No school stands alone; if it is to function effectively, each must be part of a wider context of collaboration and cooperation.

The same can be said of the people who work in schools. No teacher – or leader – stands alone. Each is a member of a learning community which must continually change and grow to remain effective.

Today’s professional needs to take responsibility for their own ongoing professional learning; supported by a system that provides encouragement, opportunity and pathways for learning.

Traditionally, professional learning has been seen in the context of courses, seminars and workshops taken in venues away from the school itself. These can be very useful experiences where lecturers and presenters share the latest professional knowledge, teach new skills and provoke new ways of thinking. However, the most powerful professional learning usually occurs within the school environment.

This takes many forms: peer coaching, mentoring, appraisal, professional reading, team teaching, observation of colleagues, discussions and shared projects of all kinds.

Professional learning is everyone’s responsibility. The individual teacher must always be looking for ways of deepening knowledge, expanding repertoires and incorporating the insights of authentic research and scholarship.

School leaders set the tone of a collaborative and reflective culture within which such professional learning occurs organically and which nourishes our core work – the enhancement of quality learning and teaching.

Teacher learning and student learning go hand in hand. Both take place within a culture of reflection and learning.

The nurturing of such a culture is the privilege and challenge of educational leadership.