Helping Teachers Learn
Principal Leadership for Adult Growth and Development
- Eleanor Drago-Severson - Columbia University Teachers College, USA
Foreword by Susan Moore Johnson
Administration & Leadership | Principalship | Staff Development & Professional Learning
"Drago-Severson has created an indispensable resource for anyone who wants to learn how to be a school's 'principal adult educator.'"
—Robert Kegan, Meehan Professor of Adult Learning and Professional Development
Harvard University Graduate School of Education
"Helping Teachers Learn is a remarkably ambitious and comprehensive work that describes how principals may effectively exercise leadership in support of teacher learning within schools. The book is an extraordinary treasure chest of real-world examples, insights, and uncommon sense."
—Richard H. Ackerman
Author, The Wounded Leader
A new learning-oriented leadership model to help principals support teacher development and growth!
How can you, as a principal, create opportunities for teacher learning that really work to support teachers with different needs and preferences? There is wide agreement that the best teacher development is informal, diverse, democratic, school-based, and continuous. The best programs ignite and sustain teachers' excitement in learning, growing, and changing their classroom practices. Drago-Severson presents case studies from 25 diverse schools across the U.S. and examines strategies that help shape a school climate of teacher support, growth, and learning. In addition, she suggests many creative solutions to secure any resources needed to implement this learning-oriented professional growth model.
Concepts covered in Helping Teachers Learn include:
- A new model of learning-oriented leadership that can be tailored to particular settings or individuals
- Adult learning principles that inform teacher growth and development, and why they are essential to effective teacher development programs
- The Four Pillars: teaming, providing leadership roles, engaging in collegial inquiry, and mentoring
- Real-world examples of principals sharing leadership, building community, and managing change
Enhance your professional development model to better support teacher growth and development, as well as your own self-development as a principal.
"Drago-Severson has created an indispensable resource for anyone who wants to learn how to be a school’s ‘principal adult educator.’"
"Helping Teachers Learn is a remarkably ambitious and comprehensive work that describes how principals may effectively exercise leadership in support of teacher learning within schools. The book is an extraordinary treasure chest of real world examples, insights, and uncommon sense."
"Helping Teachers Learn addresses an extremely important theme--the developmental aspects of teacher learning and how principals can support them. The framework is new and generative."
"Teaching can be a very isolating profession. In the midst of the many constraints and pressures inherent in education today, there exist some distinctive messages of hope. Helping Teachers Learn focuses on some of the best practices found in a broad spectrum of schools--public, independent and parochial. Drago-Severson's important research points the way to greater reflective practice, personal growth and professional satisfaction."
"Drago-Severson masterfully weaves voices of experience with practical strategies and theoretical underpinnings to illustrate the viability and necessity of adult learning in schools. As a novice principal in a low resource urban charter school, I have a renewed hope that this work is indeed possible."
"Strategies and case studies combine to provide principals with a leadership model to help enhance teacher development."