Snapshots of Convergence
Where everyday moments reveal how we lead, learn, and inspire—at home, in school, and in life.
Convergence is what happens when life, learning, and leadership come together—not to blur the lines, but to spark something new.
From Jet Lag to Blog Prompts
There’s something about the holidays that messes with your sense of rhythm.
In Australia, I’m my daughter’s mum, my mum’s daughter, the friend who’s been away too long, and the one still ordering oat milk lattes like I never left. There are sibling and cousin catch-ups filled with noisy laughter, watching my kids reconnect with family and bond with their grandparents, helping my parents with iPhones and whatever new app they’ve just discovered, and always, the inevitable question: ‘How long are you here for?’ followed by, ‘When are you coming home for good?’
Then I’m back in Shanghai, where school hasn’t yet started, and my focus has shifted entirely to parenting. My children—now a pre-teen and a teen—keep growing faster than I can keep up, which means I’m constantly updating wardrobes, rethinking the décor of their rooms, and negotiating the fine balance between too-much-tech and just-enough-to-keep-them-connected. I’m swapping out picture books for novels they want to read, trading dinosaurs for design posters, and trying to hold on to a sense of inspiration that doesn’t feel babyish but still speaks to who they’re becoming.
A Pattern Starts to Form
I wasn’t looking for insight—I was just scrolling through the pictures on my phone.
Melbourne skylines. Selfies with dearest friends. Food—glorious food. Leadership quotes. Ocean views. Celebrations. Adventures. Book pages. A redecorated room. Family moments.
Individually, each photo marked a moment. But together, they revealed something else: life wasn’t happening in compartments.
What I saw wasn’t random. It was a reminder that the personal, professional, reflective, and relational are always overlapping—shaping and informing one another.
That’s what convergence is.
A system-level phenomenon.
Not just about connection—but about the creation of a new whole through interaction.
One that’s greater than the sum of its parts.
Teaching isn’t separate from parenting.
Leadership is shaped by experience.
Learning happens in between it all.
Convergence doesn’t blur the lines—it reveals the pattern.
And in doing so, it helps us make meaning from the messy, layered reality we’re living.
That’s what inspired this blog.
It started on holiday, but not in theory. In action.
I found myself shifting constantly between roles: mum, daughter, friend, organiser, emotional anchor. I wasn’t thinking about leadership frameworks. I was rearranging bedrooms to grow with my children’s changing identities. I was negotiating screen time in a way that felt respectful and human.
In systems thinking, a system is not just a collection of things, but an interconnected set of elements organised around a shared purpose (Meadows, 2008). The meaning lives in the connections.
This is what convergence feels like.
Not just switching hats, but living within a system of roles, ideas, values, and relationships that overlap and influence one another.
Convergence is when the professional, the personal, and the philosophical begin to align—quietly, meaningfully.
This kind of coherence echoes Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory (1979), which reminds us that development doesn’t happen in silos. Who we are in one context—say, the workplace—is shaped by all the others around it.
It also resonates with Wenger’s Communities of Practice (1998), where identity is fluid, co-constructed across the many groups we belong to—family, school, research networks, even WhatsApp chats.
Because innovation doesn’t come from staying in one lane.
It comes from what happens when we cross them.
When parenting informs pedagogy.
When lived experience shapes leadership.
When theory is tested every day.
In this view, convergence sparks innovation
My doctoral research focused on Collective Teacher Efficacy (CTE)—the belief that what we hold true together shapes what’s possible for students.
But belief doesn’t live in strategy documents.
It lives in hallway conversations, shared planning, side chats after meetings.
CTE isn’t just a theory—it’s what happens when teachers believe, together, that they matter.
CTE draws from Bandura’s work and has been extended by Hattie and Donohoo. As Donohoo (2017) puts it, “Collective efficacy is the belief that through collective action, educators can positively influence student outcomes.”
And that, too, is convergence:
Shared belief becomes shared action.
About this Blog
This blog is my way of pausing long enough to see what’s already taking shape. To share it, even if it’s still in progress.
If anything here resonates, if it feels familiar or even just possible, then maybe it’s done its job.
This blog is for the in-betweens. The half-formed thoughts. The patterns are worth noticing.
Lead. Learn. Inspire.
It’s the rhythm I return to:
Lead with clarity and care
Learn constantly, humbly
Inspire through honesty and shared purpose
“Because the best learning rarely arrives fully formed. It arrives in moments of convergence.”
A moment to breathe.
A quiet nudge to notice what’s already converging in your own life.
Thanks for reading.
— Tania
References
Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. W.H. Freeman.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design. Harvard University Press.
Donohoo, J. (2017). Collective Efficacy: How Educators’ Beliefs Impact Student Learning. Corwin Press.
Hattie, J. (2009). Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement. Routledge.
Meadows, D. (2008). Thinking in Systems: A Primer. Chelsea Green Publishing.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge University Press.
Reading your post made me think about what convergence feels like for me. Often, it feels like looking through a lens of a camera, not just the physical one, but an invisible lens shaped by memory, movement, and meaning, blended through time, emotion, and perspective.
Perspective converges with magic. Magic with trust. Trust with chance. And somewhere in that convergence, something true begins to emerge.
This is what true—and honest—convergence feels like to me: perspective in motion, like a quiet rebirth, again and again. It makes me think of a lens refocusing, capturing the blur between moments. Sometimes, that blur reveals beauty that’s been hidden or obscured. It’s not always sharp, but it’s always real—and often surprising.
What I love most about photography—especially non-digital—is that you don’t always see the moment until later, when the film is developed. You must trust there’s something there—something magical—even if you don’t yet understand it. Kind of like life. Sometimes, a person’s path is unclear, the journey unfocused, the outcome still waiting to be discovered. But choosing to move forward anyway—to trust your eye, your instinct, your self—that’s the magic. That’s convergence. Maybe the most honest kind. It’s the moment all the scattered pieces of your own jigsaw begin to edge closer—still incomplete, still shifting—but slowly forming something that feels like truth. And truth, especially personal truth, I’m realising is what it’s all about.