Designing formative learning organisations

This chapter looks at learning environments as directed eco-systems, and how they develop over time so as to maintain (ideally strengthen) learning as the central preoccupation and realise the ILE (Innovative Learning Environments) learning principles. In this continuous cycle, leadership is essential to ensure that particular learning designs are put in place. The learning leadership requires vision and it necessarily requires strategies to realise such vision to take it “off the drawing board”. Teacher engagement and professional development are key aspects of the design process. Learners themselves are prominent partners in the learning environments (“learner voice”). For the learning environment to be formative, it needs to be highly informed about the learning taking place within it and it is “information rich” in this sense. For that rich information to inform further growth in the learning environment it must be fed back, reflected on and strategically used to “redesign” the learning environment.