The Future of Education

The issue of organizational improvement in the education sector, linked to enhanced professionalization, personal development and sustainable transformation, has been a key challenge for many countries. This paper examines the situation in Catalonia and its Basic Skills Network (Xarxa de Competències Bàsiques). This is a form of training and professional development for teachers based on peer and network learning, promoted by the Department of Education, within its ongoing training plan. The CB Network comprises teaching teams in the primary and secondary sectors who want to start, maintain or consolidate processes of reflection-action as a team and network to transform schools into a space that promotes learning. Helping teachers to improve their professional development and schools to become improved learning organizations is a key objective. It currently consists of more than 700 centers, organized in territorial networks, and involves more than 10,000 teachers. This paper examines the conceptual basis for the CB Network and highlights the concept of innovation as transformation, the vision of shared leadership and the basic organizational structure of peer-to-peer collaboration, which facilitates individual and collective professional development, as well as sustainability and transfer of transformation processes. It provides data on the CB Network, as well as insights about the shared experiences. This paper aims to identify how leadership is articulated at meso-level. We need to develop theories and models that account for how leadership is operated. We share some ideas that can help pedagogical reflection to rethink, reinforce and define the priorities of an educational center. The document focuses on preferred school objectives based on the accumulated experience of the participants.  Leadership in our times means being able to navigate a different course, to create new pathways through challenges. We will examine this with reference to best practice and enhanced outcomes regarding strategic change in Catalonia.

Keywords Leadership; Competences; Professional development; Networks; Strategy 

References 1. Stiepe, M.and Cunningham, C.  (2022), "Understanding educational leadership during times of crises: a scoping review", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 60 No. 2, pp. 133-147.
2. Hargreaves, A. and Fullan, M. (2020), "Professional capital after the pandemic: revisiting and revising classic understandings of teachers' work", Journal of Professional Capital and Community, Vol. 5 No. 3/4, pp. 327-336.