Keith Hammond – Summary Sheet

Lifelong learning (LLL) creates the need for a new sort of leadership, which connects practices in different organizations horizontally.  It does not just work within the structures of the same organization .  Communication technology and language skills thus become more important. LLL leadership thus works far more organically, bringing providers together to provide a more comprehensive range of informal and formal opportunities.  Whilst management structures may still be needed they are of secondary importance to the leadership skills that systematically ‘transform’ the way people think about education and training.

New leaders then are knowledge producers, active citizens, boundary transgressors and public intellectuals that can emerge in any area of Palestinian society.  New leaders take on the values of freedom and justice, which must inform the project of a learning society.  New leadership focuses on access, and quality provision that can take place anywhere in Palestine.  Learning is focused on the process rather than the place of learning.

Critique and the building of reflective institutions, fully transparent and open to public scrutiny are central to new leadership.  Critique is fundamental to reflective practice and reflective practice has to run right across the learning society.  The learning society functions around organic leaders, networks, collaboration and very different organizational settings.  Working discursively, disseminating practice, and constantly generating new practices within organizations of learning, the new leadership looks far more to processes.

Intended outcomes of these workshops:

·       A grasp of the new leadership approach needed for building learning networks in regional development connecting to the broader dynamics of the global knowledge economy;

·       An understanding of the collective task involved in building the learning society that deepens Palestinian commitment to international knowledge exchange;

·       A commitment to creating opportunities for the development of core communication skills at all levels of learning leadership that spread across a whole range of Palestinian organisations offering formal and informal training and education;

·       A strategic grasp of the importance of organic leadership that is required for working across Palestinian society and not just within the structures of self contained organizations like schools, colleges or universities.