This document discusses leading professional learning and the challenges and possibilities of collaborative professional development models. It introduces a model of professional learning communities (PLCs) and explores some of the barriers to collaborative ways of working. Effective professional learning is distributed and collaborative, using data-informed inquiry to address concrete classroom challenges and improve student outcomes through a cycle of collective enquiry. Characteristics of high-functioning PLCs include distributed leadership, focus on learner needs, experimenting with instructional practices, and aligning professional learning with school improvement priorities.

1. Leading Professional
Learning:
Challenges and Possibilities
Dr. Keith Eades
District Transformation Coach

2. This interactive session will
• Explore the relationship between
leadership, school improvement and
professional learning
• Introduce a model of Professional
Learning Communities
• Investigate the barriers to collaborative
ways of working

3. How do we ensure success for all
students in all settings?…

4. Old v New Reform
(Harris, forthcoming)
Old
New
 Standardization
 Professionalisation
 Punitive
 Developmental
 Compensates for poor
 Advocates effective




practice
Control
Reductionist
Focus on Failure
De-Professionalization




practice
Empowerment
Expansionist
Emphasis on success
Professional Collaboration

5. Drivers (Fullan 2011)
‘Wrong’
‘Right’
 Accountability
 Capacity Building
 Individual teacher and
 Group Solutions
leadership quality
 Technology
 Instruction
 Fragmented Strategies
 Integrated or systemic
strategies

6. Mc Kinsey
How the world's most improved school systems keep getting better’ 2013

7. The Most Powerful Levers
 Leadership Capacity
 Teacher Quality

8. School Improvement
 Does not occur without some change in leadership
or leadership practice

9. Leadership: What we Know
 Leadership is the key lever of high organizational
performance.
 Successful organizations have widely and carefully
distributed leadership.
 Effective leaders grow and support other leaders

10. FIVE DIMENSIONS OF EFFECTIVE SCHOOL LEADERSHIP
(Robinson, 2008)
0.42
1. Establishing Goals and Expectations
0.31
2. Resourcing Strategically
3. Planning, Coordinating and
Evaluating Teaching and the Curriculum
0.42
4. Promoting and Participating in
Teacher Learning and Development
0.84
5. Ensuring an Orderly and Supportive
Environment
0.27
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
Effect Size
0.7
0.8
0.9
1

11. Leadership Matters
So Leadership Matters

12. But
 What type of school
leadership transforms
organizational performance
and outcomes?

13. But What Type of Leadership?
 Transformational
 Instructional
 Distributed
 Strategic
 System
13

14. So we know
What is important and what to focus upon
But how do we make it happen?

15. Effective Leadership is
Distributed and Collaborative

16. Distributed Leadership
is concerned with
(Harris, 2008)

Building leadership capacityinter-relationships that build leadership

17. Distributed Leadership in context
(Harris, 2006)
• Leadership shifts according to need
• Collaborative teams formed for specific
purposes
• Team membership changes according to
task, roles and expertise..
•

18. Pause and Reflect
 How far is leadership distributed or collaborative
in your school/district?

19. Research suggests that professional development
is most effective when:
 it addresses the concrete,
everyday challenges involved in
teaching and learning
 Does not focus on abstract
educational principles or
teaching methods taken out of
context.
Professional Learning in the Learning Profession: A Status Report on Teacher
Development in the United States and Abroad Darling Hammond et al 2009
NSDC

20. Professional Learning
Communities
in Action

21. What’s in a name?
 Communities of Practice
 Professional Learning Communities
 Collaborative Learning circles
 Communities of Interest
 Professional Learning Teams

22. Professional Learning
Communities as
• A mechanism for distributing leadership
• An infrastructure for change
• A platform for professional learning

23. Connecting Professional Learning
 Working together on the barriers to learning through
collective inquiry, joint decision-making and problemsolving.

24. Professional collaboration
Collaborative practice is about teachers and school
leaders working together to develop effective
instructional practices, studying what actually works
in classroom, and doing so with rigorous attention to
detail and with a commitment to not only improving
one’s own practice but that of others as well.

25. Professional Learning Communities
PLCs engage in processes of inquiry in order
to improve student outcomes.
Through using evidence from school self
evaluation, including data and teacher
assessments, members of the PLC identify the
strengths and needs of a group of pupils and
then determine the strategies and skills
needed to improve outcomes.

26. Characteristics of a PLC
Data informed
Distributed Leadership
Focused on Learner Needs
Experiment with Pedagogy / Instruction
Inquiry driven- outcomes lead to
change in practice and improved learner
outcomes

27. School Priorities
Effective Professional Learning
aligns with school improvement
priorities and goals.

28. Effective PL addresses school
improvement priorities in context
School
Priorities
Professional
Learning
Student
Learning

29. PLCs
 You do not DO PLCs once a week or once a term. Being
part of a PLC is an on going process where teachers
work collaboratively in cycles of collective enquiry /
action research to achieve better results for the
students they teach

30. Without stones, there is no
arch.
Marco Polo

31. 
