Reflective Journal - The Beginning

As the leader of learning at my school, it is important for me to continually seek learning, grow my own leadership pedagogy and improve practice. My leadership inquiry journey which began half way through last year, had me constantly asking myself and reflecting on...." What are the set of conditions that school leaders control which lead to success for every learner?" 

I viewed many TEDTalks, reflected on their content, messages, agreed and disagreed with points of views and shared ideas with other colleagues. My journey had me join a small group of like-minded Principals who were also searching for answers to this question. We decided to form a community of practice to collaborate our thinking, viewpoints, challenge each other and find solutions to problems. 

Our first group decision was to work engage with Cognition Education on the framework of Emeritus Professor Russell Bishop, Culture Counts - RBL (Relationship Based Learning Practices). Cognition's delivery model for Collaborative Impact is built around an integrated series of professional learning opportunities for participants to build on existing practices that are effective, and grow a system-wide sustainable capability focused on accelerating learner progress and achievement (Culture Countsplus Cognition Education).

We have been focusing on the relationships and practices required of teaching teams in classrooms to markedly accelerate learner progress and achievement, also including the growth in system, and instructional leadership capability necessary to support the work of teaching teams as they support the development of assessment capable learners within classrooms. This is ongoing, but we have seen deliberate changes in both leadership practices and teacher mindsets.
Here is the first phase of our leadership inquiry....
What are our student learning needs?
we answer these questions to help us identify our leadership learning needs.
  • What do we already know about student learning needs?
  • What are our sources of evidence?
  • What do they need to learn and do?
  • How do we best support teachers to address student learning needs?
  • What do we know about deliberate leadership actions?

I will share some of our finding in my next blog.....


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