This is a topic of massive proportions. But it must increasingly drive our thinking and planning. I want to share some initial thoughts to provoke and nurture the professional conversation that binds us in a extended learning community.

The one constant in our 21st century world is change - social, technological and economic change that is accelerating and continually reconfiguring.

Its context is global but, for us, the challenges and opportunities it presents are local. Advances in available digital technology, challenge us to deal creatively with an expanding body of information that is prolific and free. The opportunities are found in new tools that, in turn, provide access to new pedagogies.

There are many educational narratives that are currently describing the vocation of the teacher and the purpose of the school. Not all of these are sympathetic to the Catholic view of human dignity and the common good.

For this reason we are called, perhaps more insistently than ever before, to exercise thoughtful discernment and make wise decisions about the directions in which school life should be moving.

It is tempting to see all of this as outside our control and to lose ourselves in ‘busyness’. Yet the great challenge is to our imagination, as we work together to create Catholic schools that express their essential identity while adapting to changing circumstances.

This imagination nourishes a mindset which challenges existing assumptions, raises new questions and explores new possibilities. It can only flourish in a reflective culture – a culture that reaches beyond survival or maintenance strategies to embrace wisdom, or, as Brain Caldwell calls it, sagacity. We are talking here of the reflected-upon professional lives of teachers who intelligently apply the wisdom acquired from years of learning and experience.

According to Caldwell, this is an essential prerequisite for the transformation of school so that it will both serve and lead in a changing world. But this reflection has to be shared. It is a collective task which, in turn, gives birth to a collaborative learning community.