DOES PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITY AFFECT THE CLASSROOM - TEACHERS WORK AND STUDENT EXPERIENCES IN RESTRUCTURING SCHOOLS

School reform efforts have focused on the development BE professionall y enriching work groups for teachers as a vehicle for improving studen t achievement. This study examines the impact of school professional c ommunity on the intellectual quality of student performance (assessed using authentic measures) and on two dimensions of classroom organizat ion, the technical (measured as authentic pedagogy) and the social (me asured as social support for achievement). Employing quantitative (mul tilevel) and qualitative analytic methods, we show that in 24 national ly selected, restructuring elementary, middle, and high schools profes sional community is strongly associated with these dimensions of class room organization. Both professional community and social support for achievement have a positive relationship to student performance, but t he strength of their association with authentic pedagogy accounts for that effect.