Hold up the mirror: Examples of embedding a cross-school learning culture from Australia and New Zealand

We all recognise schools as places of learning for children and young people. However, in schools with strong learning cultures, everyone shares an identity as a learner. When staff speak about the learning dispositions they expect to see in their students, they could hold up a mirror and see the same dispositions in themselves. This paper draws from ongoing research into the leadership of future-focused schools, conducted from November 2018 to January 2019, funded through a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship. At the time of writing, I had visited 11 schools – four primary, six secondary and one serving Years 1–13 – across Australia (Victoria, New South Wales) and New Zealand (Christchurch). Schools in Australia and New Zealand are apt for comparison to those in England. In both countries, state schools follow a national curriculum and, as with English schools, have comparably high levels of autonomy (Ponte et al., 2008). In Australia, students take standardised, n