School leaders face complex challenges that typically have multiple causes and often persist despite everyone’s best attempts to address them. Addressing complex challenges requires juggling both the big picture and the specific parts of the challenge. Without a roadmap, this process is fraught and unlikely to succeed in improving outcomes. To make a difference, schools need adaptive expertise; a skill that can be learnt through professional conversations and inquiry.

In Leading professional conversations, Emeritus Professor Helen Timperley deftly outlines the key enablers for effective professional conversations – relationships, resources, processes, knowledge and culture – that support teachers to be independent learners and result in positive impacts on educational, social and emotional outcomes for students.

Featuring examples from conversations between school leaders and educators, and practical digital templates that can be adapted to suit any context, Leading professional conversations is the school leader’s guide to thinking and acting evaluatively, knowledgeably, metacognitively, collaboratively, responsively and systematically, to engage in deep professional learning and genuine improvements in practice.