The two of us have a pretty simple goal when facilitating professional learning. Keep things simple, mix research with practice, understand our impact, and ask questions that allow us to learn from our participants as much as they, we hope, learned from us.

That doesn’t always seem to be the norm in professional learning. In education, professional learning often feels more like an event than a process. In our experience as facilitators, we learned long ago that there are educators who are “voluntold” to attend a session. Other times, we have seen educators who attend large conferences, experience a sit-and-get, and then head back to their schools implementing very little of what was thrown at them.

Professional learning needs to be approachable, personal, and empathetic to the needs of the people in the room.

We have found in our roles as teachers, building leaders, and Michael as a district leader that what impacts educators the most is when they are engaged in learning that has elements of coaching, research, and true practice from individuals who have actually spent time in the classroom or leading a school or district.

A while ago, the two of us began engaging in a Communities of Practice (CoPs) during our long-term work with educators and leaders. Communities of Practice is a model rooted in the work of Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner. They say, “A CoP is formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor.”

At their core, CoPs are not just groups that get together and talk about schedules and adult issues. They are social learning systems. They form when people come together around a shared challenge and evolve through relationship-building and continuous meaning-making. The theory is powerful, when done correctly.

Translating Theory to Practice
In 1972, Odetola’s research found that students feel alienated from schools for two reasons. One, they don’t feel like they have a voice in their own learning, and two, they don’t feel an emotional connection to their teacher or school. These days, we know that many adults working in schools feel the same way, which partly contributes to the teacher-attrition issue school leaders are dealing with around the world.

In our work with leadership teams across states and districts, we’ve discovered the real power of CoPs lies in making that theory actionable. In their books, the Wenger-Trayners give permission for participants in a CoP to have flexibility within a structure. It’s about taking ownership over our own learning.

In our book Lead Collectively: From Belief to Action to Impact, we introduce a simple but powerful framework: the three-legged stool of collective leader efficacy. The three legs are shared understanding, joint work, and evidence of impact, which are rooted in collaborative inquiry.

The three legs of our stool aren’t just key components of strong leadership; they mirror the core elements of the Wenger-Trayners’ CoP theory.
For example:

• Shared Understanding = Domain The pair describe the domain as the area of focus that brings people together. In our framework, this translates to building trust, clarity, and coherence around a shared priority. Whether it’s literacy, equity, or instructional improvement, clarity in the “why” gives a CoP its direction. Our teams use strategies like the Frayer Model and the Collaborative Inquiry Placemat to co-construct meaning and avoid assumptions.
  
• Joint Work = Community Community is where relationships grow. In our CoPs, joint work isn’t just collaboration, it’s purposeful, structured, and grounded in data. Leaders engage in protocols, coaching, and shared decisionmaking that foster vulnerability and interdependence. We’ve seen that when leaders work together to define problems, test strategies, and reflect on outcomes, they build the trust needed for real change.
  
• Evidence of Impact = Practice A CoP’s practice evolves through reflection. We build this into every cycle. Using Victoria Bernhardt’s four types of data, which are demographics, perceptions, student learning, and school processes, teams evaluate whether their strategies are improving student outcomes.
  

What It Looks Like in Practice
CoPs are dynamic and focused learning groups. They meet monthly, supported by trained facilitators and our inquiry tools. Leaders:

• Explore problems of practice rooted in evidence
• Develop and test theories of action
• Collect and analyze evidence of impact
• Engage in reflection cycles to guide next steps
  

The results have been powerful. Teams report stronger leadership clarity, more strategic use of data, and greater alignment between adult actions and student needs. As a result of participating and engaging in the CoP process, leaders have also reported they have better language to use with staff they supervise and see a better connection to the overall district vision.

A Way of Being
As Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner suggest, CoPs are more than a strategy, they’re a way of being, which matches our leadership thinking around our collaborative inquiry place mat that will ultimately support student learning. The husband and wife researchers believe that learning is social and change is relational. CoPs invite us to shift from isolated leadership to interdependent inquiry. They create space for agency, reflection, and shared purpose.