The Department of Education in Northern Ireland (NI) has challenged the education system to ensure that “every teacher is a learning leader, accomplished in working collaboratively with all partners in the interests of children and young people”. The Education Authority works in partnership with schools to develop this vision by seeking to achieve a number of goals: identify innovative practice in professional learning in order to effect improvement and develop “next practice”; build professional learning communities based on collective enquiry; identify ways for school leaders to develop and refresh their skills and competences across the wider education sector; provide school leaders with ongoing access to a mix of experiential, vocational and academic professional learning to enable them to lead and inspire their teachers and pupils. The objectives for this project are based on these goals and include to review policy and practice in school leadership in the countries visited; to examine professional progression for teachers from entry through to leadership; to engage in reflection and dialogue and to consider the implications for the wider educational community in NI; and where appropriate to develop opportunities for interna
Participating in this project provides was an opportunity for EA to involve schools directly in an activity that brought them together in groups where they have time to review practice elsewhere and in so doing to consider how their practice may change, they have time to build relationships with one another, to have conversations and share reflections of what constitutes school improvement as well as being inspired and enthused by the experience so that on return to their own situation they are able to actively take some aspect forward into their school improvement journey. This project also aimed to have an expected impact on the EA officers directly involved in the work, developing their understanding of how other educational systems are working with their schools to improve and how those schools are moving forwards. These officers have a key role in school improvement and will be able to incorporate lessons learned back into their work. The potential longer term benefits of the project was to support school leaders who are able to inspire, sustain and create a culture and climate of professional learning and who are informed by current research and practice to improve educational outcomes for pupils.