Building Effective Learning Communities

Establish collaborative learning communities that foster high academic standards!

Today′s school leaders face a difficult reality: the pressure to meet national standards often eclipses the pursuit of additional academic goals. This groundbreaking text seeks to remedy this conflict by enabling practicing and prospective school leaders to build collaborative, constructive environments that not only help schools achieve national standards, but also help the school community realize high academic standards.

Sullivan and Glanz put forth a conceptual framework centered on modeling reflective practice. This framework and the authors′ suggested strategies and techniques provide school leaders with:

• Approaches that can be employed at all educational levels
• Materials that educate leaders about themselves
• Tactics for building a reflective learning community
• Suggestions for promoting individual and group development

Discover the techniques that foster collaborative learning communities in which all members of the school community advance high academic standards.

Susan Sullivan is currently Chair of the Department of Education at the College of Staten Island (CSI), City University of New York (CUNY) where all undergraduate and graduate education programs are under the direction of the Chair. Previously, she was the Chair of the Education Department for six years. She continues to teach post master’s courses in supervision of instruction and educational leadership in the Department leadership program. She is co-principal investigator on an NSF grant that supports the Teacher Education Honors Academy and is a founder of the CSI High School for International Studies. In addition, she is currently planning a leadership program for Chinese school administrators. Her continued research interests center on supervision of instruction and its alternatives, reflective practice, and the role of leadership and supervision of instruction, in particular, in school transformation, themes on which she continues to write journal articles. In addition to the third edition of Supervision that Improves Teaching and Learning: Strategies and Techniques, she and Jeffrey Glanz have coauthored a staff development book, Supervision in Practice, and are the authors of Building Effective Learning Communities. Jeffrey Glanz currently serves as a Senior Fellow at the Institute for University-School Partnership, Director of the Masters Program and the Raine and Stanley Silverstein Chair in Professional Ethics and Values at the Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and Administration at Yeshiva University. Prior to coming to YU, Dr. Glanz served as Dean of Graduate Programs and Chair of the Department of Education at Wagner College in Staten Island, New York. He also coordinated the educational leadership program that led to New York State certification as a principal and assistant principal. Prior to arriving at Wagner, he served as executive assistant to the president of Kean University in Union, New Jersey. Dr. Glanz held faculty status as a tenured professor in the Department of Instruction and Educational Leadership at Kean University’s College of Education. He was named Graduate Teacher of the Year in 1999 by the Student Graduate Association and was also that year’s recipient of the Presidential Award for Outstanding Scholarship. He served as a teacher and assistant principal in the New York City public schools. He has conducted numerous workshops and seminars internationally. Dr. Glanz has authored, coauthored, and co-edited 20 books and has many peer-reviewed article publications.