We first turn our attention to elements of collaboration that promote changes in teaching cultures. In general, the research tells us that successful collaborative efforts include strategies that ‘‘open’’ practice in ways that encourage sharing, reflecting, and taking the risks necessary to change. For example, Louis and Marks (1998) created a ‘‘professional community index’’ that demonstrated that effective PLCs included both collaborative activity and the deprivatization of practice. Despite a relatively vague description of their methodology, Berry et al. (2005) reported that a learning community structure helped teachers in a rural elementary school examine their practice through such collaborative structures as sharing lessons, using protocols for decision making, and relying on systematic note taking to inform colleagues about their work. In another example, Phillips (2003) drew on interviews with teachers in one middle school to report that funding from reform initiatives allowed the teachers to collaborate in ways that included observing each other in the classroom, videotaping and reviewing lessons, investigating teaching problems and collectively generating new ideas for practice, engaging in literature study circles, and participating in critical friends groups.