ABSTRACT
("Leadership for Learning") presents "a practical theory", a "master key" which opens up a rich source of intelligence and a challenge to policy. When the term leadership for learning (LfL) was first coined in Cambridge in 2000, it brought a freshness and originality to the leadership discourse and prompted a number of international studies, exploring how we come to understand the connections between leadership and learning in different country contexts. In the two decades that have followed, the terminology has been widely employed but not always with the meanings and intent of its original conception. Adopting the LfL descriptor required, and still requires, a critical revisiting of what is widely understood as "leadership", what is commonly viewed as "learning", and how the connective "for" is critical in bringing these two big ideas together. That sometimes contentious preposition opens up a plethora of questions as to how learning is promoted, embedded, and reviewed in policy and practice. The five informing principles of the LfL framework are revisited, showing that they are integrally related and, when taken together, offer a practical theory which provides a platform for constructive challenges to policy.
