Creating a Culture of Adult Learning in Schools

What happens when teachers and school leaders from ten different schools across the Network come together to learn about Adult Learning?

“Train the Trainer reignited my passion for PBL and helped me rediscover my purpose”

Teachers from Sunbury and Geelong share their thoughts on Culture Practices that foster student-centred learning

“The program gave me the opportunity to design a PD program that I am passionate about and tackles a problem area at our school”

One rainy Wednesday in May, a group of educators with varying levels of responsibility, from classroom teachers and Heads of Department to Pastoral Leaders and Principals, filed in to our training rooms in Sydney’s CBD. By Friday 3pm, they emerged as strong, confident leaders of adult learning, armed with a fully developed plan for adult learning to address a current issue in their school.

Having been on hold during the pandemic, New Tech Network’s Train the Trainer program was back, and its participants more inspiring and motivated than ever.

Here, School Development Coach, and course facilitator, Emily Liccioni, reflects on the Train the Trainer process and its impact on creating a sustainable adult learning culture.

NTN Train the Trainer Cohort 2022

Creating a Train the Trainer Learning Community

With a mixture of nerves and excitement, the participants sat, much as our students do at the start of the year wondering “what’s expected of me here?”. After some discussion protocols and an ice breaker, we established our community agreements and they were relaxed and ready to learn.

These dedicated professionals had been identified as great practitioners able to lead staff playing an important role in the school learning culture and subsequent staff and student growth. They had targeted areas for development and a passion for being a part of something better at their school. The main questions they had were, “how?”, and for some, “do I have the confidence to do this?”.

Modelling good teaching practice

Train the Trainer PBL entry event document

As we would when launching a project, we started with an entry documents outlining the challenge and expectations before them. An excerpt of which can be see here.

Educators then worked collaboratively to create a list of shared Knows and Need to Knows for the days ahead. These Need to Knows then formed the basis for the facilitated workshops to come.

Experiential Learning Cycle

John Heron’s Experiential Learning Cycle

Educators took a deep dive into John Heron’s Experiential Learning Cycle which aims to do the following:

  • Attend to the affective as well as the cognitive needs of participants

  • Provide opportunities for all kinds of learners to engage

  • Build participation and ownership of objectives

We then examined this in practice with agendas from NTN’s Adult Learning Toolkit.

Fostering a Culture of Learning in Our Schools

Creating learning cultures in schools

We learned about school change and NTN’s Learning Organisation Framework as we started to unpack how our schools provided structural, cultural and leadership support when fostering new initiatives.

We chose from different NTN Culture Practice Cards aimed at fostering one of the four aspects essential for developing a professional learning culture:

  1. Build Internal Awareness and Empathy

  2. Cultivate a Learning Community

  3. Engage in Restorative Discipline

  4. Support Social - Emotional Wellbeing

We had deep discussions in groups regarding how each of the cards we’d chosen could be implemented that could have on classroom or staffroom culture.

All the while, these teachers and leaders were applying this new learning to designing their own adult learning opportunity addressing a need specific to their school.

The Culminating Event

New Tech Culture Practices


Through a process of deep thinking and discussion time, ongoing feedback and refinement (and a few laughs along the way!), these teachers and leaders grew visibly both in knowledge and confidence to create a quality agenda for effective adult learning of which they felt proud to take back and present at their school.

What a feeling to know that twenty-three adults from ten schools in Australia now have the tools, knowledge and confidence to up-skill the many staff at their schools in order to improve student outcomes for every students at each of those ten schools.

““Train the Trainer fostered big picture discussions and planning””
— Daniel Buttacavoli, Deputy Principal Learning Innovation, Salesian College Sunbury

Principals, we salute you for releasing teachers at this time of unprecedented teacher shortages.

To those brave new trainers, we thank you for your contribution to the program, for your dedication to improving student experience and outcomes and look forward to hear how you get on.

For more information about the work of New Tech Network Australia in fostering learning communities through learner-centred practices, contact us below.

Bradley Scanlon