Leadership & Learning: Personal Change in a Professional Setting, Second Edition (2006) is a book of stories about how five school principals grow into authoritative leaders whose ability to improve their own performance enables them to improve the performance of others. Beginning with doubts about their ability to lead, they make their own behavior and thinking the object of inquiry and change. As a result, they stop behaving as answer-men and start communicating as skillful, interpersonal learners who expect themselves and others to support one another in improving current practice by rigorously examining it.
The Second Edition is updated and contains new material about transformational leaders, including "Embracing Confusion," an article written with Jerome Murphy and published in the January 2005 issue of Phi Delta Kappan, where it received a large and universally positive response. Another new chapter is entitled "Making Our Own Minds the Object of Our Learning: Three Reasons to Seek Self-Knowledge," published in Voices for Democracy: Struggles and Celebrations of Transformational Leaders by the National Society for the Study of Education, spring 2006.
Praise for the Entryplan Approach and Leadership & Learning Books
REVIEWS AND COMMENTARY
"Entry has been a valuable tool for over 25 years. The new edition is a welcome addition to the literature on entering leadership positions in the education sector. I will add it to the list of required readings for my students in the Urban Superintendents Program and recommend it to new and aspiring leaders, as I have in the past. Well done!"
Robert S. Peterkin, Francis Keppel Professor of Educational Policy and Administration, Director, Urban Superintendents Program, Harvard Graduate School of Education
“In my work preparing educators to be principals and superintendents… … always recommend they read and use… Entry. I tell them that it is one of the best books on taking a new administrative position in a public school."
Harris Sokoloff, Center for School Study Councils, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
“Our district has found The EntryPlan HandBook enormously helpful to every administrator moving into a new position, as well as to those of us responsible for providing support.”
James H. Lytle, Superintendent of Schools, Trenton, NJ
“…the EntryPlan methodology arms new hires with knowledge they would have otherwise learned only after months – if not years—in their new positions.” Beverly L. Hall, Superintendent, Atlanta Public Schools, GA
Beverly L. Hall, Superintendent, Atlanta Public Schools, GA
“I returned home (to Singapore) and continued my work as a school principal where I am now looking over 95 schools. I introduced your book Leadership and Learning to the principals… They found the book really valuable in helping them develop self-awareness, an understanding of relationships, empathy, and patience.
I remember the impact that the book had on me when I first read it at Harvard. I have read the book many times over and every time I read it, I gain new insights. Thank you for the wonderful narration and learning nuggets that you have given us in the book.”
Chee Wah Sum, Ministry of Education, Singapore
“The final case in Leadership and Learning is a remarkable forty-page account of a principal’s successful confrontation with a teacher’s serious problems. This case is an exemplary combination of theory and practice and should be read by all school leaders.”