Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns 1st Edition
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Selected as one of the "Best Books on Innovation, 2008" by BusinessWeek magazine
Named the "Best Human-Capital Book of 2008" by Strategy + Business magazine
A crash course in the business of learning-from the bestselling author of The Innovator's Dilemma and The Innovator's Solution…
"Provocatively titled, Disrupting Class is just what America's K-12 education system needs--a well thought-through proposal for using technology to better serve students and bring our schools into the 21st Century. Unlike so many education 'reforms,' this is not small-bore stuff. For that reason alone, it's likely to be resisted by defenders of the status quo, even though it's necessary and right for our kids.
We owe it to them to make sure this book isn't merely a terrific read; it must become a blueprint for educational transformation."
--Joel Klein, Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education
“A brilliant teacher, Christensen brings clarity to a muddled and chaotic world of education.”
--Jim Collins, bestselling author of Good to Great
According to recent studies in neuroscience, the way we learn doesn't always match up with the way we are taught. If we hope to stay competitive-academically, economically, and technologically-we need to rethink our understanding of intelligence, reevaluate our educational system, and reinvigorate our commitment to learning. In other words, we need “disruptive innovation.”
Now, in his long-awaited new book, Clayton M. Christensen and coauthors Michael B. Horn and Curtis W. Johnson take one of the most important issues of our time-education-and apply Christensen's now-famous theories of “disruptive” change using a wide range of real-life examples. Whether you're a school administrator, government official, business leader, parent, teacher, or entrepreneur, you'll discover surprising new ideas, outside-the-box strategies, and straight-A success stories.
You'll learn how
- Customized learning will help many more students succeed in school
- Student-centric classrooms will increase the demand for new technology
- Computers must be disruptively deployed to every student
- Disruptive innovation can circumvent roadblocks that have prevented other attempts at school reform
- We can compete in the global classroom-and get ahead in the global market
Filled with fascinating case studies, scientific findings, and unprecedented insights on how innovation must be managed, Disrupting Class will open your eyes to new possibilities, unlock hidden potential, and get you to think differently. Professor Christensen and his coauthors provide a bold new lesson in innovation that will help you make the grade for years to come.
The future is now. Class is in session.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From the Back Cover
WARNING: THIS BOOK WILL CHALLENGE
EVERYTHING YOU EVER LEARNED-ABOUT LEARNING
“After a barrage of business books that purport to 'fix' American education, at last a book that speaks thoughtfully and imaginatively about what genuinely individualized education can be like and how to bring it about.”
-Howard Gardner, author of Five Minds for the Future
“A decade ago, Clayton Christensen wrote a masterpiece, The Innovator's Dilemma, that transformed the way business looks at innovation. Now, he and two collaborators, Michael B. Horn and Curtis W. Johnson, have come up with another, focusing his groundbreaking theories of disruptive innovation on education."
-David Gergen, US Presidential Advisor
“Clayton Christensen's insights just might shake many of us in education out of our complacency and into a long needed disruptive discourse about really fixing our schools. This will be a welcome change after decades in which powerful calls to action have resulted in only marginal improvements for our nation's school children.”
-Vicki Phillips, director of Education, Gates Foundation
“Full of strategies that are both bold and doable, this brilliant and seminal book shows how we can utilize technology to customize learning. I recommend it most enthusiastically.”
-Adam Urbanski, president of the Rochester (NY) Teachers Association, and vice president of the American Federation of Teachers
"Finally we have a book from the business community that gets it. Disrupting Class from Clayton Christensen and colleagues points out that motivation is central to learning and that if schools and learning are to be transformed as they must be, motivation must be at the center of the work. They also point out how technology should be used to personalize learning and what the future might look like for schools. A must read for anyone thinking and worrying about where education should be headed."
-Paul Houston, Executive Director, American Association of School Administrators
“Powerful, proven strategies for moving education from stagnation to evolution.”
-Christopher Dede, Timothy E. Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies, Harvard Graduate School of Education
“Clayton Christensen and colleagues describe how disruptive technologies will personalize and, as a result, revolutionize learning. Every education leader should read this book, set aside their next staff meeting to discuss it, and figure out how they can be part of the improvement wave to come.”
-Tom Vander Ark, President, X PRIZE Foundation
“In Disrupting Class, Christensen, Horn and Johnson argue that the next round of innovation in school reform will involve learning software. While schools have resisted integrating technology for instruction, today's students are embracing technology in their everyday lives. This book offers promise to education reformers.”
-Kathleen McCartney, Dean, Harvard Graduate School of Education
“The genius of Disrupting Class is the spotlight the book throws on how we can tap children’s early enthusiasm for school by letting them learn in best-choice, individualized ways, the teacher’s role transformed from ‘sage on stage’ to ‘guide on the side.’”
--Seattle Times & Post-Intelligencer
About the Author
Clayton M. Christensen is the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. He is co-founder of Innosight, a management consultancy, Rose Park Advisors, an investment firm, and Innosight Institute, a non-profit think tank. Christenen is the author or coauthor of five books including the New York Times bestsellers The Innovator’s Dilemma and The Innovator’s Solution. He serves as a leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Michael B. Hornis a cofounder and Executive Director of Innosight Institute. He holds an AB from Yale and an MBA from Harvard.
Curtis W. Johnson is a writer and consultant who has served as a college president, head of a public policy research organization, and chief of staff to governor Arne Carlson of Minnesota. Johnson and his colleagues were among the early proponents of what has become the chartered school movement.
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Product details
- Publisher : McGraw-Hill; 1st edition (May 14, 2008)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 288 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0071592067
- ISBN-13 : 978-0071592062
- Item Weight : 1.15 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.4 x 0.86 x 9.4 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #823,951 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #483 in Cognitive Psychology (Books)
- #1,279 in Education Reform & Policy
- #1,977 in Medical Cognitive Psychology
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors

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Michael B. Horn strives to create a world in which all individuals can build their passions and fulfill their potential through his writing, speaking, and work with a portfolio of education organizations. He is the author of several books, including the award-winning Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns; Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools; Choosing College; Goodnight Box, a children’s story; and the forthcoming From Reopen to Reinvent: (Re)creating School for Every Child, which will be released in July 2022.
Michael is the co-founder of and a distinguished fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, a non-profit think tank. He cohosts the top education podcasts Future U and Class Disrupted. He is a regular contributor to Forbes.com and writes the Substack newsletter The Future of Education. Michael also serves as an executive editor at Education Next, and his work has been featured in outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Harvard Business Review, and NBC.
Michael is a senior strategist at Guild Education, which partners with leading employers and organizations to help offer education and upskilling opportunities to America’s workforce. He serves on the board and advisory boards of a range of education organizations, including Imagine Worldwide, Minerva University, and the LearnLaunch Institute and is a venture partner at NextGen Venture Partners.
Michael was selected as a 2014 Eisenhower Fellow to study innovation in education in Vietnam and Korea, and Tech&Learning magazine named him to its list of the 100 most important people in the creation and advancement of the use of technology in education. Michael holds a BA in history from Yale University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
Customer reviews
Top reviews from the United States
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However, solutions that focus on the needs of the teachers, the unions, the principals, the parents, etc., have not worked. And, with the proper guidance, students should know what they need to be successful in their school work and ulitmately their lives.
Clayton using his usually strong analytical approach evaluates the educational challenges both inductively and deductively to get to the root cause of the problem. And, in my words, the problem is this: each student learns differently, and the centralized, bureaucratic approaches that have been used to force fit a regimented approach dictated from Washington down to local school boards haven't and won't solve this problem. What we need is a more student centric approach that uses flexible tools developed through information technology to meet the needs of individual students.
This is a very innovative approach to solving this problem, and in my opinion, Clayton is the most innovative thinker out there today. After all, as he quotes Einstein (and I used some liberty to paraphrase), you can't solve the problem by using the solutions that caused it.
Then, Clayton lays out how the change is happening (in some instances) and can happen (in others where it is not) based upon innovation concepts like disruptive innovation and heavyweight teams.
I highly recommend this book for any individual interested in innovation and/or education.
Clayton has written another excellent book to build upon his disruptive innovation philosophy. Thank you, Clayton, for your continued excellent work!
Christensen is a professor at the Harvard Business School who developed a theory of disruptive change to explain what happens in business when new technology disrupts a stable market (e.g., the personal computer and its impact on mid-size and mainframe computers). I was skeptical that a business school professor would get anything right about education. In fact he gets a lot right: education does need a paradigm shift to accommodate diminishing numbers of teachers and diminishing resource, and to accommodate the long discussed little addressed differences among learners and how to accommodate it in classes of 20 or more using lecture as the principal teaching method. The notion that courses delivered over the internet could be built to accommodate individual differences in learning style, and could free teachers from administrative tasks to allow them to tutor one on one, is intriguing. Christensen does NOT do the heavy lifting of building such courses, he only motivates those who are considering that heavy lifting. But he does provide the rationale for being willing to do the heavy lifting to build excellent courses delivered on the internet, and to invest the billions needed to give each student access to a computer in multiple classrooms.
Top reviews from other countries
Todo bien!






