Throughout 2021, Director Shelby Cosner has been working with The Qatar Ministry of Education and the Qatar Foundation to design and provide an in-depth leader development program for principals and their school leadership teams in Qatar. This development program focuses attention on the learning-oriented leadership practices emphasized in the OECD’s Leadership for 21st Century Learning, Qatar Principal Standards 1-4, and academic/instructional leadership more generally. The program also focuses on developing leadership-oriented mindsets and practices. The implementation phase of the program kicked-off in January 2021. Despite the challenges and disruptions presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, Cosner, in collaboration with the Qatar Foundation and The Qatar Ministry of Education, innovated a unique virtual program for a group of largely Arab-speaking school leadership teams. During the spring and summer, Cosner used a digital synchronous learning environment that combined cross-school leadership team learning with individual leadership team coaching. Throughout the experience school leadership teams have been engaged in action-based leadership projects. Cosner traveled Doha, Qatar for the first in person learning experience near the start of November. She will be returning to Doha in December to present this leadership learning design at the World Innovation Summit in Education, which brings together roughly 1500 policy leaders/experts, researchers, and developers from nations throughout the world to foster new collaborations and develop educational solutions with the goal of inspiring creative changes in education.
