Leading professional conversations

School leaders face complex challenges, that typically have multiple causes and often persist despite everyone’s best attempts to address them. Addressing complex challenges requires juggling both the big picture, and the specific parts of the challenge. Without a roadmap, this process is fraught and unlikely to succeed in improving outcomes. In order to make a difference, schools need adaptive expertise; a skill which can be learnt through professional conversations and inquiry. In Leading professional conversations, Emeritus Professor Helen Timperley deftly outlines the key enablers for effective professional conversations – relationships, resources, processes, knowledge and culture – which support teachers to be independent learners and result in a positive impact on educational, social and emotional outcomes for students. Featuring examples from real conversations between school leaders and educators, and practical templates which can be adapted to suit the contexts of your school, Leading professional conversations is the school leader’s guide to thinking and acting evaluatively, knowledgeably, metacognitively, collaboratively, responsively and systematically, to engage in deep professional learning and genuine improvements in practice.

Helen Timperley is an Emeritus Professor of Education at The University of Auckland. Early in her career she held both teaching and leadership positions in the early childhood, primary and secondary education sectors. 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. She has published numerous research articles and books in this area with many translated into a range of languages. Her most recent work is the highly successful Leading professional learning: practical strategies for impact in schools, published by ACER Press.