Design thinking is a human-centered problem-solving process that organizations can use to address wicked and complex problems of practice. Within the PK-12 space, design thinking has been employed to engage educators in an innovative approach to address challenges like curriculum redesign, instructional engagement, and designing physical spaces. The use of design thinking in the PK-12 space is a result of the evolution of an organizational improvement process that puts people at the center...

The 1995 NCPEA Yearbook is organized into five major sections. The first, The Landscapes of Change: Challenges for Professors of Educational Administration, contains four chapters that frame the major themes and issues of the 1994 conference. In Section 2, Educational Leadership and Development Program: Theoretical Perspectives, the authors explore theoretical lenses for examining the preparation of educational leaders and the development of educational administration programs. Se...

Preparing school administrators for the challenges they will face requires materials well-informed about the nuts and bolts of education in real life. Only a richly detailed case study book like Short and Scribner's will provide them with the opportunity to analyze current issues. Each narrative chapter concludes with application questions and a list of references. The authors, some of the most respected American scholars on the superintendency have compiled cases grounded in research and ...

Despite the best efforts of educators, our nation's schools are dangerously obsolete. Instead of teaching students to be critical thinkers and problem-solvers, we are asking them to memorize facts for multiple choice tests. This problem isn't limited to low-income school districts: even our top schools aren't teaching or testing the skills that matter most in the global knowledge economy. Our teens leave school equipped to work only in the kinds of jobs that are fast disappearing from the ...

This book is the initial volume coming out of the "excellence project"--a comprehensive research effort commissioned by the IABC (International Association of Business Communicators) Research Foundation. The purpose of this project was to answer two fundamental questions about public relations: What are the characteristics of an excellent communication department? How does excellent public relations make an organization more effective, and how much is that contribution worth economically? ...

NEW EDITION, REVISED AND UPDATED Future Search is among the best-established and most effective methods for enabling people to make and implement ambitious plans. It has been used to redesign IKEA’s product pipeline in Sweden, develop an integrated economic development plan in Northern Ireland, and demobilize child soldiers in Southern Sudan. Written by the originators, this book is the most up-to-date account of this powerful change method. This third edition is completely revised, reorga...

In this seminal volume, leading authorities strategize about how to create early childhood systems that transcend politics and economics to serve the needs of all young children. The authors offer different interpretations of the nature of early childhood systems, discuss the elements necessary to support their development, and examine how effectiveness can be assessed. With a combination of cutting-edge scholarship and practical examples of systems-building efforts taking place in the fie...

Discover how to engage your school’s community and help students achieve their full potential with this guide.Americans see public schools as a critical community resource and rank education as a priority second only to the economy. How can educators harness this public interest in education to bring parents, families, and communities to action for our schools? Improving Schools Through Community Engagement addresses these questions and more in this invalu...

How to base learning on mastery instead of timeWhat if you could remove time and space pressures from the process of teaching and learning? The authors of Off the Clock not only suggest this, but they have implemented it in New Hampshire. Due in part to their work, the New England Consortium won the 2011 Frank Newman Award for State Innovation through the Education Commission of the States. This book′s core idea is that student ac...

This book provides an overview of the core professional issues in the field of child and youth care practice. The author explores themes ranging from relationships and the exploration of Self to career building and field-specific approaches to management. The book is written from a pragmatic perspective, and serves both to advance current thinking in the field about professional issues as well as to provide the student of child and youth care practice and practitioners with practical and a...

How can we “fix” our schools? Improve graduation rates in college? What works?These are questions that make the headlines and vex policy makers, practitioners, and educational researchers. While they strive to improve society, there are frequently gulfs of mutual incomprehension among them.Academics, longing for more influence, may wrongly fault irrationality, ideology, or ignorance for the failure of research to inform policy and practice more powerfully. Policy makers and practitioners m...

This 112-page publication, Preparing Schools and School Systems for the 21st Century, presents characteristics of schools and school systems capable of preparing students for a global knowledge/information age. Order copies of this publication for board members, administrative team, staff, and community leaders. Use it to build support and stimulate discussions that will help you take leadership in reshaping your schools and school system for a new millennium. Characteristics of 2...