Break down the barriers that keep professional learning from sticking!Real professional learning takes place when there is a permanent change in practice. This book outlines what it means to intentionally interrupt the status quo in order to overcome barriers to learning that impede permanent change. The authors explain the psychological processes involved in learning and which biases get in the way of making professional learning stick. Staff developers will find tools and strategies for:Moving professional learning beyond activities to deepen conceptual changeEnabling new learning by building three key capacities: a learning focus, collaborative inquiry, and instructional leadershipEmbedding and sustaining a true learning culture in schools

What does it mean to be a "lead learner" in a school? What does it mean to be a "learning organization"? This book takes up those questions by advancing a concept of the school as a learning organization in which prescribed expectations and experiential professional judgment don't have to be (and in fact shouldn't be) oppositional and incompatible. The authors refer to this particular type of learning organization as an "intelligent, responsive" school.

Harness the power of collective efficacy to achieve quality implementation! Designed to overcome a common barrier to successful implementation of school improvement efforts--entrenched belief systems--this book digs deeper into the power of collective efficacy. Teams with a strong sense of collective efficacy devise ways to make "what's supposed to work" actually work, and find ways to exercise control over challenges that surround them. In addition to the examples from both inside and outside of education, readers will find * Ways to create environments that tap into mastery as the number one source of collective efficacy * Methods to strengthen vicarious experiences through observational learning * Examination of social persuasion and affective states as additional sources of collective efficacy Expanding on this critically-important topic, this book accentuates the importance of collective efficacy as the single most important driver of student achievement and the key to successful implementation. This book is the spark you need to look at implementation in a completely new light.

A History of Anti-Semitism examines the history, culture and literature of antisemitism from antiquity to the present. With contributions from an international team of scholars, whose essays were specially commissioned for this volume, it covers the long history of antisemitism starting with ancient Greece and Egypt, through the anti-Judaism of early Christianity, and the medieval era in both the Christian and Muslim worlds when Jews were defined as 'outsiders,' especially in Christian Europe. This portrayal often led to violence, notably pogroms that often accompanied Crusades, as well as to libels against Jews. The volume also explores the roles of Luther and the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the debate over Jewish emancipation, Marxism, and the social disruptions after World War 1 that led to the rise of Nazism and genocide. Finally, it considers current issues, including the dissemination of hate on social media and the internet and questions of definition and method.

A complete guide to understanding the real world of gambling and its consequences. Can be of enormous help and benefit for all kinds of gamblers or potential gamblers. Provides knowledge and guidance to teach teenagers and adults how to end or never begin a gambling experience. (Please visit our website at gamblingfactsandfictions.com for more details about the book)

In Disciplining Old Age Stephen Katz gives us a sophisticated and theoretically rigorous approach to what gerentology does. He deftly and subtly combines the theories of Foucault, Bourdieu, and the Althusser in his analysis of what he calls the "gerontological web."

Katz explores how political and social sciences have differentiated the elderly as a special kind of population characterized in negative terms, and he examines the literature of the discipline and shows how gerontology as built itself as a discipline through its journals, associations, funding agencies, and "schools of thought."

More versatile than mere number crunching and statistics, data can be an effective tool-even a powerful catalyst-for change within a school. By replacing cynicism with conviction, learning to harness data's power, and becoming good users of data to positively impact student achievement, school leaders can develop three crucial capacities: an inquiry habit of mind, data literacy, and a culture of inquiry. Lorna M. Earl and Steven Katz show educators how to become comfortable with data and provide valuable tools for school improvement teams to use in their work, including: o Vignettes to support group discussion o Activities for practicing the ideas and concepts in the book o Task sheets o Short case studies with actual school data that show how the full process works in a school To improve schools, data can and should be a vital force in the change process. Using this essential resource, school leaders, school teams, study groups, and students of education can all make sense of data to plan and reform for maximum benefit.

Ideal for school leaders, teacher leaders, and superintendents leading district-level change, this book describes how separate professional learning communities can be purposefully linked across schools to create effective Networked Learning Communities (NLCs). Steven Katz, Lorna M. Earl, and Sonia Ben Jaafar demonstrate how NLCs can effectively engage schools in creating and sharing professional knowledge and develop the kind of deep and sustained changes that enhance student learning, engagement, and success.Based on the authorsAE research and work with districts and schools in North America and England, the book defines NLCs, explains how they work, and leads readers in examining:The importance of having a clear, evidence-based focusCollaborative inquiry as a process that challenges thinking and practice and generates new learning for teachersThe role of formal and informal leaders in both professional learning communities and networked learning communitiesBuilding and Connecting Learning Communities demonstrates how to work together to create the conditions for focused professional learning for teachers and tackles the challenge of how to sustain the work of NLCs.

Ideal for school leaders, teacher leaders, and superintendents leading district-level change, this book describes how separate professional learning communities can be purposefully linked across schools to create effective Networked Learning Communities (NLCs). Steven Katz, Lorna M. Earl, and Sonia Ben Jaafar demonstrate how NLCs can effectively engage schools in creating and sharing professional knowledge and develop the kind of deep and sustained changes that enhance student learning, engagement, and success.Based on the authorsAE research and work with districts and schools in North America and England, the book defines NLCs, explains how they work, and leads readers in examining:The importance of having a clear, evidence-based focusCollaborative inquiry as a process that challenges thinking and practice and generates new learning for teachersThe role of formal and informal leaders in both professional learning communities and networked learning communitiesBuilding and Connecting Learning Communities demonstrates how to work together to create the conditions for focused professional learning for teachers and tackles the challenge of how to sustain the work of NLCs.

Between 1890 and 1924, more than two million Jewish immigrants landed on America's shores. The story of their integration into American society, as they traversed the difficult path between assimilation and retention of a unique cultural identity, is recorded in many works by American Hebrew writers. Red, Black, and Jew illuminates a unique and often overlooked aspect of these literary achievements, charting the ways in which the Native American and African American creative cultures served as a model for works produced within the minority Jewish community. Exploring the paradox of Hebrew literature in the United States, in which separateness, and engagement and acculturation, are equally strong impulses, Stephen Katz presents voluminous examples of a process that could ultimately be considered Americanization. Key components of this process, Katz argues, were poems and works of prose fiction written in a way that evoked Native American forms or African American folk songs and hymns. Such Hebrew writings presented America as a unified society that could assimilate all foreign cultures. At no other time in the history of Jews in diaspora have Hebrew writers considered the fate of other minorities to such a degree. Katz also explores the impact of the creation of the state of Israel on this process, a transformation that led to ambivalence in American Hebrew literature as writers were given a choice between two worlds. Reexamining long-neglected writers across a wide spectrum, Red, Black, and Jew celebrates an important chapter in the history of Hebrew belles lettres.

Designed around the bestseller by Lorna M. Earl and Steven Katz, this Facilitator's Guide to Leading Schools in a Data-Rich World gives staff developers and workshop leaders the tools to facilitate book study groups, seminars, and professional development events to help school leaders integrate data as a vital force in the school reform process. This facilitator's guide features chapter summaries, discussion questions, journal prompts, staff development activities, resources, a seminar evaluation form, and more.