Steplab PD Leadership Intensive - Melbourne

Want to attend both the Nov 5th & Nov 6th Intensives? Book the two-day PD Leadership & Instructional Coaching Intensive bundle here.

Across Australia, schools are moving to whole-school explicit teaching, but adopting a model is the easy part. The hard part is improving teaching consistently, across every classroom, and making it stick.

How does a school leadership team decide on a high leverage PD priority? How do leaders run group PD that has an immediate impact on teacher practice? How do you give teachers timely and impactful feedback to support their development?

The PD Leadership Intensive gives you a complete system for running whole-school professional learning that embeds any PD priority. It draws on the latest research on teacher development and on what Steplab has learnt from working with over 16,000 schools and 200,000 teachers worldwide.

Join Steplab Australia’s Director, Ollie Lovell, alongside Director of Implementation, Rory McCaughey, and PD Specialist, Maxine Galante, for a day of in-depth professional learning designed for those leading and managing teacher development at a school or system level.

In this PD, attendees will engage in a deep dive, exploring how to:

• Diagnose high-leverage pedagogical priorities
• Deliver targeted and time efficient rehearsal based Group PD to build collective teacher efficacy
• Provide granular feedback through lesson visits to celebrate change and embed teaching improvements over time
• Identify progress made by teachers across a school or system
• Strategically use data to track and improve teaching and learning.

This PD is designed to accelerate your confidence and expertise to run effective professional learning cycles, regardless of your leadership level, from department or year level, to campus, school, or even system-wide.

Every insight throughout the day will be clearly and concisely communicated and demonstrated, with lots of opportunities for rehearsal and consolidation provided.

You do not need to be a Steplab user or school to attend this PD and all principles and practices shared within the PD are entirely applicable to a wide range of Instructional Coaching approaches, both with and without Steplab.

Details

• Date: Thur 5th November, 2026
• Time: 9am - 4pm
• Location: Lowther Hall Anglican Grammar School, 17 Leslie Rd, Essendon VIC 3040
• Included: All training materials, full day PD, morning tea and lunch

Public Transport to the venue:

There are train, tram and bus options for getting to Lowther Hall, with all stops within a 5-7 minute walking distance to the School.

Please find here a map relating to public transport information for getting to Lowther Hall.

If travelling by car:

There is no parking available on campus for visitors to Lowther Hall. Street parking options that are within the direct vicinity of the School are limited to a 1-2 hour time frame and monitored by Moonee Valley City Council. However, there is free all-day parking down the bottom of Park Street near Clarinda Park, which Google Maps suggests is a 12 minute walk from Lowther Hall.

Pre-learning

A great primer for this professional development is the free podcast between Ollie and Alex Evans. Listen to episode 101 of the Education Research Reading Room Podcast here, or via Spotify, or your favourite podcasting app.

Testimonials

“I’ve been using Steplab for two years and this training opened my eyes to how much more I could get out of the platform. I have come to see that it is a whole approach, not just a database and coaching platform. I was equipped with specific strategies for how to move beyond individual coaching to whole-school engagement.”

David Cole, Deputy Principal, Australian Christian College, Singleton

“The entire day was extremely engaging - you truly brought the mechanisms for effective PD to life and walked the walk not just talked the talk. Every activity, piece of content, demonstration and discussion were meaningful and impactful. I loved that I was able to get so much out of the day despite not being on the platform yet. You can see how truly passionate you all are about contributing to real change in schools. Thank you!”

Kylee Painter, Pedagogical Practice Consultant, Catholic Education WA.

“This session really developed my understanding of how to create systems within a school to support impactful PD. The mechanisms that underpin effective PD were insightful and understanding the relationship between drop ins, PD and rehearsal is empowering. Likewise, this session gave real clarity on the impact that drop-ins can have on the culture of a school.”

Dom Snape, Assistant Principal, Kurunjang Secondary College

Discounts codes

• 10% off discount for 3 or more staff. Code: 3ormore
• 15% off discount for 3 or more staff, including principal. Code: 3ormoreincprin
• 20% off discount for each Steplab account at your school* Code: steplabaccount

*For example, if your school currently has a Steplab license for 8 users, you can use this code for 8 attendees (any 8 staff members from your school) to this intensive.

About 

Ollie Lovell

With a broad career spanning teaching roles in both the public and private sectors, as well as higher education, Ollie is a leading thinker on education within Australia and internationally. Ollie constantly strives to clarify, codify, and communicate key educational ideas for time-poor teachers and has done so through his popular Education Research Reading Room Podcast, his weekly newsletter EdThreads, and his two books Cognitive Load Theory in Action and Tools for Teachers. Ollie is the Director of Steplab Australia, the Senior Researcher within the Crowther Centre, an adjunct lecturer at LaTrobe University, and is currently completing his PhD in self-regulated learning.

Hear Ollie speak with Steplab founder, Josh Goodrich, on the Education Research Reading Room Podcast speaking about Responsive Coaching (Part 1, Part 2)

Rory McCaughey

Rory partners with schools across Australia to design and sustain high-impact professional development, providing ongoing support throughout the year. He is a teacher and leader with 14 years’ classroom experience, holds a Masters in Education, and co-hosts the Educate to Self-Regulate podcast. He has delivered high-impact training for staff around the country, bridging classroom practice and education research.

Maxine is a PD Specialist for Steplab Australia. A former Deputy Principal with 12 years’ of classroom and leadership experience across schools in the ACT and Western Australia, she is passionate about helping schools build high-impact, sustainable professional development. In 2022, Maxine was recognised with ACEL’s New Voice in Educational Leadership Award for her contribution to educational leadership. She works closely with schools across Australia to strengthen instructional coaching and leadership practice.

See the full Steplab team here

Steplab

Steplab is a professional learning platform for schools that harnesses instructional coaching and data-driven insights to systematically improve teaching and learning. It is the primary tool of choice to drive improvement in many of the top schools in the UK, and within five years has grown to be used in over over 3000 schools, and with over 100,000 teachers. Its content and design team involves Josh Goodrich, Peps Mccrea, Harry Fletcher-Wood and Ollie Lovell.

Cancellation policy

Cancellation and refund requests will be processed as follows:

• 30 or more days before event: 100% refund
• 2 or more weeks before event: 50% refund or ticket transfer to alternate participant for same event (free) 
• Less than 2 weeks before event: ticket transfer to alternate participant for same event (free) or postponement to future event ($50 + GST fee) available