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Michael Fullan's insights on what it takes to make professional learning stick - in other words, Learning Forward's Implementation standard - have long helped leaders at the school and system level create change in ways that lead to better outcomes for students. In his full thought leader essay in Reach the Highest Standard in Professional Learning: Implementation, Fullan begins by considering the failure of professional development and then explores promising models and offers recommendations for succeeding at implementation.
In this excerpt, learn about the role of human, social, and decisional capital in building educator capacity, and more importantly, a culture of learning within schools.
In our recent work on professional capital, Andy Hargreaves and I (2013) have been explicit about the conditions at the school level that are essential for continuous professional learning.
We see professional capital as the key to scaling up change efforts from individuals to groups to schools and districts.
Professional capital is a function of the interaction of three components: human capital, social capital, and decisional capital. For a principal, human capital refers to the human resource or personnel dimension of the quality of teachers in the school - their basic teaching talents. Recruiting and cultivating the skills of individual teachers are one dimension of the principal's role.
Social capital concerns the level of quality and quantity of interactions and relationships among people.
Social capital in a school affects teachers' access to knowledge and information; their senses of expectation, obligation, and trust; and their commitment to work together for a common cause.
Decisional (or decision-making) capital refers to the sum of practice and expertise in making decisions that may be spread across many individuals or groups in a school and its community.
Decisional capital is that which is required for making good decisions - especially decisions about how to put human and social capital to work for achieving the goals of the school.
This three-part conception of professional capital can be used as a way of organizing one's roles in leading learning. In effect, the role of school leaders is to build professional capital across and beyond the school. All three must be addressed explicitly and in combination.
ENLIST THE POWER OF THE GROUP
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