Leading Professional Learning: Revisiting and Reimagining Moral Purpose
Professional learning is central to the development of the knowledge, skills, and dispositions of educators necessary to successfully teach students. Yet leaders of professional learning too often focus solely on educator competence – their knowledge and skills, and the ability to produce learning outcomes for students – diminishing the importance of the dispositions that both enable and motivate educators in the profession. Connecting to educators’ sense of moral purpose cultivates a disposition that animates the deeper motivation that brings most educators to the profession: to make a difference in the lives of their students. Preserving and reinvigorating that sense of moral purpose is critical to navigating times of rapid global, national, and local change. By moral purpose, we mean that the work of leading and learning are committed to and focused on the goal of improving teaching to support strong learning and development for all students. Effective leadership and disciplined dialogue are essential for fostering a shared moral purpose.
The 2026 edition of the Leadership for Professional Learning (LfPL) Symposium invites dialogue toward supporting individual educators and communities of educators in revisiting and reimagining their sense of moral purpose. How can professional learning help educators individually and collectively define a moral purpose that fits their context?
Since 2017, the LfPL Symposia have served as an opportunity for global educational professionals to engage in dialogue and critical reflection about issues facing education. LfPL brings together educational practitioners, leaders, policy makers, researchers, and school leaders with a focus on enabling sustainable professional educational learning cultures.
Why, how, and for what purpose?
In 2021, the International Commission on the Futures of Education published a report titled Reimagining Our Futures Together that calls for a new social contract for education grounded in collaboration, shared responsibility, and ethical engagement. In light of significant societal changes, the report emphasizes the importance of viewing teaching as a collaborative endeavour, where teachers are recognized as engaged learners who collectively contribute to the development of knowledge and innovative pedagogical practices. The report also encourages a reimagining of pedagogical approaches by highlighting the significance of underlying questions of meaning and purpose in educational institutions. In a changing world where multiple alternative futures are possible, the report invites us to probe our assumptions and principles that underlie why, how, and for what purpose we engage individually and collectively in leading professional learning.
In revisiting meaning and purpose for the 2026 symposium, we aim to address societal complexities while remaining grounded in moral purpose for all who are involved in leading professional learning. Educators support the learning of themselves and others. Educational leadership, through formal and informal roles, involves supporting others’ agency and shaping the learning of professionals through empathy, courage, and communication.
To illustrate the challenges of navigating in turbulent conditions we offer an example from a different context: a team of canoeists can journey across uncharted waters, facing dangerous obstacles that can test its bravery. Calm waters may create an enjoyable experience, but risky challenges call upon the skill sets of each member of the team to successfully get beyond the unstable conditions of white water. Effective leadership is needed to utilise the team’s individual and collective strengths and goals, with potentially high rewards for everyone.
The 2026 LfPL Symposium invites you to share reflections on leadership for professional learning with moral purpose by drawing on relevant academic research, empirical evidence, theoretical frameworks, and/ or professional experiences. The symposium presents an opportunity to actively listen and engage with others, to consider new perspectives and questions, and to develop a clear sense of direction and shared moral purpose through professional learning and leadership. By building common purpose as individuals and communities, we can grow professionally and personally.
Areas of Provocation
We invite participants to propose and host dialogues within small breakout groups that are based on their professional and academic work, conceptual or empirical in nature. A shared protocol will be used for each dialogue. Unlike traditional research conferences that feature the static presentation of findings and conclusions, these dialogues prioritize the posing of questions with reflective feedback and conversation to stimulate new ideas for all members of the group. Proposed dialogues should clearly connect with the broad theme of the symposium and invite participants to critically explore areas of provocation such as, but not limited to, the following:
How do we lead with optimism and use our successes to open up opportunities that enrich our colleagues’ professional learning?
What do you and your educational community see as the core purpose of education and the leadership of professional learning and education?
How has that evolved over time?
How are you engaging and helping others in developing a shared sense of purpose and staying focused on what truly matters?
How do we ensure that all our colleagues are supported and brought along in ways that are responsive to the needs and opportunities in the specific context, especially in complex times and across differing educational contexts?
How do you see leaders attending to this in your context?
How are we building a trajectory toward the future of learning with clarity, flexibility, and approaches that address today’s and tomorrow’s emerging challenges and opportunities?
How is the leadership of professional learning being re-visited or re-imagined in your own context?
How do we prepare educators and leaders for the rapid evolution of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, and the questions these technologies surface about their ethical use and the purpose of education?
What counts as evidence and whose voices need to be heard in making sound decisions that preserve a sense of shared moral purpose within an educational community?
How are leaders navigating these factors and using evidence to guide school-wide decisions and professional learning?
When moral purpose is tested, how can we balance courage and discretion in making difficult leadership decisions?
What does this look like at both the individual and collective leadership levels and in the context of professional learning?
References
MacBeath, J. & Dempster, N. (Eds.) (2009). Connecting leadership and learning: Principles for Practice. Routledge.
Stevenson, H. (2023). Professional learning and development: Fit for purpose in an age of crisis? Professional Development in Education, 49(3), 399–401. https://doi.org/10.1080/19415257.2023.2207332
UNESCO. Reimaging our futures together: A new social contract for education. https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/reimagining-our-futures-together-new-social-contract-education