Leading Powerful Professional Learning: Responding to Complexity With Adaptive Expertise

Effective facilitation is complex


What is central to leading powerful and effective facilitation in professional learning? You. Gone are the one-size-fits-all answers―instead, you’ll draw from your own knowledge and expertise to lead your PLC in actively solving complex problems that are unique to your context. 

For professional learning to have an improvement impact for both teachers and students, it needs to be more than a single event. Truly successful professional learning is sustained, collaborative, evidence-informed, and student-focused―generating multifaceted solutions to real-life, real-time issues rather than focusing on one piece of the practice puzzle at a time.

This book, based on the results of a five-year research study, provides:

• An innovative approach to the design and delivery of professional learning grounded in principles of adaptive expertise
• Easy-to-use one-page summaries of "Deliberate Acts of Facilitation"
• Guidance that’s fully congruent with Learning Forward Standards for Professional Learning

The current educational landscape demands a new kind of leadership. This book gives you the tools you need to apply the principles of adaptive expertise to your leadership and facilitation―enabling you to draw on your own deep knowledge to address the complex challenges you and your teachers face every day.

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 U.K 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.

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. Kaye Twyford is an experienced school leader and teacher and more recently, researcher. She is a lecturer at the University of Auckland. She also works as a consultant supporting Communities of Learning to build collaborative practice to raise student outcomes. Kaye completed her PhD in Education (2016) investigating teachers’ engagement in professional learning through a risk lens focused on uncertainty and vulnerability. Her work identifies the importance of reframing teacher resistance as perceptions of risk and highlights implications for mitigating risks in change. She brings knowledge and skills in project management, leading change and collaborative inquiry. 

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. ?