By Dr. Michelle Cleveland
Director, Accountability, Educational Technology & Professional Learning
San Bernardino City Unified School District
“The principal is the key to developing a professional learning community.” — Richard DuFour
Across schools and districts, collaborative learning teams (CLTs) have become a common structure for improving instruction. Time is scheduled, agendas are posted, and shared folders are created—meaning that, on paper, the system is in place.
And yet, in many cases, classroom practice remains largely unchanged.
This disconnect points to a critical truth: structures alone don’t drive instructional improvement; leadership does.
The difference between collaborative teams that transform teaching and those that simply consume time can almost always be traced back to leadership focus. When leadership is unfocused, teams stay busy. When leadership is intentional, teams become powerful.
If collaborative teams are the engine of school improvement, leadership steers the work.
When Collaboration Becomes Compliance
Many schools have done the challenging work of building time for collaboration into the master schedule. But what happens during that time is where impact is either realized—or lost.
Without a clear instructional focus, collaborative time often drifts toward logistics: planning events, dividing tasks, or sharing resources. These activities aren’t wrong, but they rarely lead to meaningful shifts in teaching practice. Teachers leave meetings busy, but not necessarily better.
In response, leaders often tighten structures—adding templates, refining agendas, or increasing monitoring. While these actions feel productive, they tend to reinforce compliance rather than deepen instructional clarity.
The real issue isn’t whether teams meet. It’s ensuring that the meetings have a purpose.
At the school level, someone defines that purpose. In most cases, that responsibility sits with the principal. Their essential choice becomes—will collaborative time be managed for efficiency, or led for instructional improvement?
Leadership Shapes the Conditions
Effective leaders understand that collaborative teams are not an initiative to implement; instead, they are a system to develop. Systems require coherence, clarity, and protection.
Research consistently shows that leadership positively influences student outcomes indirectly by shaping culture, collaboration, and instructional focus. In other words, leaders create the conditions for teachers to learn together in ways that improve practice.
What teachers need from leadership isn’t more structure or motivation. They need direction.
Leaders who create strong collaborative systems consistently do five things well:
- Clarify the purpose of collaboration
- Protect time and prioritize student learning
- Focus on instructional improvement over task management
- Build shared leadership and collective responsibility
- Align work to a small number of high-impact practices
These actions don’t add complexity; they create coherence.
From Managing Meetings to Leading Instruction
The daily demands of leadership are relentless. It’s easy to fall into a pattern of managing collaborative teams—ensuring meetings happen, notes are submitted, and expectations are met.
Instructional leadership requires an intentional shift in thinking. Moving from compliance to instructional impact.
Instead of asking:
- Are teams meeting consistently?
- Did they submit their notes?
Effective leaders ask:
- What are teams learning about instruction?
- What evidence is shaping their decisions?
- What will be different in classrooms tomorrow?
This shift is subtle but significant. It moves the focus from activity to impact.
Leaders don’t need to take over meetings to influence them. Their role is to maintain coherence—monitoring the quality of conversations, redirecting when needed, and ensuring that collaboration stays anchored to student learning.
Leadership Moves that Make Collaboration Matter
- Clarity drives collaboration. When purpose and commitments are shared, engagement deepens and decisions stay centered on learning. This clarity must be reinforced through consistent leadership actions.
- Collaboration doesn’t require more time—it requires protection. When leaders safeguard team time and keep the focus on learning, it leads to meaningful instructional growth.
- Collective responsibility sustains the work. When leadership is shared and teams own learning within clear parameters, consistency and impact follow.
- Focus fuels A tight-loose approach—tight on priorities, loose on methods—creates the conditions for depth. When leaders define clear priorities and evidence, collaboration moves beyond surface-level work.
- Presence signals priority. When leaders show up, engage, and follow through, they reinforce accountability and keep the work focused on impact.
The Bottom Line
Collaborative learning teams hold tremendous potential to improve teaching and learning—but that potential is not realized through structure alone.
It is realized through leadership.
What leaders prioritize shapes what teachers discuss, how they use their time, and whether collaboration leads to meaningful change in the classroom.
The future of collaborative teams won’t be determined by schedules or templates.
It will be determined by the daily decisions leaders make.