Getting Started: Reculturing Schools to Become Professional Learning Communities

by Robert E. Eaker, Richard DuFour

Get answers to the most common question posed by educators seeking to build and sustain a PLC: Where do we begin? Access a solid conceptual framework and concrete illustrations of how schools operate when they are functioning as PLCs. Two case studies examine schools that have made the transformation, showcasing district- and curriculum-level efforts to focus on student learning.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction

203 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a lot of "aha" moments about education reading this book. Lots of interesting insight.

[Graham Bates · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book of this age (21 in 2023) gets judged differently than newer ones: how did it predict/shape the years/decades since its printing? In this case, fairly well. The Professional Learning Community has become ubiquitous in usage, though at different levels and with different results depending on the school. But the language used shows how influential the concept has become.
Getting Started is very practical and easy to understand. This isn't a college-level, ivory-tower think piece which inundates you with statistics and psychological studies or government-level fixes that could only be changed by electing different politicians who appoint new bureaucrats to blow up the system and replace it with a new, ideal one. It focuses on makeup and personal responsibility - how to set up the community and who should take ownership of the results. It's a great read for someone transitioning to a leadership position in a school or as a refresher to make sure the community hasn't become stale and stagnant. Hopefully you'll find your school has been doing these things for years but you can always find small ways to improve.

[Brenda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very practical guide to "doing the work" of PLCs.
I love the analogy about assessment: Formative assessments are to Summative assessments as Physical examinations are to Autopsies.
This book recommends putting responsibility squarely where it belongs--on each individual member of a collaborative team.

[Douglass Gaking · Rating 3 out of 5]

The target reader for this book is a school administrator considering starting PLC at their school. There is some helpful advice for teachers in existing PLC programs, which I bookmarked in my copy, but it’s mostly for administrators looking to start from scratch. It is definitely helpful for that, but they will probably need more resources to effectively start a program.

[Scharenjo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overly redundant--in trying to be "more conversational" the authors essentially succeeded in repeating themselves and each other multiple time on almost every page which left me feeling like I was wasting my time. My colleagues really liked it.

[Steve Parsons · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like others have said, I felt this book was repetitive and could have been stripped down to the length of a pamphlet. Also, it lacked specificity I would want in a book about how to change the culture of a school.

[Cassie · Rating 2 out of 5]

A series of essays on aspects of PLCs - Eaker and DuFour's original 1998 book is a better description of PLCs. Read for class.

[James Zimmerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very insightful