Certificate in Leading Adult Learning
A Professional Program for Education Leaders
Designed for teachers, site and district leaders, department heads, PLC facilitators, and nonprofit leaders committed to transforming how adults learn in service of student success.
The Certificate in Leading Adult Learning develops the leadership capacity of established and emerging leaders in both the educational and non-profit sectors, with an emphasis on design and facilitation of powerful adult learning spaces that center the experience of youth. It is designed to support leaders to disrupt unjust practices, cultivate curiosity, and drive continuous improvement across organizational systems.
The program, which culminates in a certification in adult learning, offers a reflective, robust community of practice that develop leader identity and skills while connecting to deeper purpose, vision for equity, and core values. The majority of the program is self-paced and asynchoronous, with 3 live cohort sessions and ongoing feedback from a Lead by Learning coach.
Experience and Learning:
Four Consecutive Online Modules (asynchronous + 2–3 live sessions)
Module 0: Reflecting on Self
Module 1: Clarifying Purpose
Module 2: Refining Practices
Module 3: Understanding Impact
Learn research backed tools and strategies to design powerful adult learning spaces
Engage with equity-aligned frameworks, grounded in real-world stories and data
Connect through Canvas LMS for course content and reflections
Build a professional network with other like-minded education leaders who routinely lead adult learning
Earn a certificate upon completion of all four modules
Program Investment:
This is a fee-based certificate of $800 per leader, unless included in a current Lead by Learning partnership
Includes all learning materials, Canvas access, live sessions, and the official certificate
May quality for 1 unit of Continuing Education credit upon successful completion of the program. Program cost does not include unit fees.
Ready to Enroll?
Aligned to Lead by Learning’s Leader Profile Framework, educators who participate are supported to build their skills and dispositions as partners, learners, and visionaries as shown below.
- Values multiple perspectives and seeks thought partnerships
- Deeply listens with empathy and care, looking first for assets/connections
- Builds relationships that cultivate a culture of professional respect, trust, agency, and distributed leadership
- Supports rigorous learning steeped in SEL
- Publicly models a learning stance (curiosity, vulnerability, trust, flexibility, adaptability)
- Uses data to make adult and student learning visible
- Adapts and improves by deepening self-awareness
- Leads collaborative learning by experiencing and reflecting on conditions that supported their own learning
- Puts students at the center of learning by identifying and returning to high leverage goals that target students’ needs
- Communicates purpose and progress in humanizing, authentic ways to build awareness and support continuous improvement
- Creates space to move beyond transactional compliance to curiosity and collective efficacy
- Is driven by a moral imperative
What I Found
What I found this year, when doing this work, is that
loosening the grip of one’s own identify-bound perspective leads
to valuing multiple perspectives that add to the vision of a high quality program for our students
asking “What else do I need to know; what have I not thought about?” leads
to more power behind our continuous quality improvement process and better outcomes
deeply listening with empathy and caring leads
to identifying assets in others that I don’t possess and finding that the people I lead have wisdom that this moment needs
cultivating a culture of professional respect, trust, agency and distributed leadership leads
to building a program that is more responsive to the needs of our students that isn’t based just on my vision for the program, but the strengths of the people I lead who implement it
engaging in rigorous learning and braving uncomfortable conversations leads
to change, of how we think and act to improve the program and improve the outcomes for the students we serve
Vallejo City Unified School District
