‘Learning thrives on error’ (Hattie, p 165). It is absolutely vital to create warm, empathetic and trustworthy climates where errors are welcomed as opportunities for learning. This is absolutely vital for students but it is just as important for leaders to establish this climate for teachers. Your role as literacy leader is to support the establishment and maintenance of a true professional learning community. To lead this successfully will entail you setting up the parameters and protocols for teachers to feel safe to evaluate the effects of their teaching, especially when a student’s progress is slow. Teachers need encouragement to uncover deep-seated beliefs about teaching and learning, to discard incorrect knowledge and seek new understandings through genuine inquiry. One way to ensure this is to have a relentless focus on reflection about their impact based on the evidence of students’ learning. Teachers may feel anxious about being observed, and so an effective literacy leader will set up an observation process that is clear, well planned and well understood in terms of purpose, criteria and process.
Published on: 02 Mar 2016
