The pandemic has made deeper problems more transparent and has stimulated many to realize that there may be an opportunity over the next period to pursue much needed innovations in learning. In this essay we describe the ways in which the pandemic has provided the conditions for new human development that joins two powerful forces: the pulsar…

School change expert Michael Fullan and principal Michelle Pinchot collaborated on an experiment: As Pinchot tackled her first years turning around the culture of Heritage Elementary School in California--using ideas Fullan has promoted about school culture and leveraging teachers' power--she and Fullan checked in every few months on how the work…

Debunking popular reform efforts, this book argues that education reformers are fighting a fruitless uphill battle. Neither top-down regulation nor locally based reforms will transform schooling. The insurmountable problem is juxtaposing a continuous change theme with a continuous, conservative system that defies change. In partnership with all…

Canadian educational reform involves "top-half" provincial policy makers and "bottom-half" communities, schools, and local jurisdictions. Policy reforms in curriculum, instruction, and assessment are on the right track while those in teacher education and community development are not. Local implementation concerns are…

The Toronto school district combines professional learning in literacy with learning about change to give staying power to literacy-driven reform. Using literacy as the basis for large-scale reform can be challenging without equipping staff with the skills they need to cope with and implement such broad-scale change. Teach both skills at once and…

This report characterizes the decade 1985-1995 as a series of false starts in reform of teacher education in the United States. The main purpose of the report is to raise the question of whether the next decade of reform will be any different. Chapter 1 presents the problem: the need to do something about teacher education is reaching crisis…

Accomplishing significant improvement in teaching and learning requires strong, open, and interactive relationships between schools and the community. Chapter 1, "What's Out There," explores the vital role of teacher morale in successful reforms and argues that teachers and schools should actively connect, in more effective ways, with…