So many books, so little time! If you're looking for a list of the best books to read if you're interested in learning more about personalized learning, these are the ones to begin with. We have a wide variety, from texts focused on leadership and supporting teams to coaching and classroom teachers' experiences. Take a look at our recommendations, and you're sure to find your next read!
*All descriptions are directly from the authors' texts*
Tapping the Power of Personalized Learning: A Roadmap for School Leaders
by James Rickabaugh
James Rickabaugh, former superintendent and current director of the Institute for Personalized Learning (IPL), presents the groundbreaking results of the Institute's half-decade of research, development, and practice: a simple but powerful model for personalizing students' learning experiences by building their levels of commitment, ownership, and independence.
Empower: What Happens When Students Own Their Learning
by John Spencer and A.J. Juliani
Kids begin their learning journey as curious problem solvers who ask questions and create solutions. As they go through school, something happens to many of our students, and they begin to play the game of school, eager to be compliant and follow a path instead of making their own.
A.J. Juliani and John Spencer provide teachers, coaches, and administrators with a roadmap that will inspire innovation, authentic learning experiences, and practical ways to empower students to pursue their passions while in school.
Beyond Reform: Systemic Shifts Toward Personalized Learning
by Lindsay Unified School District
Like many school districts, Lindsay Unified School District faced difficulty meeting the needs of increasingly diverse student populations. Through this detailed resource, you will learn how Lindsay Unified took action to improve student learning by shifting from a traditional time-based education system to a learner-centered performance-based system.
Visible Learning for Mathematics, Grades K-12: What Works Best to Optimize Student Learning
by John Hattie, Douglas Fisher, and Nancy Frey
Rich tasks, collaborative work, number talks, problem-based learning, direct instruction…with so many possible approaches, how do we know which ones work the best? In Visible Learning for Mathematics, six acclaimed educators assert it’s not about which one―it’s about when―and show you how to design high-impact instruction so all students demonstrate more than a year’s worth of mathematics learning for a year spent in school.
That’s a high bar, but with the amazing K-12 framework here, you choose the right approach at the right time, depending upon where learners are within three phases of learning: surface, deep, and transfer. This results in "visible" learning because the effect is tangible. The framework is forged out of current research in mathematics combined with John Hattie’s synthesis of more than 15 years of education research involving 300 million students.
Visible Learning for Literacy, Grades K-12: Implementing the Practices That Best Work to Accelerate Student Learning
by Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and John Hattie
Renowned literacy experts Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey work with John Hattie to apply his 15 years of research, identifying instructional routines that have the biggest impact on student learning, to literacy practices. These practices are "visible" because their purpose is clear, they are implemented at the right moment in a student’s learning, and their effect is tangible.
Through dozens of classroom scenarios, learn how to use the right approach at the right time for surface, deep, and transfer learning and which routines are most effective at each phase of learning.
Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning
by John Hattie
In November 2008, John Hattie’s ground-breaking book Visible Learning synthesized the results of more than fifteen years research involving millions of students and represented the biggest ever collection of evidence-based research into what actually works in schools to improve learning.
Visible Learning for Teachers takes the next step and brings those ground breaking concepts to a completely new audience. Written for students, pre-service and in-service teachers, it explains how to apply the principles of Visible Learning to any classroom anywhere in the world. The author offers concise and user-friendly summaries of the most successful interventions and offers practical step-by-step guidance to the successful implementation of visible learning and visible teaching in the classroom.
Ten Mindframes for Visible Learning: Teaching for Success
by John Hattie and Klaus Zierer
The original Visible Learning research concluded that one of the most important influencers of student achievement is how teachers think about learning and their own role. In Ten Mindframes for Visible Learning, John Hattie and Klaus Zierer define the ten behaviors or mindframes that teachers need to adopt in order to maximize student success.
These powerful mindframes, which should underpin every action in schools, are founded on the principle that teachers are evaluators, change agents, learning experts, and seekers of feedback who are constantly engaged with dialogue and challenge.
This practical guide, which includes questionnaires, scenarios, checklists, and exercises, will show any school exactly how to implement Hattie’s mindframes to maximize success.
The Multiplier Effect: Tapping the Genius Inside Our Schools
by Liz Wiseman, Lois Allen, and Elise Foster
Why do some leaders double their team’s effectiveness, while others seem to drain the energy right out of the room? Using insights gained from more than 100 interviews with school leaders, this book pinpoints the five disciplines that define how Multipliers bring out the best across their schools. By practicing these disciplines, you’ll learn how to: attract top teachers to your school, create an intense environment that demands people’s best thinking, drive sound decisions by constructing debate and decision-making forums, and give your team a sense of ownership for responsibilities and results.
Delivering on the Promise: The Education Revolution
by Richard A. DeLorenzo, Wendy J. Battino, Rick M. Schreiber, and Barbara B. Gaddy Carrio
This is the story of one school district's journey to develop and implement the RISC (Re-Inventing Schools Coalition) Approach to Schooling, a system that represents a dramatic shift for American education, a literal reinvention of what schooling looks like. In 2001, the members of the district won the coveted Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for their efforts in developing and implementing the program. The RISC Approach to Schooling is a standards-based approach to education designed to educate all students to the highest levels, empower them to own and lead the learning process, help them realize their dreams, and equip them with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to succeed.
Teaching That Changes Lives: 12 Mindset Tools for Igniting the Love of Learning
by Marilee Adams
Through a moving story of a teacher on the verge of burnout, Adams demonstrates the powerful influence our mindsets have on how we interact with our students, our colleagues, and ourselves. Through vivid examples, she illustrates how cultivating what she calls a Learner Mindset leads to breakthroughs in critical thinking, communication, and collaboration. Complete with Adams’s Choice Map for identifying our own mindsets, a workbook, and access to online resources, this inspiring book will transform teachers and students alike into open-minded, creative, resilient problem solvers and lifelong learners.
From Leading to Succeeding: The Seven Elements of Effective Leadership in Education
by Douglas Reeves
Utilizing the crucial elements of effective leadership-purpose, trust, focus, leverage, feedback, change, and sustainability-education leaders can overcome the many challenges they face in their profession and learn the skills and characteristics they need to succeed. This book synthesizes research from 21st century sources and confronts prevalent leadership myths, while offering guidance on best leadership practices. Use this professional development tool to establish a clear mission and enact vision statements.
The Art of Coaching: Effective Strategies for School Transformation
by Elena Aguilar
This practical resource offers the foundational skills and tools needed by new coaching educators, as well as presenting an overview of the knowledge and theory base behind the practice. Established coaches will find numerous ways to deepen and refine their coaching practice. Principals and others who incorporate coaching strategies into their work will also find a wealth of resources.
Aguilar offers a model for transformational coaching which could be implemented as professional development in schools or districts anywhere. Although she addresses the needs of adult learners, her model maintains a student-centered focus, with a specific lens on addressing equity issues in schools.
The Art of Coaching Teams: Building Resilient Communities That Transform Schools
by Elena Aguilar
This is the manual you never received when you signed on to lead a team. Being a great teacher is one thing, but leading a team, or team development, is an entirely different dynamic. Your successes are public, but so are your failures—and there's no specific rubric or curriculum to give you direction. Team development is an art form, and this book is your how-to guide to doing it effectively. You'll learn the administrative tasks that keep your team on track, and you'll gain access to a wealth of downloadable tools that simplify the "getting organized" process. Just as importantly, you'll explore what it means to be the kind of leader that can bring people together to accomplish difficult tasks. You'll find practical suggestions, tools, and clear instructions for the logistics of team development as well as for building trust, developing healthy communication, and managing conflict.
Blended Learning in Action: A Practical Guide Toward Sustainable Change
by Caitlin R. Tucker, Tiffany Wycoff, and Jason T. Green
Blended learning has the power to reinvent education, but the transition requires a new approach to learning and a new skillset for educators. Loaded with research and examples, Blended Learning in Action demonstrates the advantages a blended model has over traditional instruction when technology is used to engage students both inside the classroom and online. Readers will find:
breakdowns of the most effective classroom setups for blended learning, tips for leaders, ideas for personalizing and differentiating instruction using technology, strategies for managing devices in schools, and questions to facilitate professional development and deeper learning.
Breaking With Tradition: The Shift to Competency-Based Learning in PLCs at Work
by Brian M. Stack and Jonathan G. Vander Els
Shifting to a competency-based curriculum allows educators to revolutionize education by replacing traditional, ineffective systems with a personalized, learner-centered approach. Throughout the resource, the authors explore how the components of PLCs promote the principles of competency-based education and share real-world examples from practitioners who have made the transition to learner-centered teaching. Each chapter ends with reflection questions readers can answer to apply their own learning progression.
Student-Centered Coaching: A Guide for K-8 Coaches and Principals
by Diane Sweeney
Student-Centered Coaching is grounded on the premise that school-based coaching can be designed to directly impact student learning. Shifting the focus from "fixing" teachers to collaborating with them in designing instruction that targets for student achievement makes coaching more respectful and results-based. The book also underscores the critical role of the principal in fostering a culture of learning. Each chapter includes:
a model for designing and implementing student-centered coaching, data-driven coaching tools and techniques focused on student learning, and specific practices for leading a student-centered coaching effort.
Leading Student-Centered Coaching: Building Principal and Coach Partnerships
by Diane Sweeney and Ann Mausbach
Strong leadership is essential in any successful instructional coaching effort. This action-oriented guide provides principals and district leaders with the background, practices, and tools required for leading coaching efforts that have a measurable impact on student and teacher learning. Filled with ideas that school leaders can easily apply, this book includes: tools and techniques for preparing a school for coaching, launching a coaching culture, and supporting coaches, leadership moves and lessons from the field that provide strategies for building principal and coach partnerships, and recommendations for coaches to use as they strive to increase their impact.
A Handbook for Personalized Competency-Based Education: Ensure All Students Master Content by Designing and Implementing a PCBE System
by Robert J. Marzano, Jennifer S. Norford, Michelle Finn, and Douglas Finn III
In K-12 education's growing movement of competency-based education and personalized learning, both contradictory and overlapping definitions come up around these two terms. To clear up this confusion, A Handbook for Personalized Competency-Based Education delves into the components of a personalized competency-based education (PCBE) system.
This handbook explores approaches, strategies, and techniques that schools and districts should consider as they rethink traditional instruction to fit a PCBE system and support student learning. The authors share examples of how to use proficiency scales, standard operating procedures, behavior rubrics, personal tracking matrices, and other tools to aid in instruction and assessment.
Tool Time for Education: Choosing and Implementing Quality Improvement Tools
by David P. Langford
The new Tool Time for Education book provides 64 quality improvement tools, and describes how to use them in the 9-step Plan-Do-Study-Act process to assess, evaluate and improve your classroom or school's unique learning system and organizational structure.
This book will enable your school improvement team to use their knowledge, skills, and tools to effectively assess and analyze their current school processes, identify areas of improvement and windows of opportunity, plan and implement school improvement strategies and processes using data-driven instructional practices.
When They Already Know It: How to Extend and Personalize Learning in a PLC at Work
by Mark Weichel, Blane McCann, and Tami Williams
This practical guide is designed to help collaborative teams at all grade levels address the critical question "How will we extend the learning for students who are already proficient?" Mark Weichel, Blane McCann, and Tami Williams identify five elements of personalized learning, along with five instructional strategies for extended, differentiated instruction, that give all students the opportunity to reach their personal best.