Factors in Sustaining Professional Learning Community

School change efforts to develop schools as learning communities result in schools that are constantly learning and thus changing. This collective case study of four schools involved in a 4-year reform effort begins to examine the ongoing sustainability of a learning community. The study draws insights about the sustainability of learning communities in these schools as involving issues of change, loss, and hope. After offering a description for each of these themes, a discussion is offered that draws connections to the environmental factors of administrative support, collaborative structures, relational integrity, enablers, and coherence that operated to perpetuate reform in these schools.