Why Can't We Get It Right?
Designing High-Quality Professional Development for Standards-Based Schools
- Marsha Speck
- Caroll Knipe - Retired
Foreword by Dennis Sparks
Curriculum Leadership | Designing & Evaluating Staff Development | Standards & Accountability
This book will deepen teachers' collective understanding about how to create professional development opportunities and practices. Well-designed professional development programs foster a learner-centered environment, and research has shown that improving teachers' knowledge and skills is a prerequisite to raising student performance. Speck and Knipe provide professional development designs and practices that make a difference for teachers and students, resulting in dramatically improved schools.
In order for our schools to leave no child behind, teachers need access to the most current information, strategies, research, and professional learning opportunities. This unique and indispensable guide links professional development tightly to academic standards to raise student achievement.
Each chapter contains:
- brief scenario to ground readers
- essential questions to provoke deeper thought about each topic
- tables, figures, and other visuals to illustrate key concepts,
- surveys, teacher professional development plans, planning worksheets, standards-based adaptable frameworks, evaluation guides, and other tools to help readers try out ideas
It is written for teachers, headteachers and LEA staff, but it will also be of interest to governors and professors of educational leadership.
“In Why Can't We Get It Right? Second Edition, Marsha Speck and Caroll Knipe provide a thorough overview of what is known about the nature of professional development that produces high levels of learning and performance for teachers and their students. They admirably achieve their goal of showing how well-designed professional development with a clear focus on improved student learning can make a difference in teaching and student success.”
"This is indeed a caring and pioneering book. Seldom have I seen or read such a thorough, comprehensive, and theoretically sound text on professional development. I challenge teachers, parents, principals, superintendents, district office personnel, board members, and professors to add this book to (their) professional library, to use it as a text, and to share it with others."
"Speck and Knipe's book is unique in that it does justice to both the complexity and the central role staff development must play in raising student achievement. The authors discuss professional development in a way that does not sacrifice depth for breadth, sound research for practical application, or comprehensiveness for expediency."
Praise for the First Edition:
"As a proponent of whole-system change and as a professor of change leaderhip in education, I highly recommend Marsha Speck and Caroll Knipe's book as a valuable guide for improving student, faculty, staff, and whole system learning. Professional development leaders concerned with whole-system improvement will want to have a copy of this book on their shelves."
"From an amazingly true-to-life perspective, this book explains how educational leaders can design, develop, and evaluate truly collaborative professional development . . . This second edition is intended to give supervisors and edge in the 'race for personal efficacy and collective power focused on student achievement.'"
Sample Materials & Chapters
Chapter 1: Essential Questions About High-Quality Professional Development
