Preparing Leaders for Deeper Learning

Preparing Leaders For Deeper Learning
Authored by Karen Cator, Bonnie Lathram, Carri Schneider and Tom Vander Ark
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In partnership with: Digital Promise

In the paper, Preparing Leaders for Deeper Learning, released jointly by Getting Smart and Digital Promise, we assert the need for programs that prepare and develop school and district leaders who will create and sustain deeper learning environments. (The paper is the fourth in a series from Getting Smart that explores the shift to deeper learning).

The paper addresses two fundamental questions:

• As a growing body of schools and districts recognize the need for deeper, blended, competency-based learning environments for students, how must the role of leaders evolve to create and sustain them?
• How must leader preparation and ongoing professional development evolve to fully enable teacher and leader success in this new environment?

The paper captured a diverse set of voices – ranging from current practicing principals to representatives from pioneering programs and organizations whose missions address educational leadership challenges. The team reviewed the literature on leadership development and spent a year tracking the progress of high-performing educational leadership programs, talking to practitioners and researchers at conferences and events to learn from others passionate about this work; this yielded dozens of conversations and 50 guest blog contributions to inform the research, resulting in a paper that is a compilation of many voices, perspectives and ideas.

View the paper for a description of 10 roles leading toward deeper learning and recommendations for prep and develop to better prepare deeper learning leaders.

Download the full press release.