Leading Adult Learning – in-school support
Strengthen how your team learns and works together
Strengthen how your team learns and works together
Effective professional learning depends on how people listen, challenge ideas, and learn together. We help leadership and teaching teams build trust, lead purposeful conversations, and translate their learning into improved practice for ākonga.
We work with schools, kura, and clusters to design support around your priorities. The focus, duration, and mix of activities are agreed with you.
When team partnerships matter most
Schools and clusters typically invite us in when their leadership or teaching teams are navigating specific collective friction points:
The collaboration gap: Teams are meeting and collaborating regularly, but these efforts are siloed or superficial and not yet translating into improved student outcomes.
The compliance trap: Team meetings and professional learning communities feel like administrative box-ticking exercises rather than drivers of impactful, shared teacher growth.
Avoided conversations: Teams lack the collective confidence or the robust frameworks needed to address challenging dynamics, leaving trust, alignment, and professional accountability compromised.
Strategic shifting: A leadership team or cluster is navigating rapid growth, structural change, or competing priorities, and needs to re-align their collective focus.
What we can work on together
Explore how your team works together and establish practices that support trust, participation, and shared responsibility.
Lead conversations that move learning forward: Develop practical skills for listening, questioning, giving feedback, and examining different perspectives. Use Joan Dalton’s Learning Talk tools to address real issues and deepen professional learning.
Make collaborative learning more effective: Strengthen how you plan and facilitate meetings, workshops, and professional learning groups. Help your team move from sharing ideas to examining practice, taking action, and reviewing what changes.
Develop a shared approach to leadership: Build the confidence and capability of those who lead adults. Clarify expectations, strengthen consistency, and support leaders to apply their learning in their everyday work.
How we work with you: practical, site-based, team-driven
We begin with a conversation about your team’s strengths, the challenges you are working through, and what you want to achieve.
Together, we agree a focus and design a practical programme. This may combine workshops, team facilitation, leadership coaching, and opportunities to apply learning and review progress. We can work with you in person, online, or through a mix of both.
Our work draws on a longstanding collaboration with Joan Dalton and practical resources developed for leading adult learning.
Contact Mel Stopford to arrange a conversation about your leadership team, your context, and how a Leading Adult Learning Pathway could support your school's future direction.
