PART ONE: PROBLEMS AND CONCEPTS
Professionalism and Community - Karen Seashore Louis, Sharon D Kruse and Anthony S Bryk
What Is It and Why Is It Important in Urban Schools?
An Emerging Framework for Analyzing School-Based Professional Community - Sharon D Kruse, Karen Seashore Louis and Anthony S Bryk
PART TWO: CASES FROM URBAN SCHOOLS
Professional Community and Its Yield at Metro Academy - Mary Anne Raywid
Thomas Paine High School - Jean A King and Daniel A Weiss
Professional Community in an Unlikely Setting
Catalyzing Professional Community in a School Reform Left Behind - Sharon Rollow and Anthony S Bryk
Changing the Tire on a Moving Bus - M Peg Lonnquist and Jean A King
Barriers to Professional Community at Whitehead School
Dewey Middle School - Daniel A Weiss, Karen Seashore Louis and Jeremy Hopkins
Getting Past the First Stages of Restructuring
PART THREE: REFLECTIONS ON PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITY IN URBAN SCHOOLS
Developing Professional Community in New and Restructuring Urban Schools - Sharon D Kruse and Karen Seashore Louis
Getting There - Karen Seashore Louis and Sharon D Kruse
Promoting Professional Community in Urban Schools

Karen Seashore Louis is the Rodney Wallace Professor of Educational Policy and Administration at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Her area of expertise includes improvement in K-12 leadership and policy over the last 30 years, particularly in urban secondary schools. Louis also conducts research on organizational changes within higher education, with particular attention to faculty roles, and on international comparative policy in educational reform. A past president of Division A of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), she is a widely published author in the field. Recent books include Organizing for School Change, Leadership for Change and School Improvement: International Perspectives, Handbook of Educational Administration, Second Edition, and Organizational Learning in Schools. Louis earned a bachelor¿s degree in History from Swarthmore College and a doctorate in sociology from Columbia University.

School-based professional community is a concept that portrays teachers as working together towards a set of shared goals of improved professionalism for themselves and increased learning opportunities for students. Attempts to put this into practice in urban schools in the United States have met with varying degrees of success. Using case studies, the contributors to this book examine the reasons for this inconsistency, focusing on the structural, social and human relations conditions of schooling.