Leadership for Learning
The practice learning awards emphasise the importance of leadership in relation to learning. They are also careful to use the word ‘learning’ rather than ‘teaching’ or ‘training’. We think the move from ‘training’ to ‘learning’ is closely linked to a greater need for leadership in learning but first we’d like you to do a little reflection on your own about this.
Activity 2:1
Why do the practice learning awards talk about ‘learning’ rather than ‘training’ or ‘teaching’?
In the past learning facilitators could depend on training programmes because what was relevant and important to know and do today would still be as important and relevant in a year’s time or even five years time. Nowadays skills and knowledge can go past their ‘sell by’ date quite quickly and we have access to much more information much more quickly through the internet. Society itself is changing too and social services are inventing new roles and methods of service delivery to keep up with rapidly changing demands.
Now we talk about ‘learning’ rather than ‘training’ to capture the new role demanded of modern learning facilitators. As Sloman puts it, training is ‘an instructor-led, content-based intervention, leading to desired changes in behaviour’. Learning, on the other hand, is defined as ‘a self-directed, work-based process, leading to increased adaptive potential’ {Sloman 2005: 2}. The key role of the learning facilitator is therefore helping others learn how to learn – to help them achieve the skills, confidence and motivation to keep their own practice up to date. This new role means that the learning facilitator needs leadership skills.
Activity 2:2
How could you be a leader for learning?
A leader enables others to draw upon their own well of confidence and capacity so they can find out what they need to know and gain the skills they need to do the job better. There are many ways for you to be a leader for learning. Firstly, you can be an inspiration for lifelong learning. This means embracing new opportunities for your own learning and thus inspiring others to seek growth and development too. This is about much more than getting formal qualifications. It’s about the joy of discovering more about yourself and finding new ways of following your own vision. Secondly, you can work to help your organisation become a learning organisation. This is an important theme of the crucial policy document for Scottish Social Services called Changing Lives. A learning organisation is one where every part of the organisation learns from the other parts and, in so doing helps the organisation provide better services. Here the learning facilitator keeps communication channels going within the workplace – maybe even sets up communities of practice or action learning sets to make it easier for each part of the organisation to understand what is going on across the whole.