Abstract
This study describes the formation and development of teachers’ professional community in the United States by reviewing Milbrey W. McLaughlin’s research genealogy. The results of this study are summarized by the following three moments.
First, the Stanford CRC was established as a national research center that conducted school reform research focusing on the contexts of teaching. McLaughlin intended to enable teachers’ professional development within the existing constraints and concentrated on the contexts of teaching.
Second, the concept of teachers’ professional community was formed as a key concept of the contexts of teaching. After McLaughlin clarified the high school teachers’ various reactions to the today’s students who were burdened and distracted, she identified the concept of professional community as a teaching context that continuously pursues innovative practices with the today’s students.
Third, the results of McLaughlin’s research on high school reform were formulated through the relationship among the three typologies of teaching practices, teacher communities, and teaching careers, and the professional community was positioned within the multiple contexts of teaching.
These descriptions revealed that the concept of professional community was established in McLaughlin’s fundamental perspective of school reform by the efforts of the various change agents, and her stance that pursued the realizability of school reform within the existing constraints required steady work. The formation and development of teachers’ professional community was central to her research genealogy.
