Whole-Faculty Study Groups: Creating Professional Learning Communities That Target Student Learning, 3rd Edition

Filled with numerous examples, this best-selling book provides both the practical knowledge and the theoretical foundation necessary to develop successful Whole-Faculty Study Groups.

"This third edition from Murphy and Lick is a superb resource and a must read for all educators involved in the improvement of education. It should be in the hands of individuals from the state department of education to the classroom teacher, for it speaks to all layers of the system, and to the role that each person must play to assure successful learning for all students."
-From the Foreword by Shirley Hord, Scholar Emerita
Southwest Educational Development Laboratory

"Planning is an important thing. What Whole-Faculty Study Groups has done for us is to ensure that we never forget that implementation is the only thing."
Jack Ernst, Superintendent
Springfield Public Schools, Springfield, MO

One of the most successful and exciting approaches to staff development, school reform, and systemic change in education today!

Used by hundreds of schools and school districts across the country, the Whole-Faculty Study Group (WFSG) System is a student-driven, holistic process for facilitating major staff development and schoolwide change.

While providing a step-by-step methodology for the development and implementation of successful WFSGs, this newest edition of Murphy and Lick's groundbreaking bestseller incorporates the most current theoretical concepts on change, the latest refinements to change management procedures, and a wealth of new experiences from more than two thousand individual study groups.

Other significant revisions to this edition include:

• Three additional chapters: the research foundation for WFSGs, how to recognize and understand school culture, and fourteenkey findings
• A reorganization of chapters to make the book even more reader-friendly
• New material on timely topics such as "learning communities" and "learning teams"
• An increased focus on assessment of student results
• Updated sets of resources and illustrations in the appendix

WFSGs are a proven way to successfully reform, improve, and transition schools to meet tomorrow's needs. Filled with real-world examples and illustrative cases, this book provides both the practical knowledge and the theoretical foundation necessary to negotiate the societal, organizational, and cultural barriers affecting education.

This new edition is essential for administrators, teachers, and staff in K-12 schools, as well as district level administrators, teachers of education, and anyone interested in increasing student learning.

Dale W. Lick is past president of Georgia Southern University, the University of Maine, and Florida State University, and he is currently a university professor in the Learning Systems Institute at Florida State University. He teaches in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies and works on educa tional and organizational projects involving transformational leadership, change creation, leading and managing change, learning teams, learning organizations, distance learning, new learning systems (e.g., the HyLighter Learning and Assessment Systems), strategic planning, and visioning. A mathematician by academic training, Lick previously held administrative and faculty positions at the Port Huron Junior College, University of Redlands, University of Tennessee, Drexel University, Russell Sage College, and Old Dominion University. He also served as a visiting research mathematician at Brookhaven National Laboratory, an adjunct professor of biomathematics at Temple University, and a scientific consultant to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. Included in 45 national and international biographical listings, Lick is the author of four books; more than 60 book chapters, professional articles, and proceedings; and 285 original newspaper columns. His recent books are Whole-Faculty Study Groups: A Powerful Way to Change Schools and Enhance Learning and Whole-Faculty Study Groups: Creating Student-Based Professional Development (both with Carlene Murphy), and New Directions in Mentoring: Creating a Culture of Synergy (author and coeditor with Carol Mullen). Recent publications are "Mega-Level Strategic Planning: Beyond Conventional Wisdom" and "Change Creation:The Rest of the Planning Story" (both with Roger Kaufman), Chapters 1 and 2 in the book Technology-Driven Planning: Principles to Practice; "Whole-Faculty Study Groups: Facilitating Mentoring for School-Wide Change," Theory Into Practice; "Leadership and Change," Chapter 3 in A Field Guild to Academic Leadership (edited by Robert Diamond); and "Medieval Scholarship Meets 21st Century Learning Technology, Part One: The Collaborative Annotation Model" and "Part Two: The Interactive Annotation Model" (both with David Lebow), Online Classroom. Lick received both bachelor's and master's degrees from Michigan State University and a Ph.D. from the University of California at Riverside. He holds all three levels of formal training and certification for Leading and Managing Organizational Change: Change Knowledge, Instructor/Trainer, and Consultation Skills, from the international change research and development organization, Conner Partners (formerly ODR, Inc.), Atlanta, Georgia. He also completed formal programs on The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (Stephen Covey) and Learning Organizations (Peter Senge).

Carlene U. Murphy began her 47th consecutive year of work in public schools in September 2004. She is Director of the National WFSG Center in Augusta, Georgia. She began her teaching career as a fourth-grade teacher in August 1957 in her home-town of Augusta. After 1 year of living at home and teaching, she decided to spread her wings and went to Memphis, Tennessee, where she would teach the fourth grade for 13 years. It is the children she taught in Memphis that she sees in her mind's eye today as giving her the energy and love for what she continues to do. Returning to Augusta to begin the 1971-1972 school year, she was a classroom teacher for 2 more years before moving into administrative positions. She developed the programs for gifted children in the Richmond County school system and administered those programs for 5 years before becoming director of staff development in 1978. During the 15 years as direc-tor of staff development, she also designed and administered the district's Adopt-A-School program that received national recognition, and she assumed responsibilities for the district's public relations functions, including publications and coordinating special events. The 15 years (1978-1993) as the Richmond County (Augusta) School District's director of staff development brought many accolades to the district and to Murphy. In 1991, Richmond County received the Award for Outstanding Achievement in Professional Development from the American Association of School Administrators. The district also received Georgia's Outstanding Staff Development Program Award for 2 consecutive years. In 1992, she was awarded the National Staff Development Council's Contributions to Staff Development Award, one of the organization's highest honors. She was the first practitioner to receive that honor. Her personal ser-vice to the National Staff Development Council included serving as chairperson of the annual national conference in Atlanta in 1986, as president in 1988, and on the board of trustees from 1984 to 1990. After retiring from the Richmond County schools in 1993, she worked through 1997 as a private consultant for the schools and districts that wanted to implement the process that she would name Whole-Faculty Study Groups (WFSGs). She has written extensively about her work in Educational Leadership and the Journal of Staff Development. From the summer of 1997 to December 2002, Murphy worked as a full-time consultant with ATLAS Communities. She worked withall ATLAS schools in the implementation of WFSGs. She also continued to work with schools not associated with the national comprehensive school reform design.