PESA Digital PD: The Space Between Knowing and Doing

The Space Between Knowing and Doing:

Why Relational Practice Requires a Shift from Control to Curiosity

Presented by Sue Chandler

Founder, Transformative Schools

Join us to celebrate the launch of The Relational School and explore one of its most powerful and practical ideas: Relational Thinking.

Educators understand the importance of relationships, belonging and student voice, yet under pressure, even the most committed professionals can retreat to patterns of control and compliance. Why does this happen, and what can we do about it?

In this online workshop, author Sue Chandler draws on her book The Relational School to explore the gap between our relational intentions and our relational responses. Sue introduces the Relational Practice Bridge, a framework for translating relational values into sustainable cultural transformation and focuses on its first foundational pillar: Relational Thinking.

Through reflection, discussion and practical provocations, Sue examines three stories that shape how educators interpret behaviour and respond in moments of challenge:

• The stories we inherited

• The stories we were taught

• The stories our systems tell us

This workshop challenges the false choice between control and rescue, inviting educators to hold high expectations while building responsibility and capacity in young people.

Format: Interactive workshop · Suitable for: All staff

About the Presenter

With more than 30 years of experience working in and alongside schools as a teacher, counsellor and educational leader, Sue helps schools understand what sits beneath behaviour, policy and culture. Through her consultancy, Transformative Schools, she partners with schools to move beyond behaviour management toward coherent relational cultures grounded in safety, care and shared responsibility. Her approach is both compassionate and candid, combining evidence, neuroscience and the lived experience of educators and students. Sue Chandler is an education consultant, restorative mediator and author of The Relational School: From Behaviour Management to Cultural Transformation.