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…

Michael Fullan's insights on what it takes to make professional learning stick--in other words, Learning Forward's Implementation standard--have long helped leaders at the school and system level create change in ways that lead to better outcomes for students. In his full thought leader essay in "Reach the Highest Standard in Professional…

Much has been written about sustainable large-scale change, but there are few examples of it. Over the last four years, the province of Ontario, Canada, has been engaged in just that work of moving from a system that was in constant conflict to one that has generated both much improved student outcomes and positive energy. The Ontario education…

Professional development as a term and as a strategy has run its course. The future of improvement, indeed of the profession itself, depends on a radical shift in how people conceive learning and the conditions under which teachers and students work. In this article, the author discusses five key ideas that together foreshadow his argument and…

Defining adaptive capacity as the ability of an organism or a social system to cope with a wide range of environmental conditions, physical or social, the auth rs examine the relationship between education and each of the components of individual adaptive capacity. (JB)

If the goal is to fundamentally change the culture inside schools, people need to move beyond the superficiality of professional learning communities and focus on a system of learners. Professional learning communities are in fact about establishing lasting new collaborative cultures. Collaborative cultures are ones that focus on building the…

The National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies (NLS and NNS) represent a major government initiative to improve classroom practice and student learning in literacy and mathematics in elementary schools across England. National targets were intended to increase the percentage of 11-year-olds reaching the "expected level"--Level 4--in…

This complete resource provides staff developers with the necessary tools for training leaders at all levels of the educational system to become the catalysts for large scale, sustainable reform. Hear from practicing principals, superintendents, and educational experts; observe actual training sessions; and visit classrooms to see how the model to…

Organized to make learning contagious throughout the school, this user-friendly guide helps create a culture of learning that promotes the simultaneous development of students, teachers, and parents--addressing specific ways to maximize study groups, student data, classroom walk-throughs, and more. The interactive self-assessment protocols focus…

Applies a inside/outside reciprocity metaphor to the top-down/bottom-up combinations required for school reform. Sustained change requires internal change, active connection to the outside community, and a challenging, but nurturing external infrastructure. There is also a fusion of the spiritual, the political, and the intellectual. (Contains 13…

Change processes at the school building level are considered in order to formulate a number of locally based strategies, derived from research, for significantly improving schools and classrooms. Part I of the three-part analysis examines, through illustration, what is known about successful change processes at the school and classroom levels.…

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…

This book is concerned with educational change affecting elementary and secondary schools in the United States and Canada. A wide range of innovative programs are discussed as examples of the practical meaning of change, including projects involving various curriculum areas, microcomputers, career education, open-concept schools, desegregation,…