3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not a bad book, October 12, 2010
This review is from: Transforming Professional Development Into Student Results (Paperback)
Transforming Professional Development into Student Results
Douglas B. Reeves
Copyright Date: 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4166-0949-0
APA Citation: Reeves, D B. (2010). Transforming professional development into student results. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Reeves' purpose in writing this book was to help teachers, professional development leaders, school administrators, superintendents, board members, and policy makers create effective professional development.
The major theme of the book is that professional development as it exists now is not effective. Reeves thesis is that professional development suffers from a lack of focus and is therefore unsustainable in creating effect learning for students and teachers.
Reeves way of presenting his thesis is through persuasion with the first section of the book dedicated to what is wrong with professional development. Reeves then goes on to develop ideas of how to create effective professional development. Finally, in the third section of the book Reeves looks at how effective learning can be sustained.
The book is easy to read with ideas that follow a logical progression. I found myself agreeing with many of the points that Reeves made. One idea that particularly caught my eye was what Reeves calls The Law of Initiative Fatigue. The basic idea of this law is that there are three essential resources a school (teachers/administrators) has; time, money, and emotional energy. All of these resources are limited. The rule is that as the number of initiatives increase while the resources of time, money and emotional energy remain constant then each new initiative will receive less of each resource. This is something I have seen in schools where teachers just become worn down by the number of different new things they are having to "try/do", not to mention that many of these new initiatives receive little or no funding to implement them because of the "budget".
Reeves is a well-known author and according to The Leadership and Learning Center website (n.d.):
Dr. Douglas Reeves is the founder of The Leadership and Learning Center. He has worked with education, business, nonprofit, and government organizations throughout the world. The author of more than 20 books and many articles on leadership and organizational effectiveness, he has twice been named to the Harvard University Distinguished Authors Series. Dr. Reeves was named the Brock International Laureate for his contributions to education. He also received the Distinguished Service Award from the National Association of Secondary School Principals and the Parents Choice Award for his writing for children and parents.
The Leadership and Learning Center (n.d.) is also known for its work with the 90/90/90 schools, that is 90% poverty, 90% minority, and 90% meets or exceeds.
Section one of Reeves book is called "What's wrong with Professional Learning?" and is broken up into six chapters. These chapters look at a variety of topics such as accountability measures, high impact professional learning, initiative fatigue, school improvement plans, people and practices versus programs, and what Reeves calls scattershot learning. Reeves makes many good points in these chapters and identifies many things that most educators already "know" but don't necessarily know what to do about. One example of this would be the way Reeves relates accountability measures to an autopsy in which we identify the problem after it has already died - to late to be of any real use. Reeves identifies the characteristics of high-impact professional learning and the problem that most professional learning does not meet these characteristics. With school improvement plans has found that there are nine characteristics of effective plans and outlines them. In the chapter on people and practices versus programs Reeves uses McGuffey's readers as his example of how we should endeavor to make education challenging and engaging rather than just throwing another program at it. In calling professional learning scattershot Reeves refers to the idea of "but we did that last year" in professional development and suggests that schools need to become more focused in their approach to professional learning with less initiatives that are sustained and revisited over a longer period of time.
Section two is called "How to create high-impact professional learning" and comes in three chapters. The first chapter asks you to take a moment and think about professional learning in your school and your vision for the future. It also asks you to look at some specific areas evidence you would expect to see if that vision was achieved, how will you assess the learning of the adults involved? What kind of feedback you would expect to collect to be able to make decisions and specific formative feedback that will be provided. The second chapter hones in on focus, focus, focus. The overwhelming idea here is that schools need to get focused in their professional learning to improve teaching; improve curriculum and assessment; improve leadership. Schools need to look at the time they spend on activities and ask themselves are they really helping student achievement which is or should be the end goal for the school. Finally, Reeves makes a case for action research within the school. Reeves position is that action research can help to influence teachers' professional practice and develop teacher leadership within the school.
The third and final section is titled "How to sustain high-impact professional learning". Again Reeves has split this into three chapters - a nice balance in the book with six chapters on the negative and six positive. The first chapter in this section deals with the idea of train the trainer. Reeves suggests that we should move away from the idea of training which suggests teaching someone to perform tricks. Instead we should look to influence teachers practices by providing them with professional development and working them to implement the new learning into their classroom practices. The next chapter looks at teacher and leadership assessment which Reeves says is currently punitive rather than formative. Reeves position is that we should be looking to grow our teachers and leaders by providing them with formative feedback that gives them specific direction on ways in which they can improve as well as identifying the areas where they are performing well. Reeves also suggests that adult assessment be linked with student learning and takes into account the characteristics of effect school improvement planning. The last chapter of the book is a case study showing how all of the ideas from the book could be implemented in a school and the positive outcomes it could have.
The book also has two appendixes, the first being the results of a study into school planning, implementation, and monitoring. The second appendix is the Planning, Implementation and Monitoring (PIM(tm)) Rubric mentioned in the last section of the book.
Overall, this is an easy book to read and would generate some great discussion within a school, especially the first section which has a number of areas both teachers and leadership could identify with. An example of this would be the time spent on doing announcements in a school and how this time could easily be used better by just sending a note around.
References
The Leadership and Learning Center. (n.d.). . In The Leadershipand Learning Center. from [...].
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dr. Reeves Provides Clear Guidance on Effective Professional Development, May 24, 2011
This review is from: Transforming Professional Development Into Student Results (Paperback)
Reeves, Douglas B. (2010). Transforming professional development into student results.
Alexandria, Virginia: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
This fast-reading, compelling, and even entertaining text for educational leaders by Dr. Douglas Reeves elucidates--and provides solutions for--a major problem in American education today: effective staff development. Staff development must affect student learning in discernible qualities and degrees if it is to be deemed effective. American education seems to be perpetually stuck in an Industrial Age assembly line-esque approach to both teaching students and teaching staff. Reeves asserts that professional development needs to fit any given student learning contextual situation; and, he substantiates this idea in the first chapter of the book entitled "What's Wrong with Professional Learning?" Of particular interest and importance to all educational leaders will be the most essential characteristic actions of every teacher:
*[to] understand the academic content in the current grade level and the next grade level;
*[to] provide feedback to students in a timely, accurate, and effective manner;
*[to] prepare lessons that are engaging, adaptive, and differentiated;
*[to] demonstrate an understanding of the individual needs of each student (p. 32).
The second part of the book provides concrete actions for educational leaders in order to create "high-impact" [on student learning] professional learning. Notably, Reeves spends time explaining and substantiating the need for a paradigm shift reading professional development and teaching. Basically, professional development needs to be job-embedded so that "...the focus on effective teaching,...is not about workshops or checklists, but about deliberate practice (p. 65). In addition, Reeves provides educational leaders clear guidance on how to be visionary and courageous and how to focus on curriculum and assessment to improve professional learning.
The last third of this highly beneficial read for educational leaders discusses a much ignored but much needed component of effective professional learning--sustaining it. Reeves points out the inherent flaws of the currently ubiquitous "train the trainers" model of professional development and offers viable alternatives to it. He finishes with a clear picture of how high-impact professional learning should actually look, sound, and feel.
Reeves concludes with an inspirational paragraph about "...undertaking the challenge of professional work with deep meaning and lifelong impact [for student learning" (p. 108), rather than professional development as being that which creates "...a life of efficiency and ease for teachers and leaders" (p. 108).
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