“Better people create better society.“ Adolf Kolping

Learning community depends on two basic elements: connecting teaching and learning and creation of cooperation culture for this purpose.

In literature, general characteristics of learning communities are the following: the sense of belonging, interdependence or reliance upon one another, trust among members and belief in common purpose of the community. Communities share learning from successful and unsuccessful experiences in order to extend collective knowledge. The scope of learning community ensures makes it offer a wide range of leading roles and possibilities for upskilling. It accelerates the progress toward large-scale impact.

Evidence-based learning projects are the best way to include students, teachers, society and institutions to jointly contribute to solving local problems and achieving changes in the community. Besides the extension of knowledge which will help them get to know the world better and to better function within it, the students also develop skills for work in various areas, as well as social responsibility.

In each school community, teachers get old more than other people. Students are always of the same age, and most of the parents belong to the same age group, with few exceptions. Therefore, the generation of teachers at schools needs upgrade and rejuvenation in order to confront increasing generation gap among themselves, students and parents. School is a place of innovations, though many teachers experience disappointment with systemic changes which appear and disappear. What is needed is a sustainable system which ensures everyday satisfaction with the completed work, which offers a sense of accomplishment and joy and which keeps being interesting.

Three key components of each learning project of community commitment are:

- designed connection of teaching content with socially useful action – a project should be designed and implemented in order to achieve best results in learning and local action;

- true, verifiable solidarity through practical action WITH the community, not FOR the community;

- active engagement and leadership of students in all phases, thus the students have the greatest benefit from the project.

Teachers should be able to perceive school as a learning community and a community in which learning is put into practice. Learning community is aware that cooperation, besides improvement of academic results, also helps the members of the community to develop self-awareness and self-esteem. It is about the creation of dynamic and competent participation through practice.

If teachers want to act as a learning community, they have to be connected by cooperation culture. If the achievement of each individual student is a joint goal, then each teacher may provide their contribution from different perspective offered by them or the subject they teach or from different teaching methods and strategies. Consequently, teacher cooperation may not be limited by traditional issues related to syllabus, activities or discipline, but it has to be focused on the needs of each individual student. This requires joint work, discussion and analysis of teaching practice and adoption of joint decisions on how to improve professional, scientific, pedagogical or didactic issues.