`Provides an important first step in helping us surface the mental modes we hold of the teaching and learning of diverse student populations' - Nelda Cambron-McCabe, Department of Educational Leadership, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio This book is about the paradox of relegating students with individual differences into seperate systems, protecting mainstream students from their influence, while at the same time trying to manage the cultural imperative of equity and excellence for all students This book helps administrators manage the separate systems of general and special education by demonstrating how to effectively unify the systems. The book proposes that each student should be addressed through personalized educational programming, rather than applying these to special education students only.
Leonard C. Burrello is Professor of Education and Chair of Educational Leadership Program and Executive Director of The Forum on Education at Indiana University. He is currently studying school improvement in rural schools within a distributive leadership framework and consulting with the Gates Initiative on Small Schools for the University of Indianapolis in the Indianapolis Public Schools. With co-author Lauren Hoffman he completed at three organizational consultation project in Washtenaw County, Michigan where they helped create a new planning framework using the work of Robert Fritz. They are also working with the Illinois Cooperative Leadership project in Illinois to help build more learner-centered schools. With Lynn Murray, his collaboration began in 1993 in a study of her leadership in a suburban district in Vermont and she has consulted with both authors helping to build a new organizational structure and planning process in a large urban Midwestern school district. He teaches courses on moral and distributive leadership, and organizational change at Indiana University.
Preface About the Authors 1. Students at the Margins 2. Reconceiving the Purposes of Schooling 3. A Transformational Leadership Strategy Complex Adaptive Systems 4. Incentives as Attractors Why Things Remain the Same and How to Change Them 5. The Transformation to Learner-Centered 6. The New Work of Leadership in Unified Schools 7. Organizing for Instruction in Unified Schools 8. Delivering Instruction in Unified Schools 9. Thinking Differently about Evaluation Moving Beyond the Paradox 10. A Reflection on Leadership Local Leadership Counts Resource A Resource B References Index
"A convincing conceptualization of schools as complex adaptive systems. The authors' recommendations that leaders must 'tinker at the margins' and lead in the 'zone of complexity' provide sound and practical advice for school leaders faced with creating unified educational systems that will be able to effectively support students with increasingly diverse learning needs." -- David W. Peterson "Far too long we have failed to acknowledge the large number of students relegated to parallel educational systems. This thought-provoking book provides an important first step in helping us surface the mental models we hold of the teaching and learning of diverse student populations." -- Nelda Cambron-McCabe "An insightful, informative, and thought-provoking book that deals with a topic that concerns every educator." -- Kate Kinley, Director of Administrative Training and Staff Development
