2025-2026: Building a Professional Capability System
Across education systems globally, professional learning is being asked to do more than convey knowledge — it is being asked to build workforce capability, support implementation, and strengthen the leadership and organizational conditions that drive meaningful change. This shift is reshaping the role of continuing and professional learning itself.
OISE CPL Building Professional Capability at Scale model
At OISE CPL, it is shaping how we design, deliver, and position our work. Increasingly, CPL operates not simply as a course provider, but as part of a broader professional capability ecosystem — one that connects workforce insight, learning pathways, implementation-oriented design, and applied organizational improvement. Five interconnected approaches continued evolving throughout the year:
Integrated Professional Learning Pathways: Supporting progression across professional roles, competencies, and workplace contexts.
Translational Learning Design: Connecting research, theory, and innovation to applied professional practice.
Continuing Education as a Service (CEaaS): Positioning CPL’s infrastructure as a platform for capability development, research mobilization, and organizational learning.
Research and Innovation Mobilization: Strengthening the link between research, implementation, and workforce capability through RISE and InnovED.
Human-Centred Implementation: Attending to the trust, adaptation, and relational conditions required for sustainable organizational change.
A Year of Purposeful Progress
2025–2026 was a year of intentional, structured progress — shaped not by isolated initiatives, but by a shared commitment to building the systems, pathways, and partnerships that make professional capability development sustainable over time. Guided by five Pillars of Improvement, CPL worked to expand access and reduce barriers to entry, strengthen core program quality and sustainability, deepen its role in translating research into practice, advance workforce-aligned learning models, and grow its global partnerships. The sections that follow offer a closer look at progress and priorities across each of these areas.
01
Expanding Access and Professional Learning Pathways
From guided on-demand redesign to equity-centred program development, the year’s work focused on reducing barriers to entry and strengthening coherence across four emerging professional learning pathways.
Redesigning TEFL: Human Support at Scale
A significant initiative this year was the redesign of CPL’s online TEFL program following the closure of a long-standing international partnership. Rather than shifting toward fully automated delivery, CPL rebuilt around a guided on-demand model that intentionally maintains facilitator presence, competency-based assessment, and structured learner support throughout the learning experience.
This approach reflects a core CPL principle: flexibility and scale should not come at the cost of the relational and developmental supports essential to professional growth. The TEFL redesign also serves as a replicable model for other programs exploring on-demand delivery.
“I’ve really valued the opportunity to support learners in this program. Many come in unsure of themselves, especially if they have never taught before [but] with the right structure and a bit of guidance, people start to see that teaching is something they can do.”
Reframing Access Through Professional Pathways
Access to professional learning is not simply a matter of availability — it also depends on clarity, coherence, and sustained support that helps professionals navigate meaningful pathways for growth. In 2025–2026, CPL continued addressing these structural dimensions of access through pathway development and flexible delivery models.
CPL organized programming around four integrated professional learning pathways: Adult Educator, Ontario Certified Educator, Global Educator, and Education Leader. Each pathway connects professional roles, competencies, and developmental stages with corresponding learning opportunities — moving professionals away from isolated course participation and toward a more visible, navigable system of career-long growth.
Alongside this structural work, CPL continued strengthening flexible delivery models including online, hybrid, and guided asynchronous learning designed to support working professionals across diverse geographic and organizational contexts.
02
Building a Culture of Continuous Improvement
Improvement cycles, curriculum review, and implementation-oriented planning became embedded in the rhythm of CPL’s operations — marking a shift from quality assurance as a checkpoint to continuous learning as an organizational practice.
Building a Culture of Continuous Improvement
2025–2026 marked continued advancement of CPL’s improvement-oriented planning, operational, and curriculum systems.
Throughout the year, CPL embedded quarterly improvement and review cycles across planning, program operations, curriculum refinement, and implementation activities. These cycles strengthened iterative reflection, operational learning, and continuous adaptation across the unit.
Curriculum review processes also continued evolving through competency-based design refinement, pathway alignment, and collaboration with academic governance and curriculum review processes. CPL’s 15-member Curriculum Review Committee played an important role in supporting program quality, workforce alignment, and ongoing responsiveness to emerging sector needs.
This work increasingly reflects CPL’s shift away from static program management toward more adaptive systems capable of responding to changing learner, workforce, and organizational realities.
Sharing Improvement Expertise Globally
An important outcome of this work was the development of CPL’s Improvement-Oriented Planning Toolkit — a set of frameworks and tools now being shared with global partners seeking to build improvement capacity within their own educational contexts. Drawing from K–12 continuous improvement and implementation science methodologies, this work supports organizations in building clearer improvement architectures that connect planning, professional learning, and measurable outcomes.
Building Leaders for Complex Change
The Leading School Improvement Master Certificate continued evolving as a response to the growing leadership transition challenges facing education systems globally. The program provides structured scaffolding for leaders navigating improvement agendas at the intersection of systems thinking, instructional leadership, implementation practice, and collaborative organizational development.
03
Advancing Work-Integrated and Capability-Based Learning
Through competency-based design, EduForums and EduTours, and early exploration of AI-enabled learning supports, CPL deepened its focus on professional learning that supports performance within the realities of work.
Advancing Work-Integrated and Capability-Based Learning
Throughout 2025–2026, CPL continued advancing approaches that connect professional learning more directly to workplace practice, implementation, and capability development.
Increasing emphasis was placed on competency-based learning design, performance-oriented assessment, workplace application, and implementation-focused facilitation approaches. Across programs and partnership activities, CPL continued strengthening learning models designed to support reflection, collaboration, coaching, and applied professional practice over time.
Samantha Presutto-Quercia, Curriculum & Learning Innovation Specialist, has been central to CPL’s work-integrated learning — designing experiences that connect professional learning directly to workplace practice.
EduForums & EduTours: Bringing Learning Closer to Practice
CPL’s EduForums and EduTours model continued as key vehicles for networked, practice-centred professional learning. Engaging both domestic and international educators and leaders, EduForums and EduTours created intentional spaces for shared problems of practice, implementation dialogue, and field-based learning — designed as opportunities for practitioners to learn from and alongside one another. Educators and education leaders from Canada and around the world joined us in these professional learning experiences, exploring key themes, including experiential learning, inclusive education, IB programming, and Ontario education practices.
Exploring AI-Enabled Learning Supports
CPL explored how AI-enabled supports and digital tools can strengthen just-in-time learning within professional environments. Rather than viewing AI solely as a content-generation tool, CPL examined how these technologies can support reflection, implementation, and capability development in real-time work contexts — with human expertise and relational learning at the centre.
04
Mobilizing Research and Innovation
The RISE framework, CEaaS model, and InnovED’s expanding ecosystem reflect CPL’s growing role in building the infrastructure through which research, innovation, and knowledge move into professional practice at scale.
Advancing the RISE Framework
Throughout 2025–2026, CPL continued supporting the mobilization of the OISE RISE framework (Research Impact through Strategic Engagement). Developed through the OISE Associate Dean, Research Partnership & Innovation portfolio in 2023, RISE connects research, professional learning, strategic partnership, implementation support, and workforce capability development.
CPL’s work this year reflected a growing recognition that research impact requires more than dissemination — it depends on structures that support interpretation, contextualization, implementation, and sustained organizational adoption.
The RISE framework focuses on the last three of the six phases of the research cycle: Outputs, Knowledge Mobilization (KM) Activities, and Monitoring/Tracking, and their interconnections.
From Knowledge to Practice at Scale: Continuing Education as a Service
Josie DiVincenzo facilitating the 2025 AMS-Fitzgerald Fellowship in AI and Human-Centred Leadership cohort from the Dalla Lana School of Public Health – an example of CEaaS in action.
CPL continued advancing its role as a bridge between institutional expertise and professional practice — not simply delivering programs, but creating the infrastructure through which research, innovation, and knowledge can move into broader educational and organizational contexts. This work is anchored in CPL’s Continuing Education as a Service (CEaaS) approach, which positions CPL’s infrastructure as an enabling platform for capability development, innovation mobilization, and external partnership engagement.
InnovED and Education Entrepreneurship
InnovED continued evolving as OISE’s education-focused innovation and entrepreneurship platform. Through partnership development, mentorship, and professional learning events, InnovED created pathways between educational research, capability development, implementation practice, and market engagement.
A notable example was InnovED’s engagement through University of Toronto Entrepreneurship Week, including dialogue with international partners such as Maple Bear Global Schools. These conversations reinforced a central insight: education innovation depends not only on new technologies or ventures, but on the relational and organizational ecosystems that enable ideas to move into practice and generate meaningful impact.
05
Growing Global Engagement and Partnerships
Spanning five global regions — from KSA–Canada forum engagement and GCC partnerships to ongoing dialogue with the University of Rwanda — we continued strengthening the international relationships that anchor our global learning and capability development work.
KSA–Canada Education Leadership Forum 2.0
During the year, CPL contributed to engagement activities connected to the KSA–Canada Education Leadership Forum 2.0, including hosted dialogue and visiting engagement opportunities that brought together education leaders, ministry representatives, and institutional partners to explore shared priorities related to leadership development, AI-enabled learning, innovation, and education system modernization.
CPL also continued strengthening relationships with partners across the GCC region through ongoing dialogue related to professional capability systems, workforce development, and implementation-focused partnership models.
University of Rwanda Engagement
CPL’s engagement with the University of Rwanda — including convocation activities, strategic dialogue, and implementation-focused discussions — created important learning about educational improvement through the lens of organizational readiness, human adaptation, and well-being.
These experiences contributed to CPL’s evolving implementation philosophy: that sustainable educational transformation requires attention not only to strategy and structure, but also to the trust, psychological safety, and relational conditions that make change possible.
06
Our Community
CPL’s impact is made possible through the collective expertise, care, and commitment of instructors, facilitators, researchers, advisors, partners, and professional contributors who support the design, delivery, and evolution of our work.
Recognizing Excellence: Garth Nichols
This year, CPL recognized Garth Nichols with the OISE Award of Teaching Excellence in Professional Learning in recognition of his longstanding contributions to leadership development, professional learning, and mentorship within the CPL community.
His recognition reflects an important principle shaping CPL’s approach: that meaningful capability development depends not only on curriculum and systems, but on the people who bring learning to life through experience, care, mentorship, and authentic professional engagement.
Spring and Fall Forums
CPL’s Spring and Fall Forums continued as important gathering points for the broader instructional and facilitation community.
Designed as professional learning and reflective practice spaces rather than operational briefings, these forums explored themes including AI and professional practice, evolving workforce capability needs, implementation-oriented learning design, and the changing realities facing educators and educational organizations globally.
These gatherings reflect CPL’s broader belief that professional learning communities themselves are an essential component of capability development, organizational learning, and sustained improvement.
07
Snapshot of Progress
2025–2026 marked an important year of operational refinement, pathway development, partnership expansion, and implementation-focused capability building across CPL’s professional learning ecosystem.
Selected Indicators:
AREA
SNAPSHOT
LEARNER ENGAGEMENT
~5,000 learners engaged across programs, pathways, and professional learning activities
PROFESSIONAL LEARNING PATHWAYS
4 integrated pathways advanced across educator and leadership audiences
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
Quarterly review and improvement cycles embedded across planning and operations
CURRICULUM GOVERNANCE
15-member Curriculum Review Committee supporting quality and workforce alignment
WORK-INTEGRATED LEARNING
EduForums, EduTours, and implementation-oriented learning activities expanded
RESEARCH & INNOVATION
RISE mobilization and CEaaS infrastructure advanced
GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT
Expanded partnership dialogue across 5 global regions – North America, South America, Scandinavia, South Asia, Middle East and Africa
CPL’s metrics and planning approaches are evolving toward indicators that reflect capability development, implementation progress, partnership engagement, and organizational improvement — rather than activity counts alone.
08
Looking Ahead
2025–2026 was a year of meaningful foundation-building — one that strengthened CPL’s pathways , partnerships, improvement systems, and learning models for the work ahead.
The year reinforced an important insight shaping CPL’s direction moving forward: sustainable improvement depends not only on technical systems and knowledge, but also on the human, relational, and organizational conditions that support trust, adaptation, learning, and meaningful change over time.
Increasingly, professional learning is being asked to do more than support knowledge acquisition alone. Organizations are seeking ways to strengthen the capabilities that help individuals, teams, and systems lead improvement, navigate complexity, and adapt within rapidly changing environments.
CPL looks forward to continuing this work with learners, partners, and the broader OISE and University of Toronto community.
