Please see the opening statement created by Dr. Shelley Scott, Dr. Elaine Fournier, and Dr. Don Scott on the MRU-KDP seminar series website: http://www.kdp-mru2016.com/preliminary-seminar-series-2/seminar-3/

This online seminar is an outstanding opportunity to discuss the topic of teacher professionalism with international colleagues. My thanks to the seminar facilitators for leading this initiative.

Charlie Webber

My sincere thanks to Dr. Cheryl Bauman, Dr. Susan Lovett, Dr. Clelia Pineda Baez, and Dr. Dorothy Andrews for the videos that they have created to address the topic of teacher leadership. Their presentations ask some important questions that merit attention:

What do we envision as being required to enable teacher leadership within our organizations?

What is needed to support the next generation of leaders?

Why is it that talented early career teachers do not want to move into leadership roles?

What are the necessary values and qualities of teacher leaders?

I encourage all of us involved in this online seminar to address these and other key questions as we interrogate our understandings of teacher leadership.

Thank you.

Charlie Webber, Mount Royal University, Calgary, Canada

Does professional learning require us to experience cognitive dissonance or intellectual discomfort, challenge our taken-for-granted beliefs and assumptions, or prompt us to reconsider what we know and how we go about our work?

I appreciate the definition of professional learning proposed by the Seminar 1 planning team, particularly the focus on context. In my experience, it is important to understand that context is complex and can include cultural influences, which we can recognize fairly consistently, but also temporal influences. For example, the composition of staff members and the leadership team reflects the impact of age and career stage, all of which are influenced yet again by the age and stage of the organization.

For instance, is anyone in the process of facilitating professional learning in a long established organization with long serving staff? How about in an organization that has experienced a recent high level of staff turnover? How’s that going for you? (That’s a rhetorical question as we don’t want to name names!) 🙂

Postings in this category relate to the this part of the Opening Statement for Seminar 1:

Professional learning opportunities support the individuals and/or groups to be successful in reaching their goals.

Postings in this category relate to the this part of the Opening Statement for Seminar 1:

Professional learning opportunities provide ongoing support and follow-up from appropriate individuals and/or groups.