Product Description: This comprehensive handbook synthesizes the best current knowledge on teacher professional development (PD) and addresses practical issues in implementation. Leading authorities describe innovative practices that are being used in schools, emphasizing the value of PD that is instructive, reflective, active, collaborative, and substantive...read more

Why do some schools perform outstandingly well when others of the same size and serving the same kind of community do not? How do some schools sustain their record of exceeding expectations when others can only maintain it for short periods of time or under particular leaders? Can schools reverse a worrying record of decline with existing staff and leadership, or do they always need new brooms to sweep them clean? And how do you get performance that exceeds expectations not just in one or two exceptional schools but in entire groups of them within one community or local authority? This book draws upon the findings from a unique project – the Beyond Expectations Project - that explored how the best school districts/local authorities and school systems perform beyond expectations (PBE). It looks at the ways in which the highest performing schools, districts/local authorities and school systems achieve and sustain excellence, especially with challenging communities or after years of poor performance and decline. Based on rich data from over twenty education sites across three countries, and full of detailed case studies from Finland, Alberta, Ontario and Singapore – all with stellar records of student achievement on international test comparisons - the book illuminates and illustrates the key factors of success. Chapters cover: The PBE effect - what is known about exceptional performance and what are the common themes and ideas about PBE within education; PBE Systems - how systems become and remain high performing across an entire nation, state or province. PBE Districts - the strategies, approaches, techniques that districts and local authorities use to secure PBE. PBE Schools - how schools in different sectors and in different cultures achieve PBE and how this might inform and assist other schools. Leading PBE - what is known about the nature and approach to leadership in PBEs, in particular ‘inclusive and inspirational’ leadership. A final chapter concludes the book by identifying action guidelines for developing and delivering PBE change that can assist other schools, districts and systems to think about how they might move towards PBE. This book will be of interest to school leaders, teacher, local authority and district officers, policy makers, system leaders and all those with an interest and involvement in securing high performance in schools and school systems.

Highlights include fourteen detailed, hands-on group exercises, real-life examples, five keys to enhancing the teaching profession, and concrete strategies for teacher-administrator collaboration.

Discusses ways to ensure that students and teachers maintain and perpetuate skills and ideas they have been taught so that the length of a leader's influence is maximized.

Product Description: 'A book of polemic and passion, which will challenge school leaders, teachers and policy-makers alike. Amid vivid invective and extensive research about the impoverishing effects of educational standardisation, there gleams Hargreaves' unwavering conviction that teaching is the key agent of change in the knowledge society...read more

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The success of school reform measures greatly depends on the support and commitment of teachers. This book examines the realities of educational change from the frontline perspective of reform-minded teachers. It charts the perceptions and experiences of twenty-nine teachers in grades 7 and 8 from four school districts--showing how they grappled with such initiatives as integrated curriculum, common learning standards, and alternative modes of assessment. This book moves beyond the bandwagons of rhetorical change and examines how these changes work in practice for better and for worse. Authors Andy Hargreaves and Lorna Earl focus on how reform proposals have brought new complexities to teaching practice and why major investments of time and support are required if teaching innovations are to become lasting and effective. Most importantly, they highlight the intense emotional demands that school change imposes on teachers, and they outline practical strategies for helping teachers through the difficult transition process--thus ensuring that worthwhile reforms flourish and endure.

Product Description: For many years, education reform has been imposed on teachers in many parts of the world. Overload, burnout, demoralization, poor implementation and a rush for early retirement has been the result. This text discusses the need for positive educational change, with teachers in the vanguard of it, rather than making them its marginalized victims...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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