Recommended Reading ~ AALF

Recommended Reading

8 Forces for Leaders of Change

Michael Fullan, Claudia Cuttress and Ann Kilcher

Print: Journal or Magazine Article

Fullan at al. propose eight drivers which are key to creating effective and lasting change:

engaging people's moral purposes
building capacity
understanding the change process
developing cultures for learning
developing cultures of evaluation
focusing on leadership for change
fostering coherence making
cultivating tri-level development.

Change Forces with a Vengeance

Michael Fullan

Print: Book

Change Forces with a Vengeance leads us into the big questions of how large-scale improvement can be made understandable and tractable, and how the institutional context of public schooling can be changed to support powerful learning for students and teachers.

Conditions for Classroom Innovations

Y. Zhao, K. Pugh, S. Sheldon and J. L. Byers

Print: Journal or Magazine Article

2002: This article reports on a study of the complex and messy process of classroom technology integration. The main purpose of the study was to empirically address the large question of "why don't teachers innovate when they are given computers?" rather than whether computers can imporve student learning.The study found 11 salient factors that significantly impact the degree of success of classroom technology innovations.

Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns

Clayton M. Christensen, Curtis W. Johnson, Michael B. Horn

Print: Book

Clayton M. Christensen and coauthors Michael B. Horn and Curtis W. Johnson apply Christensen's now-famous theories of “disruptive” change to education, using a wide range of real-life examples.

Leadership & Sustainability: System Thinkers in Action

Michael Fullan

Print: Book

Extends and amplifies Fullan's thinking in very powerful and practical ways, by developing a topic that hasn’t seen this kind of elegant, integrative, and comprehensive treatment before. It uses real-world examples and research literature to tackle, head on, the question of sustainability - how organizations move into the future and endure over time, as well as the equally challenging question: what about an organization is worth sustaining long term?

Leadership. What's in It for Schools?

Thomas Sergiovanni

Print: Book

What makes a good leader? Does good leadership matter in helping schools be more successful? This concise and accessible book examines leadership in a practical way by helping principals, heads, teachers and parents establish their roles and responsibilities and get to grips with the unique leadership requirements of schools.

Sergiovanni explores issues such as leadership, what it is and how it works, character and culture as keys to improvement, how to build commitment, motivation and improved performance, and using local standards and assessments to improve schools and leadership as a form of social capital.

Learners as Customers

Mr John Findlay, Dr Robert Fitzgerald and Mr Russell Hobby

Electronic: Internet Journal or Magazine Article

This paper reports on what teachers say when presented with the results of online surveys of what students think about their pedagogical performance and classroom climate and then go on to invent a new and better world for learners. The paper also reports on what students feel about the use of ICT in their classrooms and what they might do to re-invent school.

Learning By Heart

Roland S. Barth

Print: Book

This monograph examines the meaning of true educational reform and offers concrete strategies for achieving fundamental, systemic school transformation. In keeping with his earlier work (Improving Schools from Within), Barth argues that school improvement requires significant changes in the culture of schools, a task best accomplished by school professionals.

Learning in the Digital Age

John Seely-Brown

Electronic: Web Page

Seely-Brown considers learning not as a response to learning but as a of a social framework that fosters learning and posits that, to succeed in our struggle to build technology and new media to support learning, we must move far beyond the traditional view of teaching.

Millennials Rising. The Next Great Generation

Neil Howe and William Strauss

Print: Book

Building on the concepts they first developed in Generations and 13th Gen, Neil Howe and William Strauss now take on Generation Y, or, as they call them, the Millennials. According to Howe and Strauss, this group is poised to become the next great generation, one that will provide a more positive, group-oriented, can-do ethos. Huge in size as well as future impact, they're making a sharp break from Gen-X trends and a direct reversal of boomer youth behavior.

Scan This Book!

Kevin Kelly

Electronic: Internet Journal or Magazine Article

The author provides an enlightening picture of the transformation in the knowledge base that is occurring via the book scanning projects curently being undertaken by various organizations, Google included. The creation of this truly democratic library. offering every book to every person provides a significant conrexy for educational debate about the nature of schooling.

The Art of the Start

Guy Kawasaki

Print: Book

2004: Whilst this book is primarily intended as a guide for starting a new business, very many of the strategies Kawasaksi recommends apply equally well to getting a laptop initiative started. If you believe that a one-to-one program is like a startup then the ideas presented will resonate for you. For instance, the book begins with GIST (Great Ideas for Starting Things):

Make meaning: the best reason to start an organization is to make meaning - to create a product or service that makes the world a better place.
Make mantra: rather than a long and boring mission statement, focus on making meaning then making a mantra out of it.
Get going: start creating and delivering your product or service rather than on pitching, writing and planning.
Define your business model: the greatest idea is short-lived without a sustainable business model.
Weave a mat: compile three lists: a) major milestones you need to meet; b) assumptions that are built into your business model; c)tasks you need to accomoplish to create an organization.

The Kids of the ‘90s: Learning to Learn with Multimedia Internet Technologies

Idit Harel

Print: Presentation

Idit Harel discusses the nature of children who are growing up and learning with multimedia technologies. What is different and special about these children? And, most importantly for educators, how can we build the best multimedia learning experiences for them?

The Understanding by Design Handbook

Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins

Print: Book

This handbook is the companion book to Understanding by Design (ASCD, 1998). Understanding by Design provides the conceptual foundation for a theory of understanding that is based on six facets of understanding. The handbook offers the practical side: a unit planning template, worksheets, exercises, design tools, design standards and tests, and a peer review process for learning and applying the ideas in Understanding by Design. Following the logic of the authors' backward design approach, handb