve the quality of that work, moving it in the direction of collaborative professionalism.
References
Boston Consulting Group. (2014). Teachers know best: Teachers' views on professional development. Seattle, WA: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Day, C., Stobart, G., Sammons, P., Kington, A., & Gu, Q. (2007). Teachers matter: Connecting lives, work and effectiveness. Berkshire, UK: Open University Press.

DeWitt, P.M. (2016). Collaborative leadership: Six influences that matter most. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Hargreaves, A. (1994). Changing teachers, changing times: Teachers' work and culture in the postmodern age. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Hargreaves, A. & Dawe, R. (1990). Paths of professional development: Contrived collegiality, collaborative culture, and the case of peer coaching. Teaching and Teacher Education, 6 (3), 227-241.

Hargreaves, A. & O'Connor, M.T. (2017). Collaborative professionalism. Monograph prepared for the World Innovation Summit for Education, Qatar, Qatar Foundation. www.wise-qatar.org/2017-wise-research-collaborative-professionalism

Hargreaves, A. & O'Connor, M.T. (2018). Collaborative professionalism: When teaching together means learning for all. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Hargreaves, A., Shirley,D., Wangia, S., Bacon, C., & D'Angelo, M. (2018). Leading from the middle: Spreading learning, well-being, and identity across Ontario. Toronto, Canada: Council of Ontario Directors of Education Press.

Jacob, A. & McGovern, K. (2015). The mirage: Confronting the hard truth about our quest for teacher development. New York, NY: The New Teacher Project.

Leana, C.R. (2011, Fall). The missing link in scool reform. Stanford

Lewis, C. (2002). Does lesson study have a future in the United States? Nagoya Journal of Education and Human Development, 1, 1-23.

Lieberman, A. & Wood, D. (2003). Inside the National Writing Project: Connecting network learning and classroom teaching. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Little, J.W. (1990). The persistence of privacy: Autonomy and initiative in teachers' professional relations. Teachers College Record, 91 (4), 509-536.

Lortie, D. (1975). Schoolteacher. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Nias, J., Southworth, G., & Yeomans, R. (1989). Staff relationships in the primary school: A study of organisational cultures. London, England: Cassell.

Nichols, T. (2017). The death of expertise: The campaign against established knowledge and why it matters. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). (2014). TALIS 2013 results: An international perspective on teaching and learning, Paris: OECD Publishing, Paris.

Papay, J.P. & Kraft, M.A. (2017). Developing workplaces where teachers stay, improve, and succeed: Recent evidence on the importance of school climate for teacher success. In E. Quintero (Ed.), Teaching in context: The social side of education reform(p. 15-36). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educ

Rosenholtz, S. (1989). Teachers' workplace: The social organization of schools. White Plains, NY: Longman.

Schleifer, D., Rinehart, C., & Yanisch, T. (2017). Teacher collaboration in perspective: A guide to researh. New York, NY: Public Agenda.

Shirley, D. & MacDonald, E. (2009). The mindful teacher. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Talbert, J.E., & McLaughlin, M.W. (1994). Teacher professionalism in local school contexts. American Journal of Education, 102(2), 123-153.

Citation: Hargreaves, A. & O'Connor, M.T. (2018). Solidarity with solidity: The case for collaborative professionalism. Phi Delta Kappan, 100 (1), 20-24.

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Solidarity with solidity: The case for collaborative professionalism - kappanonline.org

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Effective collaboration requires teachers to get their heads out of the sand and see what others are doing while relying on expertise to keep the sand out of their heads.

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Japan's innovative approach to collaborative learning

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Japan's innovative approach to collaborative learning

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In Japanese schools, the teachers' room is an invaluable place for teachers to learn together across their careers.
For the past several decades, Japan's students have consistently ranked among the world's top performing in science, mathematics, and reading. For example, on the 2015 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), Japan ranked second in science, fifth in mathematics, and eighth in reading among the 72 participating countries and economies (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2015), with similar results on the 2015 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Japan is also known for collaborative professional development models such as lesson study, which has gained popularity around the globe since its development in the 1920s, when child-centered education was first introduced in Japan (National Association for the Study of Educational Methods, 2009).

While these achievements and models are well-known, less is known about teachers' professional lives in Japan. For instance, what are the requirements for teachers' professional development? What kinds of professional development activities do they participate in? Are these activities effective? What types of learning activities do teachers initiate? How do formal and informal learning opportunities affect teachers' practice across their careers?

As government employees, teachers are essentially granted tenure on the very first day of hire (Ahn et al., 2016). But their status as civil servants brings with it many policies governing their work conditions, including professional development requirements. Since the late 1980s, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) has required teachers to complete mandatory professional development hours that include such activities as first-year induction, 10th-year training, and license renewals every 10 years (MEXT, 2009a). These national policies target teachers at different stages in their career - beginning, middle, and veteran. In addition, many prefectures and local governments have their own professional development policies.

When talking with teachers about their professional development, we found that the mandated professional learning was less valuable than the informal collegial learning that occurred in shokuin shitsu, or the teachers' room. Understanding the differences between the two types of learning can help education leaders in Japan and around the world to create the kinds of professional development opportunities that benefit teachers throughout their careers.
Professional development requirements Beginning teachers
New teachers in Japan usually are assigned to a local school for up to six years (Fukaya, 2015), during which time they are considered beginners. After that, they are rotated to another school in the same district.

Because novice teachers begin teaching after only two to four weeks of formal student teaching, MEXT has made it a priority to boost the quality of their initial preparation and support. In 1989, it created a policy on first-year induction, requiring first-year teachers to go through an average of 10 hours per week (amounting to 300 hours in a year) of on-site and off-site professional development (MEXT, 2009b). On-site training includes regular classroom observations of new teachers by mentor teachers and observations of mentor teachers by new teachers. Also included in the 300 hours are 25 days of off-site training activities (Ichikawa, 2015).

Teachers at various stages in their career unequivocally endorsed the critical role of shokuin shitsu (teachers' room) as a necessary space for their professional growth.

In addition to the national first-year induction requirement, some local governments require second-year training. For example, in Osaka City, second-year teachers continue with their induction, spreading their 300 hours over two years. In the first year, they acquire foundational knowledge and leadership skills in a multitude of topics related to the teaching profession, including mental health, understanding students, communication and etiquette, human rights education, and subject-matter education. In the second year, they focus on applying the knowledge and skills they've acquired. Furthermore, some local governments, including Osaka City, require fifth-year teachers to fulfill additional professional development requirements that prepare them to become mentors and acquire advanced professional knowledge and skills (Osaka City Education Center, 2018).
Mid-career and veteran teachers
In 2003, MEXT mandated 10th-year professional development to prepare mid-career teachers for leadership roles (commonly known as middle leader). The 10th-year training requires midcareer teachers to spend an average of 28 days (11 days off-site and 17 days on-site) on professional development activities (MEXT, 2017a). On-site training includes content-teaching skills, contemporary educational issues, lesson study, and conferences with the principal and assistant principal. Off-site training includes lectures on content teaching, student discipline, and other areas of interest, as well as experiences with technology and environmental education. Teachers who are already serving as middle leaders or working on license renewal may have reduced requirements (MEXT, 2002).

In 2009, MEXT began mandating that all teachers renew their teacher license every 10 years. As part of the renewal process, teachers take more than 30 hours of coursework at institutions or educational offices approved by MEXT. The curriculum is composed of more than 12 hours on contemporary educational issues and 18 hours of elective courses on subject-matter instruction, guidance, and counseling. Courses are mainly offered during summer or winter holidays, and teachers pay tuition to take them (MEXT, 2017b).
Teacher perspectives
Despite these highly structured professional development policies at the national and local levels, teachers have expressed mixed views about their experiences. A nationwide survey of past first-year induction participants showed varied results regarding the effectiveness of on-site induction (MEXT, 2015). Similarly, interviews of 12 mid-career and veteran teachers at a junior high school in Osaka showed that teacher opinions varied depending on, for example, who taught and facilitated the course and whether participants were able to get the topic of their choice (popular topics get filled and closed right away).

Interestingly, among these hit-or-miss results, one form of professional development received a consistent positive response across all interviews: Teachers at various stages in their career unequivocally endorsed the critical role of shokuin shitsu (teachers' room) as a necessary space for their professional growth. Let us now turn our attention to what happens in this collegial space, using a case study site at Mirai Junior High School in Osaka.
Informal learning in shokuin shitsu Beginning teachers
Teaching in Japan is considered a collective professional endeavor. To foster this collective attitude, schools in Japan have shokuin shitsu, or teachers' room, where all teachers have assigned individual desks and meet together daily to prepare, complete work, and collaborate on practice, overseen by administrators (Ahn, 2014). Teachers in Japan travel from classroom to classroom while students remain in the same classroom. So shokuin shitsu becomes a home base that teachers use between teaching, homeroom, supervising clubs, and other responsibilities throughout the day. Often grouped by grade-level islands, teachers at different stages in their careers interact with one another about students, lessons, events, and other matters. While official work hours end at around 6 p.m., many teachers continue to stay in the teachers' room until 8 or 9 p.m. to catch up with their work. This time away from students also serves as a time to visit with colleagues and have informal personal conversations (Ahn, 2016).

Instead of being isolated, novice teachers are always surrounded by experienced colleagues in a trusting environment.

For beginning teachers, shokuin shitsu is an indispensable space in which to make sense of their questions and experiences with the support of their colleagues and administrators (Ahn, 2014). It serves as a classroom where new teachers are able to ask pressing questions, share immediate concerns, and seek needed advice from various colleagues without the fear of being judged. Instead of being isolated, novice teachers are always surrounded by experienced colleagues in a trusting environment. They do not have to wait until the next scheduled meeting or make appointments to ask questions but can share issues and questions as they arise. When an urgent matter comes up, experienced teachers and administrators draw on their vast knowledge and experience to help the new teacher arrive at a viable solution. New teachers are comfortable seeking such help because, in Japan's apprenticeship-
oriented approach to teacher development, learning is viewed as a process rather than a single event. Mistakes are a given and forgiven, because experienced teachers and administrators understand the learning curve of beginning teachers.

When Mr. Nakamura, a sixth-year teacher in charge of student discipline, was punched by a 9th-grade student, the entire school staff got involved. Immediately after the incident, colleagues and administrators in the teachers' room began gathering to comfort the visibly shaken teacher. Knowing the student's family situation well, these experienced colleagues helped Mr. Nakamura understand the circumstances that possibly led to the student's violent behavior, without criticizing his actions, and they later worked with him to create an intervention plan. When interviewed, Mr. Nakamura said he could not imagine being without the support of the teachers' room. To a beginning teacher like him with an enormous responsibility as a teacher in charge of student discipline, the teachers' room is a place of refuge, a safe niche that promotes his growth. Other beginning teachers echoed his views on the indispensability of this space in their own daily professional learning (Ahn, 2014).
Mid-career and veteran teachers
It is understandable that beginning teachers will need a safe, supportive space for continuous learning. But what about more experienced teachers? How do they feel about their professional learning in the context of shokuin shitsu?

For mid-career teachers like Mr. Toyama (science and 8th-grade homeroom teacher) and Mr. Takeda (math teacher and human rights curriculum leader), who have taught for 10 years, the teachers' room plays a vital role in their professional lives. Although from time to time they benefit from attending formal professional development trainings offered by the city and Osaka prefecture, they are keenly aware that the teachers' room allows them to engage in discussion and reflection on teaching in the company of their colleagues. As another mid-career English teacher with 15 years of teaching and leadership experience shared,

When everyone gathers in the teachers' room, we exchange information and confirm our common purpose among teachers. Regardless of age, we all learn from one another. We are colleagues. We learn from young people's energy and veteran teachers' skills. We learn what we don't notice. Even in the mid-career teacher's eyes, shokuin shitsu is a learning classroom.

These mid-career teachers' voices reveal that, even after their beginning years, informal, day-to-day learning continues to take place in the common ground of the teachers' room.
Highly experienced teachers
Highly experienced teachers also see value in the teachers' room. As Mr. Takashima, a well-respected 37-year veteran teacher who has been a teacher leader since 2003, told us, "Teachers grow in the field. When teachers run into a problem, they solve it through collegial discussions." Because of his firm belief in collegial learning, the veteran teacher intentionally chooses each year to nurture and mentor less-experienced teachers as a grade-level and language arts leader. He sees the shokuin shitsu as the place where all teachers gather formally and informally throughout the day and week to solve common issues related to children. To Mr. Takashima, who has experienced many hit-or-miss results in formal professional development sessions, the ongoing and unplanned nature of learning that takes place in the teachers' room is critical to teachers' professional growth.

Similarly, Ms. Kobayashi, a 20-year veteran physical education teacher, who serves as a 9th-grade leader, treasures the shokuin shitsu. While she found some of her earlier professional development programs to be ineffective, she was passionately supportive of the opportunities for growth she found in the teachers' room:

It is a must . . . Most teachers gather here. I need a space where I can communicate my spur-of-the-moment thoughts. From my seat, I'm always listening to other grade-level teachers' conversations as a reference. When it applies to me, I join in the conversation.

Ms. Kobayashi told us that the pockets of conversation that take place in different locations in the teachers' room keep her on her toes, with her antenna constantly extending, because she knows many of these conversations add to her insights in solving students' problems and other issues. And when she has something to say that will benefit the group, she can't resist chiming in.
Continual learning in shokuin shitsu
According to Mr. Takashima, teachers first notice, then learn, and finally grow. In Japan's teachers' room, this professional learning cycle takes place continuously for teachers at various stages in their career. The teachers' room serves as a germinating ground for learning without the feeling of embarrassment or fear of judgment by their peers. In this learning space, all teachers are entitled to participate in formal and informal collegial conversations that hone their thinking, ultimately leading to professional growth.

Japan's teachers' room as a continuous shared learning space holds promise for teaching professionals in the U.S. and around the world. Indeed, as the 37-year veteran administrator Mr. Honda stated, "There is no apex in the world of teachers. We aim at becoming better teachers [all the time]. [ Shokuin shitsu] is a place to sharpen each other with the attitude of learning and a calling to help others learn." Japan's teachers' room sheds light on a bottom-up professional learning approach that may help explain the ongoing success of Japanese education and offers a possible model for promoting collegial learning in schools around the world.
References
Ahn, R. (2014, May). How Japan supports novice teachers. Educational Leadership, 71 (8), 49-53.

Ahn, R. (2016). Japan's communal approach to teacher induction: Shokuin shitsu as an indispensable nurturing ground for Japanese beginning teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education. 59, 420-430.

Ahn, R., Asanuma, S., & Mori, H. (2016). Japan's teachers earn tenure on day one. Phi Delta Kappan, 97 (6), 27-31.

Fukaya, K. (2015). Tokai chihono jichitaini okeru shochugakkono kyoinno jinji idono keiko [Tendency of the regular personnel transfers for elementary and junior high school teachers in the Tokai district]. Journal of the School of Education, Sugiyama Jogakuen University, 8, 207-216.

Ichikawa, S. (2015). Kyousyoku kenshu no rironto kozou: Yousei, menkyo, saiyou, hyouka. [Theory and structure of teacher development: Training, certification, induction, evaluation]. Tokyo: Kyoiku Kaihatsu Kenkyusho.

Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT). (2002). Junen keikensha kenshu kankei tsuuchi [Notification related to those with ten-year experience]. Tokyo, Japan: Author. www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/shotou/kenshu/009.htm

MEXT (2009a). Kyouin kenshu no jisshi taikei. [The system for conducting the professional development of teachers.] Tokyo, Japan: Author. www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/shotou/kenshu/1244827.htm

MEXT. (2009b). Shoninsha kenshu. [Practical training for beginning teachers.] Tokyo, Japan: Author. www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/shotou/kenshu/1244828.htm

MEXT. (2015). Shoninsha kenshu jisshi jokyo Heisei 25nendo chosa kekka [2013 research results from professional development for new teachers]. Tokyo, Japan: Author. www.mext.go.jp/component/a_menu/education/detail/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2015/04/22/1314653_2.pdf

MEXT. (2017a). 10 nen keikensha kenshu jisshi jokyo Heisei 28nendo chosa kekka [2016 research results from professional development for 10th year teachers]. Tokyo, Japan: Author. www.mext.go.jp/component/a_menu/education/detail/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2017/09/28/1396424_1_5.pdf

MEXT. (2017b). Kyoinmenkyo koshinsei ni kakaru kankei shiryo [Materials related to teachers' license renewal system]. Tokyo, Japan: Author. www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/shotou/koushin/005/1388543.htm

National Association for the Study of Educational Methods ( Nihon Kyoiku Houho Gakkai). (2009). Nihon no jyugyo kenkyu: Jyugyo kenkyu no rekishi to kyoushi kyouiku (Lesson study in Japan: History of lesson study and teacher education). Tokyo, Japan: Gakubunsha.

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). (2015). PISA 2015: Results in focus. Paris, France: Author. www.oecd.org/pisa/pisa-2015-results-in-focus.pdf

Osaka City Education Center. (2018). Osaka-shi Kyoiku Center: Gonenji kenshu [Osaka City Education Center: Fifth-year training]. Osaka, Japan: Author. www.ocec.jp/center/index.cfm/28,0,194,html

Citation: Ahn, R., Shimojima, Y., Mori, H., & Asanuma, S. (2018). Japan's innovative approach to professional learning. Phi Delta Kappan, 100 (4), 49-53

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Japan's innovative approach to professional learning - kappanonline.org

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In Japanese schools, the teachers' room is an invaluable place for teachers to learn together across their careers. For the past several decades, Japan's students have consistently ranked among the world's top performing in science, mathematics, and reading.

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Sharing best and next international practice

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Sharing best and next international practice

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The best professional development comes from learning collaboratively - with and from others. Post any best or next practice about professional collaborative learning in education here.