Partnership Learning Network

The Partnership Learning Network (PLN) began as an effort to create connections among the foundation’s partnership sites. The PLN's newest initiative is the development of Communities of Practice for the Foundation and its partners. For more on communities of practice, see the Spring 2004 edition of the Review.

The goals of the PLN are to:

• Develop strong relationships among and between our partners and the foundation
• Share best practices across partnership sites
• Deepen our individual and collective understanding of productivity to improve student achievement
• Engage with partnerships in inquiry and reflection and sustain the use of a “critical friend” model across the partnerships
• Capture knowledge at each site and promote knowledge sharing among partners, the foundation, and other reform support organizations

The intended outcomes of the PLN are:

• Development of trust among and between our partners and the foundation
• Increased capacity of the adults in the educational system to produce better results for students
• Changes in instructional practices and organizational policies that lead to more productive systems and enhanced learning
• Identification of patterns and leverage points for increased productivity gains at the district, school, and classroom levels
• Attainment of the goals included in each partnership agreement
• Dissemination of our learnings to other reform support organizations engaged in district reform

Currently, the PLN’s major activities are:

• National Conferences - Gatherings of representatives from our partnership sites, foundation staff, and critical friends to advance promising practices, reflect on our work, and push our thinking. The first PLN conference was held in 2000.
• Exchange Visits - The foundation provides funds to allow staff at one partnership to visit another, in order to help meet the PLN goals listed above.
• Communications - The PLN is developing various means to promote active communication between our partners, including electronic and web-based tools. The foundation also gathers relevant information from others engaged in education reform and disseminates that information to the network.

Communities of Practice: Principle-Centered Work

The development of communities of practice relies on many tools and processes. However, the work rests on some critical principles that relate to the understanding of community formation, inquiry and learning. Some of the principles are as follows:

• Communities of practice provide members access to all the intelligence in the system.
• Communities of practice eliminate fragmentation by connecting the system to more of itself.
• Promising practices are best learned from peers -- those doing the work.
• Learning is supported by reflective space.
• Learning forums should be visible to the whole system.
• Every learning forum is an opportunity to strengthen the community of practice at all levels.
• Members of the community of practice are responsible for sharing what they know, engaging in mutual inquiry, and serving as critical friends to each other.
• The work of the community of practice resides in the authentic work of schools.
• Communities of practice nourish the network of relationships.
• Communities of practice work with what's working and what's possible, not with what's wrong.