Joseph P. McDonald - Böcker

Dissecting twenty years of educational politics in our nation's largest cities, American School Reform offers one of the clearest assessments of school reform as it has played out in our recent history. Joseph P. McDonald and his colleagues evaluate the half-billion-dollar Annenberg Challenge - launched in 1994 - alongside many other large-scale reform efforts that have taken place in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and the San Francisco Bay Area. They look deeply at what school reform really is, how it works, how it fails, and what differences it can make nonetheless. McDonald and his colleagues lay out several interrelated ideas in what they call a theory of action space. Frequently education policy gets so ambitious that implementing it becomes a near impossibility. Action space, however, is what takes shape when talented educators, leaders, and reformers guide the social capital of civic leaders and the financial capital of governments, foundations, corporations, and other backers toward true results.

Dissecting twenty years of educational politics in our nation's largest cities, American School Reform offers one of the clearest assessments of school reform as it has played out in our recent history. Joseph P. McDonald and his colleagues evaluate the half-billion-dollar Annenberg Challenge - launched in 1994 - alongside many other large-scale reform efforts that have taken place in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and the San Francisco Bay Area. They look deeply at what school reform really is, how it works, how it fails, and what differences it can make nonetheless. McDonald and his colleagues lay out several interrelated ideas in what they call a theory of action space. Frequently education policy gets so ambitious that implementing it becomes a near impossibility. Action space, however, is what takes shape when talented educators, leaders, and reformers guide the social capital of civic leaders and the financial capital of governments, foundations, corporations, and other backers toward true results.

"Should be read by all who are not satisfied with the status quo in education."--Teachers College Record This book patiently and persuasively asks us to rethink before we `redesign' schools, to question many of our deeply ingrained beliefs about learning and schooling, and to move beyond those which no longer meet the test of common sense. It mercifully gives us no ready-to-implement school reform blueprint but rather the necessary design of how to think well about learning and teaching and schooling.?Theodore R. Sizer, chairman, Coalition of Essential Schools, university professor emeritus, Brown University

This book, written by teachers for teachers, takes an important look at the compendium of factors that make up a competent classroom. The authors troubleshoot issues surrounding content standards, instructional objectives, and the aims of curriculum while keeping in mind the importance of inspiring students. This book helps readers consider the essential questions surrounding creative teaching and the ways of helping students take ownership of their learning.

Building on extensive evidence that school-based teacher learning communities improve student outcomes, this book lays out an agenda to develop and sustain collaborative professional cultures. McLaughlin and Talbert - foremost scholars of school change and teaching contexts - provide an inside look at the processes, resources, and system strategies that are necessary to build vibrant school-based teacher learning communities. Offering a compelling, straightforward blueprint for action, this book: takes a comprehensive look at the problem of improving the quality of teaching across the United States, based on evidence and examples from the authors' nearly two decades of research; demonstrates how and why school-based teacher learning communities are bottom-line requirements for improved instruction; outlines the resources and supports needed to build and sustain a long-term school-based teacher professional community; discusses the nature of high-quality professional development to support learning and changes in teaching; and details the roles and responsibilities of policymakers at all levels of the school system.

Based on research and many years of lived experience in schools, the authors have become convinced that teachers learn best within their own work communities. In this volume, they explore what research and practice have to tell us about how such communities grow and develop, and how to negotiate the inherent tension between improving competence and building community.Using five themes that emerged from their studies of practice (context, capacity, content, commitment, and challenge), the authors examine selected research studies, personal reflections, and five cases that were especially commissioned for this volume in order to uncover new insights and understandings. The text begins with essays on research and long-term development projects and concludes with vignettes that address the following questions: What is the context of your program? How does your program deal with facilitating both competence and the building of community? What are the challenges and how has your program dealt with them?

Since it was first invented, Americans have been trying to re-design the American high school. One of the latest approaches - funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - is to find inventive high school designs that work well in one location and replicate them in other locations. The authors of this book followed a design team from Big Picture Learning as it worked to do exactly this, recording the challenges it faced, and the strategies it employed. Their accessible and entertaining account of Big Picture's work is laced with stories about 'scaling up' by other school design teams, and in other enterprises beyond high school. Based on careful research, the book is both a practical guide to a new dimension of school reform, and also an interesting read for anyone interested in school change.

This is a unique insider’s look at the process that teachers experience when they assume leadership positions in their school, district, state, or writing project site. The text features vignettes by K–12 teachers, describing their individual leadership roles and experiences to show how teachers take charge in a variety of contexts. The authors identify four major themes: identity, collaboration, making conflict productive, and learning new practices. Through the teacher leaders’ own words, readers witness how the four themes are an integral part of daily practice. Chapters also examine what research indicates about these new and proliferating roles.How Teachers Become Leaders makes a significant contribution to our understanding of how teachers in leadership positions:Construct a new identity.Develop the skills and abilities to handle conflict and make it productive.Learn to facilitate the building of learning communities, helping teachers to collaborate with one another.Use the practices they already know and incorporate new ones into their work.Reframe the very meaning of leadership, making it work side by side rather than top/down.

Many users of the popular professional development book, The Power of Protocols, discovered that protocols are also very useful for online teaching. This new book, by three of the same authors, focuses on using protocols to enhance learning with their students in multiple environments including online—a growing sector of the educational world. Going Online with Protocols lays out the diverse challenges faced by teachers and by facilitators in the online world and provides readers with strategies to tackle them. The authors provide online adaptations for such traditional protocols as the Tuning Protocol, the Collaborative Assessment Conference, and the Consultancy Protocol. They also offer entirely new protocols unique to online environments. This dynamic resource combines a rich theoretical background with step-by-step illustrations of powerful protocols, along with tips on how and when to use them.

The use of protocols has quickly spread from conferences and workshops to everyday school and university settings. Now in its third edition, this perennial bestseller features substantial updates that take into account recent developments in the field of facilitative leadership. The authors have also added eleven totally new protocols, including the “Peer Review Protocol” and “Looking at Student Work with Equity in Mind.”This essential teaching and professional development tool includes: step-by-step descriptions of how educators can use protocols to study together, work on problems of practice, teach well, and explore students' work, explanations of the particular purpose of each protocol, discussions of the value that educators have found in using them, and helpful tips for facilitators, a free supplement on the Teachers College Press website with ""Abbreviated Protocols"" that can be downloaded and customised to suit each facilitator's needs.

This new and expanded edition of the bestselling The Mindful Teacher provides educators everywhere with practical ideas for improving teaching and learning. Dennis Shirley and Elizabeth MacDonald have created “Mindful Teacher” seminars that enable teachers to focus their craft so that students can learn with dignity and purpose. This updated second edition includes completely new sections on the promise of teacher leadership, the strengths and perils of technology, and schools in the midst of change. The Mindful Teacher is an indispensable and timely resource for all educators who seek to transform schools into places of learning and joy.Book Features:Nitty-gritty descriptions of teachers leading grassroots change.Practical recommendations on ways to retain the best of previous practices while creatively blending them with new innovations.Valuable ways of using principles of mindful teaching for thinking through the affordances, as well as the distractions, that accompany new technologies.Research-tested approaches to whole-school change that honor the work of educators and accelerate the learning of students.The Mindful Teacher describes real educators in real schools working with real students. It bridges the rapidly evolving field of mindfulness studies with educators’ life-long quests for substantial and sustainable improvements in the educations we provide our students.

This timely book explores what data use in teaching really is, how it works in theory and practice, and why it sometimes fails to achieve expected goals. Each chapter includes a discussion of a new direction that schools and teachers can take to ensure that data use in teaching actually spurs growth in learning.