From Professional Capital to Collaborative Professionalism: Fostering Effective Instructional Leaders for All Students
Audience: Superintendents, central office personnel, principals, and regional providers (state support team and educational service center personnel)
Andy Hargreaves, PhD, Thomas More Brennan Chair, Lynch School of Education at Boston College; Advisor in Education to the Premier of Ontario In education, as in other areas of life, if you want a good return, you have to make an investment. This means selecting and developing the human capital of teachers’ knowledge, qualifications and motivation. It also means developing their social capital – their capacity to collaborate or work together. The same thing applies to systems. When schools, districts and other partners work together, they circulate their knowledge, provide mutual support, and take collective responsibility for improvement. Principals hold a pivotal position in supporting the collective learning of adults.
But not all ways of collaborating are effective! Collaboration can feel forced and artificial. It can also be too vague and poorly focused. In this presentation, Andy Hargreaves reprises the argument and evidence of his multiple award-winning book on professional capital and connects it to his latest research insights on collaborative professionalism – deliberately designed ways of working together that helps all students learn and be well. Andy shows how true collaborative professionalism, fostered by principals, builds deep and trusting relationships of social capital along with providing precise structures, tools and protocols that improve feedback and deepen dialogue among educators.