Teaching, learning and leading in today’s complex world: reaching new heights with a developmental approach

Abstract

‘What is happening in education today?’ and ‘What is most needed for the future of teaching, learning and leading?’ This article presents a developmental approach to learning, leadership and advancing professional learning—one that takes into account adults’ diverse meaning making processes—that can help educators build the internal capacities needed to meet the mounting challenges that define education today. The increasingly complex demands of our current world call for greater internal capacities that many adults do not yet have. To be more effectively equipped to teach, learn and lead in today’s world, we need to learn how to support each other’s growth and learning as well as our own, employ practices that support such growth and learn to collaborate and work together in teams in ways that help us to meet the implicit and explicit demands that we encounter every day in our work and that enable us to grow. In order for these to occur, we must create conditions that nurture such growth. This article helps us to do this by discussing the following: (1) Understanding that, as adults, we make meaning in qualitatively different ways; (2) Being mindful of the kinds of standards that can guide professional learning (all of which involve collaboration and teamwork); (3) Recognizing the need to differentiate the kinds of developmental supports and challenges that we offer to each other in order to support growth; and (4) Employing pillar practices (i.e. teaming, providing adults with leadership roles, inviting adults to engage in collegial inquiry and mentoring) with developmental intentionality so that we can grow internal capacities while engaging in these practices.

Acknowledgements

I begin by expressing deepest gratitude to all of my teachers, mentors and to all of the courageous leaders—of all kinds—who have shared their insights, experiences and lives. Thank you for all you’ve taught me and for making this world better. My warm gratitude goes to Professors Duncan Waite and Ira Bogotch for their enormous support, their patience, their faith in my work and for their kind invitation to write this piece. Duncan and Ira please feel my heartfelt gratitude. I thank Provost Tom James of Teachers College, Columbia University, for sharing his insights about the ‘Dawn Wall’ during our February 2015 schoolwide faculty meeting. His words and commitments inspired me to include the ‘Dawn Wall’ section of this article. Thank you, Tom, for your thoughtful leadership and inspiration. My sincere gratitude also extends in large and all ways to my husband, Dr. David Severson, for helping me with researching and developing the story about the admirable rock climbers whose actions inspire leadership through belaying. Thank you so very much from soul, David. Last and importantly, I offer heartfelt gratitude to Dr. Jessica Blum-DeStefano for offering thoughtful suggestions and insights throughout the iterations of this article. I am grateful to each and all of you.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For a fuller discussion of Learning Forward’s standards, please see, www.learningforward.org; for a fuller discussion of the Design Standard, specifically, please see Drago-Severson et al. (2015).

2. In the 1999 Princeton University outdoor action guide to belaying at the [Princeton University] climbing wall, then Director Rick Curtis of the OA Program wrote, ‘Belaying itself is relatively simple provided one is always paying attention to your climbing partner.’

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eleanor Drago-Severson

Eleanor Drago-Severson is a professor of Education Leadership and Adult Learning at Teachers College, Columbia University, 525 West 120th Street, New York, NY 10027, USA. Email: [email protected]. Her work supports: leadership development; building organizational capacity; and coaching domestically and internationally. She is author of: Becoming Adult Learners (2004); Helping Teachers Learn (2004); Leading Adult Learning (2009); Helping Educators Grow (2012), Learning for Leadership (2013), Learning Designs (2015), and Tell Me so I Can Hear You: A Developmental Approach to Feedback (2016).