The Catalyst set is just what the name suggests, a catalyst for meaningful dialogue that starts conversations for action. Having used the set in a variety of settings, I now regularly have requests for a set of the cards and am happy that I ordered extras to be able to share it with school and district leaders.  

In the last two school years, we have made use of the cards in our work with teacher leaders who are in a temporary school leadership role (acting vice principals). This group meets five times throughout the year and we look in depth at each of the four areas and then apply our learning along the way and in a cumulative session. In the years prior to using Catalyst, our conversations in this same series of sessions were valuable but not in depth. In the last two years, we have noticed increased engagement, deeper conversations about the practice of leadership in their schools, and connections between their leadership work, building school culture and student success.  

In another instance, we used the Catalyst set to guide a review of the principal and vice principal evaluation process. The four sets of cards and the scenarios helped the committee to look deeply at the purposes which then helped us arrive at a process that will be meaningful for school leaders and those working with them in that process.  

Catalyst connects school leaders with the research base through a set of multi-use practical resources in an accessible and user-friendly way. The pack offers a flexible approach to leadership professional development and self-assessment, which could be used by individual schools, MATs or alliances. A great professional development resource.

Catalyst offers a brilliant dissemination of much of the research around educational leadership, but it is also much more than this. The evidence-based Research Findings cards provide bullet-pointed lists of the most impactful attributes of leadership, and the Professional Learning cards provide leaders, at all levels, with activities and themes to help lead development, thinking and change.

In the enthusiasm-rich but often time-poor environment of schools, Catalyst is a brilliant jumping-off point for leadership development.

This unique resource will be highly useful to every professional learning educator. The research findings are insightful and the format of the materials allows users in many parts of the world to place important and evidence-informed ideas into their school change practices.

An innovative professional learning resource that supports and enables leaders to engage school leaders with evidence-informed practice, and which provides a means for colleagues to stimulate their thinking about a wide range of leadership scenarios and challenges. Highly recommended! 

Original, eye-catching, mind-engaging, practice-improving and brimming with professional learning practices which we know work well. The cards are the perfect catalyst for professional growth and, in turn, the development of more capable learners. This resource underscores the power of learning for all teachers and school leaders.

These ingenious game-like yet evidence-informed professional conversation-starters will help both challenge and deepen leaders’ thinking and develop their strategies, while making the business of becoming a better leader playful rather than pompous or ponderous.

It’s a thought-provoking resource and leads to a better understanding both of being a teacher leader and of being a learning community. The fact that Catalyst is both research- and practice-based makes it a splendid tool for many purposes, including: training new middle leaders and teacher leaders, reflecting on one’s own team facilitation practices, deepening a learning conversation, and being a critical friend to others. It’s both attractive as a conversation starter and as a way to get through the whole collective learning and design ‘loop’.

 It’s quite a new idea to transform research data into a toolkit such as this one. Catalyst transfers academic knowledge into practice, and hence gets it to the intended users right away. As a team process facilitator, I’m very happy to have all of this knowledge in a box and use it whenever it’s suitable. 

Catalyst is a highly effective resource that combines a rigorous research-informed approach with prompts for reflective and collaborative learning. It is appropriate for a wide range of professional roles and situations and has a consistent focus on sustainable capacity-building and professional and organisational change.

For leaders and teachers who are tight for time but passionate about improvement, Catalyst presents a fantastic way to engage with the latest educational research and come up with personalised action plans for change. Practical, evidence-based and transformative, it presents the latest research, asks the right questions and then empowers us all to be catalysts for change. The exercises will help to move us beyond an individual journey of leadership and towards deeper conversations, stronger communities and more reflective cultures.

As a scientist I was drawn to this resource by the use of the word ‘catalyst’ in the title. A catalyst is a substance which speeds up reactions between other chemicals but remains unaltered after the process. In these challenging times I think we all want to make change, but without being ‘consumed’ ourselves. This resource really delivers on the promise of its title – it doesn’t try to offer you a step-by-step prescription for success, but rather it provokes you to think about the issues you want to solve. Through a combination of self-reflection and consultation with colleagues, you are guided by key questions and research findings which can help you think beyond your normal constraints.

At a time when people are searching for answers, Catalyst provides some great questions. My compliments to the authors.