The foundation was founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1905 and chartered in 1906 by an act of the United States Congress under the leadership of its first president, Henry Pritchett.

[5] Research scholar Catherine Langley's framework builds-off of W. Edwards Deming's plan-do-study-act cycle and couples it with three foundational questions: Approaches may vary in design and structure, but are always rooted in research-practitioner partnerships.

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching outlines six principles for improvement:[6] Carnegie researcher Paul LeMahieu and his colleagues have summarized these six principles as "three interdependent, overlapping, and highly recursive aspects of improvement work: problem definition, analysis and specification; iterative prototyping and testing...; and organizing as networks to...spread learning".

Researcher Anthony Bryk sees PLCs as a place to begin applying these principles, but also notes that PLC success is often isolated by teams or within schools and remains heavily dependent on the individual educators involved.

[13] In education, these communities are problem-centered and link academic research, clinical practice, and local expertise to focus on implementation and adaptation for context.