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A head of education that gets it...
Schools, Change Management, Teacher CPD, Naace2007, Dissertation 2395 viewsI've just come across Don Ledingham. He's Head of Education for East Lothian council (that's East of Edinburgh - I've just checked).
The thing that's special about Don as opposed to pretty much every Head or Director of Education (as far as I know), is that he keeps an open, online Learning Log, which (in his words) "started off simply as a means of recording what I was up to on a day-to-day basis. Since then it’s grown into something which has had, and is having, a profound effect upon my professional practice."
I would recommend taking at look at this. It's an inspirational piece of leadership. He's modelling the behaviour that he is expecting from his staff - but not making explicit demands of them.
He made a post this week about what is a learning log, which I'm going to quote here - it's worth it:
"I suppose it can be captured in a relatively simple tri-colon: “Where you’ve been; where you are; and where you’re going”
I’m not talking here of travel in any sort of geographical sense, but more about the journey which relates to our opinions, ideas and perceptions.
A Learning Log imposes a discipline upon the reflective process, which, although it may be going on informally, or tacitally, all of the time, can often be lost in the ‘jungle’ which forms much of our daily, weekly and monthly work.
The learning log just gives you that brief - and, for me, ever more valuable, opportunity to step outside and look back upon my practice and direction of travel.
The reflective power of the on-line Learning Log is magnified when the contribution of others’ comments is taken into consideration - there so many examples I could point to in this Learning Log where my thinking has been significantly influenced by other’s opinions.
The Learning Log therefore provides an invaluable strategic map in that it enables you to retrace your steps and see where you’ve come from, identify where you are at any one point in time and, hopefully, enable you to explore the future in a relatively safe environment.
The other, incredibly useful role for the learning log is that it enables you to see connections between various things that you are doing that might not be apparent if they were contained within their normal silos. For me it’s this connecting function that helps me to make sense of some the very disparate things that I do in my day-to-day work.
If this seems focussed upon the benefits to the Learning Logger then that has been deliberate - the benefits of a Learning Log to other people is very much dependent upon the reader’s perception - although one would hope that it might be of some interest."
Apart from the benefits to Don, I wonder what are the effects of his example on the professional learning culture in East Lothian?
1 comment
The effect has been incredibly helpful in calming the trepidation some people might hve had about getting their students’ work published or talking about their own professional practice. Very helpful to be able to quote the boss directly when people say “You can’t…”
There was a flip side, as always, as the group of innovators, including Don, started blogging about their work. As they went about ‘finding their voice’ there were some who felt it was just an accountability exercise or an ego boost. I think Don’s blog is a great example of an evolving blog where that is just clearly not the case. He’s turned that perception round through subtle changes in his blog, no less its title and strapline: where I’ve been, where I am and where I’m going to. He’s turned into a pure learning tool.
