How to Create the Conditions for Learning: Continuous Improvement in Classrooms, Schools, and Districts

Jaquith, Ann

ISBN 10: 1682530833 ISBN 13: 9781682530832

Publisher: Harvard Education Press, 2017

How to Create the Conditions for Learning shows how the conditions for continuously improving instruction can be created at every level—from the classroom to the school to the central office.

Ann Jaquith presents a framework for understanding and building instructional capacity, based on her original research in schools and districts and ideas drawn from the literature on resourcing and social learning. She describes four types of resources—knowledge, technology, relationships, and structures—and discusses the contextual conditions that allow these resources to be identified, taken up, and put to effective use. Through case studies of schools and districts engaged in the sometimes messy work of developing the capacity to improve instruction, Jaquith shows ways that school and district leaders can identify and deploy underutilized resources and create organizational routines that support the ongoing development of instructional capacity.

How To Create the Conditions for Learning represents an important contribution to the effort to stimulate, support, and sustain excellent teaching and inspired learning in our schools.

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About the Author

Ann Jaquith is the associate director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE), where she works at the intersection of research, practice, and policy. Ann’s research focuses on understanding the conditions in educational settings in which instructional improvement occurs. She studies school reform efforts and professional development initiatives. Ann received her doctorate from the Stanford Graduate School of Education.

From the Back Cover

How to Create the Conditions for Learning shows how the conditions for continuously improving instruction can be created at every level, from the classroom to the school to the central office. Ann Jaquith describes four types of instructional resources—knowledge, technology, relationships, and structures—and discusses the contextual conditions that allow these resources to be identified, taken up, and put to effective use. Case studies of schools and districts highlight how leaders can identify and deploy underutilized resources and create organizational routines that support the ongoing development of instructional capacity. The book represents an important contribution to the effort to stimulate, support, and sustain excellent teaching and inspired learning in our schools.

“Ann Jaquith’s instructional capacity building framework has taken our district to a deeper level of implementation, guiding how we create conditions of learning for teachers, principals, and district staff so they can in turn create optimal conditions for learning for students.”
—Diann Kitamura, superintendent, Santa Rosa City Schools

“Drawing on real-life examples, this insightful book provides richly detailed and specific strategies for teachers, principals, superintendents (even researchers) concerned with improving learning opportunities for students and staff in any school.”
—Leslie Santee Siskin, research professor, New York University Steinhardt

"How to Create the Conditions for Learning is essential reading for all educators determined to create and sustain a culture that continuously enriches the working conditions necessary to support efforts to improve teaching and learning."
—Marcia G. Trott, Improving Teacher Quality State Grants Program administrator, California Department of Education

“Ann Jaquith’s framework for instructional capacity building is at once theoretically sound and immensely practical and will help leaders identify and use an array of resources for instructional improvement. A terrific book for everyone concerned with improving instruction.”
—Pam Grossman, dean, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania

Ann Jaquith is the associate director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education.