t's not about the numbers, it's about change top-down thinking and bottom-up action are both essential a new understanding of 'learning' is needed by everyone learning professionals have to step up and let go manager engagement and capability are both critical

This is by far the best-educated cohort in our history - on paper, anyway - but apparently lacking in courage, judgment, capacity to analyse or even simple curiosity, except about immediate personal needs.

Where things get a bit more confusing with PLNs is when we fail to advance beyond those warm fuzzy feelings about being connected to others with more substantive knowledge and action.

Is a lack of PD a barrier? Professional development is a barrier, although I think they can teach themselves much of what teachers need to be learning to be able to modernise their classrooms. The worst thing a teacher can say is: "who's going to teach me how to do that?" Teachers are teachers and should be able to teach themselves what they need to know. If they can't then they probably shouldn't be teaching. You want a teacher who can keep up. There are networks of other educators out there that can connect you with new skills. Professional development doesn't have to be something that is done to teachers - it can be just ongoing conversations they're having with other professionals that they're learning from every day.

Reformers have largely worked within, rather than on, the system of education. Working within the system has resulted in status-quo preservation, even when reformists felt they were being radical. Illich failed to account for how educational institutions are integrated into society. Freire spoke with a humanity and hope that was largely overlooked by a comfortable developed world incapable of seeing the structure and impact of its system. To create and nurture change, a message must not only be true for an era, but it must also resonate with the needs, passions, interests, realities, and hopes of the audience to whom the message is directed.

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