Learning Rounds: Developing Leadership Capacity to Deliver the Potential of a Curriculum for Excellence

This seminar will highlight the key leadership lessons from The Scottish Government's 'Learning Rounds' programme, where staff observe lessons in groups and, as importantly, take part in the rich and formative dialogue that follows. This process can be a powerful catalyst for leading sustainable change, not just at the level of the individual teacher, but across a whole school.

By developing a leadership capacity, with staff at different levels involved in exploring effective approaches to Learning and Teaching throughout a school, a collective expertise is created to deliver change with high impact on the achievement of all pupils. This is vital in the context of realising the potential of a Curriculum for Excellence and develops the ambition of The Journey to Excellence, which seeks staff to be. '...innovative in their approaches to learning, teaching and meeting needs.'

This seminar will:

• unpack effective leadership strategies arising from Learning Rounds to develop sustainable change across the whole school,

• introduce innovative approaches to lesson observation from a Learning Rounds toolkit,

• explore lesson observation approaches from the individual observer to trios and groups,

• give examples from around the country of innovative leadership of whole school Learning and Teaching.

Graham Thomson is Director of the Scottish Centre for Studies in School Administration (SCSSA) based in Edinburgh University. SCSSA provides a national and international forum for the professional development of leadership and management in schools. More information about SCSSA can be found at www.scssa.ed.ac.uk

A key part of SCSSA's work involves devising and delivering a range of tailored leadership programmes direct to local authorities and schools, as well as providing an educational consultancy service. The past eighteen months has seen SCSSA expanding its leadership development programme into Germany, Italy, Poland and Ireland.

In addition, SCSSA runs a series of 'best practice' seminars and conferences that are delivered by practitioners from all over Scotland. These highlight innovative and practical approaches to leadership and deal with key issues such as a Curriculum for Excellence and The Journey to Excellence.

SCSSA is currently involved in coordinating and developing, along with the national CPD team, the Learning Rounds programme which involves groups of education staff, from teachers to directors, investigating processes of system wide school improvement through lesson observation.