Introduction

At the beginning of this book, the point was made that an educational leader's vision of the role of professional learning within their language-teaching organisation, their attitude to teacher learning – including their prioritisation and ongoing support of CPD – and the organisation's culture really matter. These factors are the cornerstones on which the success of professional learning programmes depend.

This chapter examines these factors by situating them within a discussion of the essential environment and conditions that language-teaching organisations need to create and sustain in order to enable powerful, long-lasting and transferable teacher learning. These comprise:

• committed leadership

• an inspiring vision

• clear goals

• an enabling culture

• appropriate terms and conditions of employment

• a viable and contextually relevant CPD model.

Some of these factors are relatively concrete, tangible and easy to measure; others are ‘softer’ and more elusive. Also, you may find that, while helping create some of these conditions may come naturally to you, providing others may prove challenging and require intentional and sustained effort on your part. Nevertheless, all are fundamental and most come at little or no cost to your CPD budget, whereas their absence or deficiency can be costly to your organisation's teaching staff, to the school itself and to the students.

In order to make the exploration of these conditions relevant to your working context, this chapter combines evidence-informed discussion with reflective tasks at different points. These tasks provide opportunities to reflect on your own leadership practices.