This study considers the extent to which a professional development programme for educational leaders in a research-intensive university contributes to participants' adaptive expertise in the domain of leading educational change. We evaluated the programme by asking participants to execute an authentic task at the beginning and end of the programme and compared the outcomes with participants' self-reported learning gains. While participants report they have substantially learned from participating, according to the task scores there is no significant progress in the development of adaptive expertise. Suggestions are offered to include more purposeful practice and more reflective activities in the programme.