If Learning is the Work...

As a leader, how do you support, encourage, enable learning for your staff? 

Michael Fullan tells us that "Learning is the work".  If this is the case, it has great significance for leaders.  It means that we must be aware of what learning needs to take place and then to determine the best ways to support, encourage, and enable it if we wish to create authentic learning communities.  We may even need to help our staff members understand just what this means in terms of their professional practice.  Indeed, it may also mean that we need to understand and come to terms with this in terms of our own leadership practice. 

According to Fullan (2008), "The secret behind 'learning is the work' lies in our integration of the precision needed for consistent performance (using what we already know) with the new learning required for continuous improvement." 

It's a simple statement but it requires thought about what this means and how it translates into practice in a school or organization.  It assumes that we are focused on continuous improvement in both practice and results.  It also assumes that everyone is 'on board' with this type of thinking.  As a leader, this may involve new thinking and reculturing around professional practice - for your staff and possibly even for you.

I look forward to your comments about Fullan's statement.  


From:  The Six Secrets of Change by Michael Fullan (2008)

Building Sustainable Capacity

As a leader, how do you build sustainable capacity in your staff?

It was probably Peter Senge who first introduced capacity building into the organizational and management literature.  In attempting in 1990 to demonstrate a logical link between the concepts of knowledge society and organizational development, Senge asserted that two conditions must be met in the work of 21st century organizations: first, the notion that the professional learning community must become accepted as integral to organizational development and, second, professional learning communities, once in operation, must accept that their core purpose involves the creation and sustainability of significant "new knowledge". 

It was out of these dual premises that the concept of educational capacity building was born.  For, according to Senge, when the professional community of an organization such as a school creates significant "new knowledge", and sets in place processes to ensure the ongoing refinement and dissemination of that knowledge, the organization's "capacity" to achieve and sustain success is greatly enhanced.

In the two decades since Senge's pioneering thinking, capacity building and its two key subordinate concepts - knowledge creation and professional learning community - have become fundamental organizational constructs. 


From:  From School Improvement to Sustained Capacity by Frank Crowther
Published by: Corwin Press