Nourishing teachers’ leadership for learning: Insights from practitioner research

This session contends that leadership and learning are mutually supporting and reinforcing. It is only recently that attempts have been made to describe in practice the complex connections existing between the two activities by drawing on empirical evidence. To this end, this session will depict ways in which leadership and learning are indispensable to each other in day-to-day teachers’ work, and the implications this symbiosis has for practice. Firstly, the session will consider the key foundations and principles of leadership for learning, especially as they relate to the Carpe Vitam international leadership for learning research project. Secondly, we will discuss the features of teachers’ professional learning that are likely to facilitate desirable conditions, practices and opportunities for promoting interconnections between leadership and learning in schools. Finally, the session will present exemplars of teachers’ work at an empirical level, in which teachers’ agency is enhanced when they are learners and leaders in different contexts. These exemplars are drawn from teachers’ action-enquiry projects designed to contribute to organisational improvement. Collectively, the exposition will present a persuasive portrayal of teachers’ agency being nourished when teachers are both learners and leaders, in their classrooms, among their colleagues and across their communities.