The Difference between Knowing That and Knowing How

The other day I found this page on "Principles of Effective Practice for Professional Development" from the Center for Teaching and Learning at LaGuardia Community College.

I'm especially intrigued by the sixth principle in the list:

Create a Supportive Professional Community. Teaching is a challenging profession. Innovation involves risk-taking. Establish a climate of support and thoughtful reflection, generating safe spaces, where [faculty] can talk about and learn from what doesn't work, as well as what does.

As an advocate of developing professional community as a part of professional learning, I completely agree. That it's important to create professional community is critical to the success of professional development programming.

The next question, however, is: How do you create professional community? And who knows how to create it?

In a college course it's relatively easy to build a syllabus as compared to fostering a climate of safety and community. It's relatively easy to organize topics into a course calendar; it's more difficult to create spaces where students can take the risks inherent in learning.

Professional development for educators is similar, and for similar reasons. Enhancing educators' competencies is a matter of exchanging information. That's relatively easy. Creating community, on the other hand, is a matter of cultivating relationships between people. That's much more difficult.

Knowing that we should build community is a good first step; knowing how to build community is the next step. LaGuardia Community College has shown us a path. Now let's all take the next steps together.