Strategic Design Toolkit for School as Learning Organization

School as Learning Organization has proven its indispensable tool for schools today to respond to the fast constantly changing environment where schools must prepare students for the complex and uncertain world. Learning Organization offers the ideal solutions to school through engaging learning at all levels, retaining knowledge capitals for innovation and continuous improvement. Being adopted by the global organizations, UNICEF, UNESCO and the OECD as a framework for school reform, the Integrated Model of SLO (Kools & Stoll, 1996) outlined the seven dimensions for the transformation journey to LO. Since SLO transformation journey is not a standalone, it is required to be initiated, agreed and approved by the top Leaders in schools to structure the journey in the policy and strategic documents. Having SLO transformation journey at the strategic levels will ensure the convergence, consistency, transparency and continuity of SLO transformation to be achieved. In addition, SLO as a strategic priority will also ensure sufficient fund allocation for operational actions. For all the actions to converge to SLO transformation, the SLO must be institutionalized in the strategic plan to align with the vision, mission and values of the school. 

School has multiple strategic priorities for competitive and sustainable operations. The key challenge is adopting the SLO strategies in the middle of the strategic plan cycle / period. Another vital consideration is aligning the SLO transformation with the school’s vision, mission and values, which the SLO may divert from all of these most important statements of the schools. Should school wait for their strategic plan cycle to end for the beginning of SLO transformation? In the disruptive circumstance of changes, school needs to radically adopt new strategies rather than a sitting duck watching the change to vanish. It will escalate to a bigger risk for schools to just think about it and take no actions. It is strongly recommended for school to design a strategic prototype which is in smaller scale and easily deployed to test the effects before going to the whole change at school. Why take into account the strategic design? 

Strategic Design phase is argued to be identical to the strategic analysis or situational analysis before formulating the strategies. There are several advantages of conducting the strategic design / strategic analysis. First, it helps inform the school it’s performance gaps and opportunity gaps. Second, it maps out the threats and necessary response to reduce or to eliminate the threats. Then strategic analysis can guide the key strategic priorities or school strategies to sustain and to be competitive. Strategic design needs explicit tools to conduct the school’s situational analysis for informing the strategic approaches. Several scholars argued strategy in a generic term “ a way to win”. Inspired by the nature of strategy ( to be winners), school, irrespectively not for profit, must design strategies to win ( sustainable operation, parent’s and student’s satisfaction and competitiveness). Strategic design is a critical and leading step for the strategy formulation and execution. Therefore, strategic design or analysis must be thoroughly triangulated to generate a comprehensive current and future performance data of schools for the next step.

There are several situational analysis tools available for choosing. The most common tool is SWOT analysis tool box which allows school to assess their internal strength, weakness and external threats and opportunities to impact on school current and future operation. PESTEL (Politics, Economics, Social, Technology, Environment and Legal) analysis is also an ideal tool for analysing the external environment which may cause disruption or opportunities for the organization / schools. To dive deeper into school specific performance, we recommend the Gap Analysis tool to evaluate the current performance (knowledge and financial aspects) against the future performance. Self evaluation of school current performance also yields benefits on school’s informed decision making for strategic approach or for setting a new strategic direction. Another value-added tool for strategic analysis is the school performance alignment using the Congruence Model by Nadler-Tushman to assess the five key organizational building blocks to align with school vision, mission, value and goals. This Congruence model framework is considered as a diagnosing tool for school to analyze their current performance. In addition, Ishikawa diagram or Fishbone diagram is also beneficial for schools to diagnose their internal efficiency, deficiency and effectiveness. Another self-diagnosing tool for school is Baldridge Excellence Framework which is proven as a quality improvement tool for the organization to build excellent quality for competitive advantages. Baldridge Excellence Framework laid the key six process criteria and one result criteria for measuring excellence performance. However, The first important step to do is self-evaluating the organizational profile illustrating two categories- Organization Environment and Organizational Relationship. 

Should schools apply all of these instruments for strategic design? The answer is “Yes” if you think one tool does not generate comprehensive school’s performance analysis for designing the SLO strategies. To become an effective SLO, school must fulfil all the seven-action oriented dimensions in the Integrated Model of SLO (Kools & Stoll, 2016). However, school has to define their strategies to achieve the SLO transformation in the frame of the performance results stemming from the schoolwide strategic analysis. Therefore, it is paramount for school to apply multi strategic analysis tools to generate comprehensive and true of current performance for the desired future performance to be sustainable in the hostile, complex and constantly changing environment. 

How to Build the Learning Support Environment for School as Learning Organization (SLO)!

Introduction

School as Learning Organization is argued as a disruptive change in the culture of learning. Learning Organization structures the learning as a system where all parts of the organization are engaged in the interconnected learning. According to Senge (1990), organization must enforce the interconnected thinking where all functions must learn from one another to understand and to better inform the changes that each unit, department or functions will make the decision. For example, the marketing department must understand the production department to provide better sale and branding strategies. Knowing how the products are made (quality measures and control...) will add better informed strategies to sale units to increase more sales. They know deeper into the production line and they can sell the them with confidences. Learning as a system is not favored by itself and staff is ready to engage. It requires building a learning support culture where learning as a system is embedded in the culture of organization. School as Learning Organization is not far from the learning organization in the way to foster learning support culture for teachers to engage learning as a system. Teachers' roles are not only teaching but leading the learning. Teachers must learn from and about students, their peers and the whole school system (polices, guidelines) and processes. Therefore, it is demanding that SLO needs a learning support culture where leaders must create the learning supportive environment for a systemic learning. 

According to the prominent culture model of Schein's (1985), culture in organization has three different but related layers  Artefacts, Values and Underlying Assumption. Artefacts are tangibles assets that can openly reveal cultures, namely policies, office layout, technology, infrastructure, campus design... Values intangible manifestation of the organizational believes, rationales which can be depicted in the structure, documents... Finally, the underlying assumption is the unconscious belief that determines how staff perceives, thinks and feels (Schein, 1990). The underlying assumption is vague and it is the source of creating value and behavior. According to Haiyan, Walker & Xiaowei (2017), they offered the synthesis of culture, basing on the Schein's model, in three components: visible learning culture ( organizational structure, policy), visible but intangible culture which fall in the learning supportive environment, leader's value in promoting learning of teachers and invisible component (underlying assumption) that is trust, belief and efficacy of teachers in learning. 

We have conducted a review of the LO model in our earlier post in this blog of the DLOQ model (Watkins & Marsick, 1997, 2003) and the Fifth Discipline (Senge, 1990) to find a common learning levels in organization, the Individual level, Team level and Organizational level. Putting the three layers of culture model of Schein and the three levels of learning, we can conceptualize a learning support environment for engaging effective learning at all levels in schools. The conception is illustrated through the diagram below. 

- It all starts with School Vision, Mission and SLO strategies (for more info about this, refer to our earlier post of Roadmap for SLO Transformation Journey) with achievable goals, objectives, key measures and targets of SLO transformation). This part sets the overarching direction for scaling down from organizational level to individual level. To build an effective learning support environment, school must align all their actions, times and resources with the Vision, Mission and Strategies. 

- Organizational Level Learning is conceptualized to capture the big visible pictures where all staff know and can rely on the system which is best matched with the Artefacts of the Schein's culture model. The top leaders must achieve the Learning Policy Framework, build physical and ICT infrastructure for learning and develop a system to capture and to utilize the learning data for improvement and innovation. It is necessary that school must have a learning management system (cloud-based or standalone database) for managing learning and assessment of learning of all students and staff. Knowledge management is a key tenet for innovation. Innovation helps school attain competitive advantages or sustainability. Since tacit knowledge of staff is hard to be captured but valuable for school to improve, school needs to build a knowledge management system to capture key improvement ideas of staff through establishing a proper channel of ideation for school improvement to better manage the flow of ideas. Then school should develop the methods to turn these ideas through filtering and targeting the ideas for school improvement only. Generally vague, personal issue or critic ideas by staff without any solutions should be considered as wastes and school can get rid of them. Therefore, school needs to set up the knowledge management system to support ideas for improvement and to store the best knowledge for innovation. 

- Team Level Learning is positioned to the layer of Value building which the whole schools adopt shared vision, culture and values. Team Level engagement is to establish a team mental models which take school vision, mission and goals into team's goals, actions and results. Translating school's vision for learning, building learning culture and agreeing on learning values and philosophy are argued to foster the learning by all larger teams (departments) and smaller teams (units). Team leaders must exemplify the learning model by inspiring and influencing the learning through sharing and agreeing on the school vision and strategies for learning (SLO strategies). To achieve these strategies, teams must establish the learning culture, values and philosophy to inspire and to empower the team's learning that align with the school vision for learning. At the level of learning, team leaders needs to ensure the team's clarity, expectation and acceptance of the shared vision for learning and the SLO strategies.

- Individual Level of Learning relies on the individual staff learning approach with the support of school leaders to enable the metacognitive learning, experimental learning and self-directed learning. At this lowest level of learning in school, staff member is argued to enact their self-regulated initiatives to improve learning of their own. With the support of their leaders for enabling and supporting the individual learning to gain the ground. For example, school must allocate self-paced learning time for teachers to improve their professional knowledge. Staff member needs to catch up with metacognitive strategies for learning or learning to learn and to catch on with the learning by doing (experimental learning). The single objective of individual level learning is to ignite staff's belief, mental model and efficacy of learning which is argued in the Underlying Assumption of Schein's culture model. The goal of individual level of learning is to streamline staff's conscious belief and intrinsic motivation with school's learning vision as demonstrated in the SLO strategic plan. There are several advantages of early exposure of learning deep inside the mind and heart of individual staff member to arouse their intrinsic motivation for continuous learning and innovation. 

Conclusion

SLO transformation journey requires the SLO strategies to set the directions for learning and innovation. Building the learning support environment is argued to be conducive to achieving the SLO transformation through engaging all levels of learning. Schein's model of culture in organization posited three key layers of culture manifestations in the organization. To build the learning support culture / environment, we conceptualize the three levels of learning under the three layers of culture to build an effective enabling environment for attaining the essence of learning. SLO transformation is a disruptive change in learning culture which require an alteration of learning strategies at all levels to embrace the positive changes as the products of learning in school. Therefore, it is argued for top leaders of the schools to plan and deploy the strategies to support learning at all levels. 

Roadmap to SLO Transformation Journey

Introduction

School as Learning Organization (SLO) is argued to be an effective tool for schools to sustain in the constantly changing and complex environment. Through instilling the learning as a central tenet , school's learning capacity is improved from individual staff to team, to whole school and to societal learning. School's learning must be competent in analyzing both the internal efficiency and effectiveness and external threats and opportunities to stay competitive in the market. There are several benefits for SLO besides being adaptive to the environment. The first one is staff's outcome, job satisfaction and boost productivity. A meta research of Welsh schools by Kools et al. (2019) found the link between SLO and staff's outcome. Another research by Gouëdard, Kools & George (2023) confirmed the SLO with teacher's self efficacy and job satisfaction. Moreover, SLO can improve knowledge performance where innovation is the product of knowledge management. Knowledge is argued to be the valuable intangible assets in organization and it will support school to gain competitive advantage through continuous learning, improvement and innovation. Only innovation will differentiate one school from the others. SLO will foster innovation and it is differentiated itself from other schools, despite similar curriculum, premise, structure and system. The last benefit of SLO is financial performance. Although there are some public funded schools that demands no profits, financial performance can be measured with cost reductions in school operations, L&D and other aspects namely marketing. Being an SLO, non-profit schools can  convert the saving (through operation cost reductions) into improving other aspects, particularly staff wellbeing and societal giveback to enhance school's CSR activity. Therefore, being SLO benefit the schools in learning from internal to external, improve staff's knowledge performance and job satisfaction which foster innovation for efficiency and effectiveness. Finally, all of these will improve financial performance (market shares, profit margins, high return on investment...) and cost reduction for nonprofit schools. 

The Roadmap to SLO Transformation

Becoming an SLO will lead school to gain more advantages in the digital and AI society. However, we argue that SLO transformation is a systematic and structured journey involving high level decision making and comprehensive plan for implementing the processes to realize the goal (becoming SLO). Without explicit structure to guide the journey, transforming to SLO is like a waste of commitment, time and funds for a lost cause. Therefore we argue school to develop a roadmap for SLO transformation, which will be discussed as below.

Figure 1. Roadmap for SLO Transformation Journey

Step 1. Strategy Priorities

SLO transformation must be set as one of the strategic priorities that school needs to address in their strategic plan / direction. By embedding SLO in the strategic level, school will be able to design process and align performance to achieve the objectives and target. In the strategic plan of SLO transformation, key objectives and targets to achieve the transformation must be defined in the short-term(outputs, medium-term(outcomes) and long-term impact. The SLO strategic priority must also align with the school vision and mission. This alignment requires school to redefine their vision and mission when their SLO priority is approved. However, revising or redefining school vision should be done after the end cycle of strategic plan where gaps are identified in the strategic implementation. Therefore, we argued to adopt the SLO transformation if the strategy align with the extant school vision and mission and SLO can converge all the performance to achieve the vision and mission. If the SLO transformation misaligns with the school vision and mission, it is argued to put it in the new cycle of strategic plan.

Step 2. Policy 

SLO transformation needs necessary policies to enforce the processes and to align performance to achieve objectives and key targets in the strategic plan of SLO. Key policies for supporting the SLO transformation processes are recommended to structure in guidelines, responsibility, key processes, resources (people, funds, materials, time and technology). The policy should outline key rationales for SLO transformation which is stemmed from the issues without SLO and advantages with SLO. Adopting the key objectives and targets as approved in the strategic plan to define responsibilities and to assign managers and teams with those responsibilities to achieve the results. The policy needs to define key processes to be discussed in step 3 for implementation. 

Step 3. Process

Process is defined as an repeated and interrelated activity and it requires at least two activities to be a process. Work process is needed in organization to achieve the results. Without process, tasks will be carried out randomly and results are hard to measured. According to the process maturity model, there are five levels of process management, starting with the Level 1.Initial, Level 2. Managed, Level 3. Defined, Level 4. Quantitatively Managed and Level 5. Optimizing. Level 1 Initial process is poorly defined and reactive where activities are completed based on the necessity of teams. In order to support the SLO transformation, school must define process standards where process mapping must be done to provide overview of extant processes and the new emergent process when implementing the SLO plan. In defining the process model, school needs to identify the core processes, support process and management process. By differentiating these typical processes, school can determine what emergent process to add or to integrate (optimizing) with the existing ones. 

Step 4. Communication

Communication is considered as the most fundamental element and challenges in organization. Communication in organization must follow the structure to avoid grapevine and implicit communication channels. Communication can be done in the close loop and in the loose loop. For the SLO transformation strategy to achieve, communication with all key leaders who will be responsible to implement the strategies is the most important step to agree on the concept, strategic objectives and key success targets. All leaders who are assigned with responsibilities in the policy must be knowledgeable and supportive of the SLO transformation strategies. Since they will plan their communication strategies further to inspire the teams for actions and achievements, effective communication with all leaders will ease the challenge in SLO strategy deployment.

Step 5. Deployment Strategy

The most important phase of strategy management is strategy deployment phase. How will leaders bring the strategic objectives and key success targets to their team to achieve the goals? The communication between leaders and their teams to drive highly effective performance is crucial for the SLO implementation. Leaders must prepare action plan to achieve the strategic objectives and targets with their teams. Setting the performance plan, incorporating the performance targets that is aligns with the SLO transformation targets and objectives, is the recommended plan for school leaders. Each team and department must have their performance plans (performance objectives, Key performance targets and results) to achieve the strategic objectives and key success targets. Staff’s competencies must also be analyzed to ensure there are no skill gaps in implementing the performance plan against the strategic targets. Leaders are strongly encouraged to develop a monitoring and evaluation tool to review the performances against the success of strategic objectives and key success targets. Adopting the Balanced Scorecard strategies is a recommended action for school leaders to manage their strategies and plan. 

Conclusion

School as Learning Organization (SLO) has tremendous advantages for school to sustain in the complex and uncertain environment, which requires constant learning at all levels to be adaptive, innovative and responsive to the fast pace of changes. Digital and AI society pressures on school to reform and to transform into the SLO in order to survive. SLO transformation needs a roadmap which is presented above to inform the systematic and comprehensive changes in school. It involves a high level decision making to formulate a strategic priority for SLO transformation. Policy and process must be developed and optimized in order to successfully implement the strategic plan. Communication with all school leaders about SLO strategies, particularly key objectives and key success targets in a short-term and long-term results. School leaders must gain comprehensive understanding and acceptance to implement the SLO strategies. Finally, school leaders must prepare deployment plan to align team's performance with strategic objectives and key success targets. Performance plan, monitoring and evaluation must be conducted in the time framework. Achieving the SLO transformation is a key success milestone toward a learning school. 

Professional Learning & Development Framework for SLO

I. Introduction

Teacher is argued to directly impact on student's learning outcomes. From teacher's motivation and job satisfaction to academic competency, teachers are conducive to learning engagement and positive outcomes. Many researches have proven the relationship between teacher’s capacity and student’s high achievement. School today must prepare students for tomorrow. Teachers and school leaders need to equip the capacity to learn and to adapt in the uncertain and complex environment. Traditional classrooms will become less effective to prepare the students for the uncertain and complex future. Therefore, the most contemporary paradigm of effective school is transforming it into a learning organization. The key tenet conducive to a learning school is professional learning from individual to team and to whole school learning. The concept of school as learning organization has aggrandized and the integrative model of school as learning organization by Kools & Stoll (2016) is worth referencing to transform traditional school into a learning organization. Professional learning paves a way for school to learn and adapt to its environment. We deliberately upholds the concept of school as learning organization and its model where professional learning is central to school practice. 

School needs a roadmap to guide their professional learning journey as a strategic direction to improve teacher's and school's learning capacity and the outcomes of learning. Based on the Integrated Model of SLO ( Kools & Stoll, 2016), the Fifth Discipline (Senge, 1990) and the DLOQ model (Watkins & Marsick, 1997, 2003), we conceptualized the Learning and Development Framework for Action (L&DFA). The L&DFA is a structured tool being mapped for actions to foster learning among individuals, teams and school as the whole. The L&DFA has three core components which lays out the key learning actions that teachers and school leaders are to abide by. L&DFA also serves as an assistance on performance management and indicative performance results of teachers and school leaders who engage in teaching and leading at APIS. 

Figure 1. Learning & Development Framework for Action (L&DFA)

Framework 1: Individual Learning

Individual learning or self-directed learning of a teacher is an essential nutrient for continuous professional learning. Self-directed learning is resulted from intrinsic motivation that arouses their internal interest in learning. To pave a way for effective individual learning, APIS school limits the teaching hours to 20-25 hours per week.

Action. 1.1. Self-paced online learning

Teachers are strongly encouraged to conduct self-paced learning at school while not engaged in teaching sessions. School arranges two rooms for individual learning, a staff room and a learning space for teachers to quietly work out their self learnings. Teachers are encouraged to enroll in online learning through Moodle platforms like Coursera, EdX, Academia… to enhance their teaching and learning capabilities. 

Action. 1.2. Self-directed learning

Self-directed learning is a broad self-learning approach which encompasses self-paced learning, personalized learning... It is intended to be different from the Action 1.1. Self-paced online learning in the way that this action offers more freedom and unstructured learning approach. Seeing the endless power of YouTube, LinkedIn, AI Chatbot, other websites for learning, teachers are also strongly encouraged to explore any learning on these platform to acquire new knowledge to upskill their current competencies. 

Action. 1.3. Voluntary program

Voluntary work in teaching is also an act of learning and experiencing new things in teaching. Therefore, APIS school will enable early leave of teachers who are engaged in external voluntary teaching services. However, the early leave condition is limited to only 30 minutes before the normal teaching duration. 

Framework 2: Team Learning 

Team learning has proven effective in improving knowledge through peer learning, reflecting, debating and sharing. Team learning also converges multiple and different perspectives into one single vision and mission of school through collaboration and support. Learning as a team goes beyond action but needs to be deeper in mind, mental model of every member of the team. From challenging ideas to learning to work as an effective team, team learning will be as good as implementing in several actions below:

Action. 2.1. Weekly reflection and sharing

Teachers and school leaders are to engage in weekly reflection of teaching and learning. The reflection should objectively focus on what goes well and what needs to improve further for next week. The weekly meeting will also pave a way for teachers to share their best practices (classroom management, assessment techniques, learning motivation…). Both the weekly reflection and sharing should not exceed 1 hour. All teachers and school leaders engage in the weekly reflection and sharing must uphold mutual respect, creative tension and solution-based approach. 

Action. 2.2. Coaching series by leaders

School leaders must set up coaching series aiming to improve teacher’s performance. Having been identified as low performance, teachers must be placed in a coaching session. The coaching series can last no more than 6 months. School leaders can arrange their coaching sessions every week or month to suit their circumstances at work. Coaching sessions can be done in one-to-one or one-to-many where school leaders consider appropriately effective coaching mode. 

Action. 2.3. Exploration and experimentation project

School leaders need to arrange teachers to undertake at least one annual project either exploring new teaching and learning approaches or experimenting with new teaching methods. Teachers need to conduct their own research and give reflection through result finding to present in a team. The target teachers should be the ones who have less teaching hours than other teachers. Teachers can spend their non-teaching hours working on the research project and experiment it in the classroom. Action research is a recommended method for teachers to explore new teaching approaches and experiment in the classroom. School leaders should facilitate the publication of research findings and a $50 cash allowance will be made for quality action research of the teachers. Publication cost is covered by APIS school and several copies must be stored in the staff room for other teachers to learn. A digital copy(PDF version) of the research finding will be shared in the school Google Drive that is accessed by all teachers. 

Action. 2.4. Quarterly PD on teaching and learning

Teacher professional development on teaching and learning is to happen every quarter or 4 times per academic year. The aim of teacher’s PD is to strengthen the capability of teachers in teaching and learning through introducing new effective teaching and learning approaches, guiding on further effective teaching and learning and reflecting on what teachers have performed in the past three months. Quarterly PD on teaching and learning must be arranged in a proper seminar style or workshop format for teachers to comfortably learn and engage with the team. APIS school auditorium is recommended for hosting the quarterly PD. Teachers are encouraged to attend and absences are allowed only on urgent occasions or special circumstances where deemed necessary and exclusively decided by their school leaders. 

Action. 2.5. Peer Observation

Peer observation is another collaborative learning opportunity for teachers to reflect, recap and revise their teaching performance. Teachers are productive when they get observed and conduct observations of others. Teachers engage in mutual trust and friendly relationships, which enhances the learning about teaching. Teachers must engage in peer observation once every month. While teachers are encouraged to observe others in the same level of teaching, for example, early year classroom to early year classroom, they are not barred from observing other teachers in different levels of teaching, for example, primary year classroom to secondary year classroom. However, teachers are not supposed to conduct observations in different subjects from their current subject they are teaching. English subject teachers should observe their peers who teach English subjects rather than the teachers who teach in science class. Teachers, who are involved with peer observation, should be well- prepared with observation notes for reflection and feedback. School leaders shall review the observation note and guide how to use it in the observation process. Reflection and feedback to the observant should be done in a self-reflection way to avoid unexpected confrontation and tension arising from the discussion. Teachers should bear in mind that peer observation is for collaborative learning opportunities and teacher’s collegiality. 

Framework 3: Organizational learning

Organizational learning is a schoolwide learning system at APIS aiming to equip teachers and school leaders with the professional capabilities to perform for excellence in teaching and learning. The organizational learning sets the system for continuous learning and improvement to be involved by all teachers and school leaders for APIS school transformation to a learning school. 

Action 3.1. Induction program

The induction program applies to all new onboarding teachers to guide and coach along the process from onboarding to deployment. The induction process lays out in three milestones, onboarding, transition and deployment. 

- onboarding: all newly accepted teachers will get a school tour to introduce themselves to other staff and to familiarize themselves with the school premise. New teachers will meet with key relevant stakeholders to learn about his / her roles and responsibilities which relate to teacher’s support in non-academic areas. Most relevant staff members are operation managers and operation officers. School leaders must arrange the individual meeting with the onboarding teachers.

- transition: all new teachers are allowed one day to review all school curriculum( subject content, approaches and assessment), policies, regulation and to sign off on several school policies relevant to teachers. On the same single day, the onboarding teacher will join a classroom observation to learn how to effectively deliver the curriculum.

- deployment: the onboarding teachers will be placed in classrooms with the presence of school leaders in the classroom. School leaders will introduce teachers to the students and stay in the classroom for at least 30 minutes to observe teachers’ engagement with students and the curriculum implementation. 

Action 3.2. Professional development program

- Professional development program for teachers:

Teachers’ pedagogical knowledge and skills are crucial for quality teaching and learning. To maintain teacher’s professional capabilities with modern pedagogical knowledge and skills, APIS school commits to host an annual teacher’s professional development workshop through hiring an expert trainer from Cambridge or other international education institutions to provide a three-day training to teachers. The three-day workshop aims to equip teachers with most contemporary knowledge and skills in pedagogy. In the post workshop, teachers shall prepare a plan to apply the new knowledge to improve student’s learning. School leaders and teachers need to engage in learning and applying cycles as a significant feedback to the professional development program for teachers.

- Professional development program for school leaders:

Leadership leverages the effectiveness of teaching and learning. School leaders are change makers at school. Although school leadership is not directly related to student learning achievement, it ensures that quality teaching and learning happens at school. Seeing the significant impacts of school leadership on teaching and learning, APIS school commits to enable its school leaders to attend at least one international conference on educational leadership and one oversea school visit per year. School leaders are strongly encouraged to enlarge professional networking with other school leaders in Cambodia to exchange professional experiences. 

Action. 3.3. Thematic school visit

School visit is an exposure opportunity for teachers to learn about and from other teachers or school leaders out of their school. The school visit is argued to be effective when it is theme-based or thematic where teachers are prepared for what to learn and improve. APIS school leaders shall set up at least one thematic school visit per year for a different group of teachers to be categorized by levels of teaching, for example, early year group, primary year group and secondary year group. The priority is for teachers in the level that is needed for further improvement in the available theme to offer by the host school. 

Action. 3.4. Inter-school exchange program

Inter-school exchange program is a mutual sharing and learning experience where teachers from both schools research and share their best practices on teaching and learning. The exchange program for teachers equips them with researching, communication and presentation skills in addition to their growing teaching and learning knowledge. The school leaders must arrange the professional exchange program for at least every three months. The topics or themes are subjected to be determined by the school leaders and teachers. However, the priorities are given to the areas where teachers are currently challenging with or where they will encounter in the shortcoming time. 

Action 3.5. Annual Staff Forum

Annual staff forum aims to equip teachers with leadership skills through leadership talk events, personal aspirations and other team engagement activities. The event is hosted once every year where all teachers and school leaders participate to engage in leadership talks, personal aspiration and team engagement. Annual staff forum is also a platform for staff appreciation and rewards for their outstanding performance and motivation in the whole academic year. School leaders are to hand in the appreciation letters for outstanding teachers to acknowledge their commitment and positive changes at schools. 

Action 3.6. Unconferenced Workshop

Unconferenced workshop will enable teachers to mentor and to learn as a presenter of their own topic and a participant of other teacher’s topics. Teachers will be selected on a voluntary basis to present their researched article/ topics related to teaching and learning. The numbers of teachers and topics to present will be under the decision of school leaders after consultation with their teachers. The venue must have several rooms for each presentation to simultaneously happen and to swap respectively. The unconferenced workshop will benefit teachers of knowledge enrichment and teamwork collaboration. The unconferenced workshop will be hosted once every year. Date and time will be determined by school leaders. The workshop will also open for public to join and exchange ideas to make the topics more breadth and in-depth. Teachers should be encouraged to well-research in the topics they will present to offer a practical guide to participants. Theory-based topics are also encouraged. 

II. How to Apply the L&DFA

The L&DFA is developed to build the professional capacity of teachers and school leaders through three levels of professional learning. The L&DFA is a compulsory framework demanding commitment by the top management and teachers to improve their professional competencies through multiple frameworks of learning actions. The first and most important step of applying is through integrating this framework in the policy where actions in this framework will be broken down into actionable timeline to achieve the learning. In the policy, funds, time and resources must be properly analyzed to allocate supportive measures for implementation. Next school leaders must constantly monitor the action progression and to evaluate the results to be satisfactory. In this step, school leaders must develop a monitoring tool to capture all the data of all learning in the L&DFA for evaluation of the impact. Finally, the policy L&DFA must be able to impact on the student's learning through improving the teacher's and school leader's professional competencies. Therefore, evaluation tool must be developed to conduct analysis on the data collected in the monitoring step. It is necessary for the school leaders and teachers to sit and discuss the performance of L&DFA through reflection and plan further actions to improve.