Commentary 1: Leading for—and Through—the Professional Learning of Adult Educators

• In Event: Roundtable Session 10
  In Roundtable Session: “Leadership for Learning” in Practice and Scholarship: What Exactly Are We Talking About?

Abstract

While both national studies gave considerable attention to the learning of adult educators (including the leaders themselves), none couched their findings in a fully developed set of ideas about adult learning as both an individual and collective phenomenon. Some scholars make the assumption that leadership for learning can only be understood in terms of the leaders’ own learning, as well as that of their fellow educators (e.g., teachers) and the environments and conditions that make that possible.

Speaking to this possibility, this commentary offers reactions to the two national studies in terms of an emerging set of ideas about what makes leadership for learning powerful for the adults in question, thereby contributing to the power of the student learning experience. Specifically, the commentary seeks to zoom in on assumptions made by the national studies about professional learning, as part of the leadership for learning equation, and how those assumptions do and don’t line up with emerging theory-based understandings.

This set of ideas derives from several strains of adult learning theory, the first, concerning “instrumental learning”, especially that of the individual classroom teacher, through systematic efforts to build awareness of practice and improvement alternatives; the second, through “socializing learning” as a collective set of norms and practices among school staffs; and third, through “self-authoring learning” that enables individuals and groups to engage in sustained and thoughtful examination of assumptions about and purposes of teaching and learning. Each of these facts of a school’s “learning story” can be the focus of a set of leadership practices, and school districts leaders can intentionally design to support these processes.

The ideas have been developed through a decade and more of developmental, exploratory work, tested out in various practice settings. The commentary will selectively draw on these examples, as it considers how and in what forms instrumental, socializing, and self-authoring learning might be taking place in the dynamics described in the two national studies. Drawing on these examples and their application to the two presentations, the commentary will conclude with suggestions for orienting further research to the underlying professional and organizational learning dynamics that come to light.

Author

• Angela Breidenstein, Trinity University