Leading Learning that Matters

Leading Learning that Matters (LLtM) is a multi-year collaboration with Independent Schools Victoria (ISV), Australia, to explore and document effective practices for leading learning that matters for our contemporary world. The project began in 2013 with an initial cohort of experienced independent school principals from a variety of cultural, urban, and rural K-12 contexts in the state of Victoria and has continued with additional cohorts.

In its current form, LLtM is a two-year research program designed to engage Principals who are looking to shape their institutions and to meet the significant challenge of defining learning more appropriately. It explores two key questions for today’s educational landscape: 1. How can learning be expanded beyond traditional academic commitments to matter more in learners’ lives? 2. How can school leaders shape their institution to stay true to its core commitments, thrive as a contemporary centre of learning, and contribute to a dynamic and complex global society?

LLtM brings together a small cohort of school leaders from diverse settings to reflect and re-think what’s taught in their schools and how it’s taught. Guided by a flexible structure, the program encourages school leaders to construct a vision that reflects their history, their ongoing commitments and their sense of the world for which they are preparing students. The principals work with researchers from Project Zero to identify leadership practices necessary for planning and implementing school innovations for 21st century learning. The collaboration has resulted in innovations in classroom and leadership practices in participating schools, and has impacted the communities the principals work in. It also established and continues to sustain a vibrant learning community of experienced principals, who work with the research team to explore how insights and images of practice for 21st century learning and leadership might speak beyond the membership of ISV to inspire schools around the globe.

Key findings from this project have been synthesized in the book Leading Learning that Matters – A Leadership Process to Rethink What’s Taught and How for Today’s World – published in 2021. The book shares several narrative case studies from schools that have undertaken LLtM, sketching the visions they pursued and how the process unfolded; key aspects of organizing and leading the LLtM process; and tools and tips for building and refining visions for learning that matters in ways suited to the institution, as well as strategies for organizing the LLtM initiative and tracking its progress.