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Attention to professional community has increased markedly over the last few years as part of both practitioner and scholarly efforts to promote improvements in student learning. Interest in this area joins two previously distinct literatures-one dealing with the benefits of communal school organization, another with enhanced teacher professionalism-to formulate a theoretical framework for a school-based professional community. Using data from a large urban school district, this paper empirically tests the impact of structural, human, and social factors on the emergence of school-based professional community and the extent to which such developments in turn promote more productive organizational functioning. Data were obtained from a survey of public school elementary teachers in Chicago administered during spring 1994 to 5,690 teachers in 248 elementary schools. Three core practices are found in a school-based professional community-reflective dialogue among teachers, deprivatized practice, and peer collaboration. The findings also underscore the importance for small school size as a key structural factor. Perhaps the most important and hopeful conclusion is that a professional community can exist in very ordinary urban schools. Moreover, positive teacher reports about professional community came from a wide cross-section of schools. One table is included. Appendices contain methodological notes. (Contains 60 references.) (LMI)

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The theme of this special issue of the Journal of School Leadership involves teachers’ professional learning communities. It is satisfying to see a major journal in educational leadership focus on a problem that was seen only dimly two decades ago. This contribution examines the antecedents and underlying research traditions that have culminated in the strong sense of urgency among scholars and practitioners to shift the focus of school reform away from restructuring and toward reculturing (Miller, 1998). In addition, it cautions against the hope that professional learning communities will become a temporary panacea for what ails the public schools and the even greater tendency to develop in professional learning communities interventions that can be implemented, such as a new reading curriculum.