Leading Professional Learning: Practical strategies for impact in schools

Today's school leaders are faced with the increasingly daunting task of leading their schools to improve, to innovate and to become ever more responsive to change. There are many resources to help schools to engage with improvement frameworks, but few that directly address the complexity of the challenges that inevitably arise along the way. Based on extensive research in the field, including the outcomes of a five-year project on school improvement and professional learning in Australia and New Zealand, Leading Professional Learning: Practical strategies for impact in schools identifies the challenges that school leaders face when leading professional learning and development in their schools as part of an improvement agenda.

Renowned professional development expert, Helen Timperley, has collaborated with a team of prominent authors, including Fiona Ell, Deidre Le Fevre and Kaye Twyford, to uncover the reasons underpinning these challenges and to provide practical strategies on how to address them. Case studies, excerpts from real teachers' experiences and step-by-step examples of useful strategies, including the spiral of inquiry, give school leaders the tools they need to tackle complex challenges in teaching, learning, curriculum delivery and pedagogical practice in both primary and secondary settings.

Leading Professional Learning: Practical strategies for impact in schools is a hands-on resource for school leaders to identify specific professional learning and development issues that accompany the learning and change process and to overcome them in their schools.

Dr Helen Timperley is Professor Emeritus of Education at The University of Auckland. Her extensive research experience has focused on how to promote professional and leadership learning in schools in ways that make a difference to outcomes for those student learners who are currently underserved by the system. She has numerous research articles in both these areas published in international journals, has spoken at a range of invited seminars and undertaken consultancies in Europe, Canada and Australia. She has written six books on her specialty research areas with many translated into a range of languages. Most of her published and consultancy work has focused on school and system change through professional learning, professional conversations with impact and evaluative thinking in educational innovation.

Dr Fiona Ell is an Associate Professor and Head of Teacher Education at the University of Auckland. She has a background in elementary teaching and remains a registered teacher. Fiona's research centers on mathematics education and teacher professional learning, both before certification and afterwards. She has worked in Australia and New Zealand on schooling improvement projects, helping schools use the Spiral of Inquiry to improve the learning and wellbeing of their students. Fiona is interested in how teachers learn about the impact of their practice from considering the responses of their learners, especially when they work with marginalized communities.

Dr Deidre Le Fevre is a Senior Lecturer and Head of Graduate Programs in Educational Leadership at the University of Auckland. She began her career as an elementary school teacher in New Zealand and the UK before completing her PhD (Ann Arbor, Michigan) and moving into research and teaching at Washington State University. On return to New Zealand she has lead large-scale research projects investigating effective leadership and professional learning practices for educational change and improvement. Her research publications focus on practices that support leaders and facilitators improve their interpersonal effectiveness and solve complex problems. She brings knowledge and skills in understanding organizational change, the development of professional capability and effective leadership.