Developing Connective Leadership: Successes With Thinking Maps

'If our best thinking comes by making connections and building patterns, then what would these patterns look like, and what might they be based on'--ask the authors. Most importantly, how could they be used?

Developing Connective Leadership shows you how Thinking Maps are an efficient and eloquent language that can be used to explore and reveal ideas, thought processes, and intentions. By creating visual representations of thought, leaders create shared understandings and foster connections among staff.

Explore how schools have used the Thinking Maps process to create strong collaborative bonds and facilitate shared leadership. As staff members collaborate to construct a shared frame of reference, they are empowered to execute and sustain the school's vision.

Benefits

* Offers real-life experiences from school leaders using Thinking Maps for professional development

* Identifies eight Thinking Maps used to build connective leadership practices

* Suggests how Thinking Maps can be used to reformulate and reconstruct negative or damaging frames of reference

* Discusses how Thinking Maps can energize and inspire insight and solutions

Larry Alper is codirector of Designs for Thinking, an educational consulting group focused on research, cognitive development, literacy, and whole-school improvement through the use of Thinking Maps, a visual language for learning and leading. Larry is a former teacher and school administrator with more than thirty years of experience in leading schools and developing learning communities for students, teachers, and parents. For eighteen years, he was an elementary school principal in Brattleboro, Vermont. Early in his career, Larry and his wife, Kathy Ernst, cofounded an elementary school on Long Island based on democratic principles and student-centered learning.

As an affiliate of the University of Vermont s Asian Studies Outreach Program, Larry served as a director of the Institute on China and Its Cultures (Yunnan Province), an overseas program for teachers. He has traveled to China to lead groups of teachers throughout various regions and presented papers to Chinese educators on American educational practices at seminars in Beijing, Inner Mongolia, and the Yunnan Province. Larry has also been an adjunct faculty member at Antioch College. He is coauthor of Student Successes With Thinking Maps.

Kimberly Williams, PhD, is an educational consultant who specializes in assessment, cognition, and improving teaching and learning. As a faculty member at the Plymouth State University College of Graduate Studies, Kimberly teaches graduate courses for teachers on cognition, history, and philosophy of education. She has also served on the faculty of the State University of New York at Morrisville and Cortland, Syracuse University, Hobart College, William Smith College, and Dartmouth College. During her time with SUNY, she received awards for excellence in teaching and excellence in research.

She has written numerous articles on topics such as drug abuse in adolescence, safety, violence prevention, and the social and emotional side of adolescent violence. She is the author of Keeping Kids Safe, Healthy, and Smart; Socially Constructed School Violence: Lessons From the Field; The Peace Approach to Violence Prevention: A Guide for Administrators and Teachers; and Learning Limits: College Women, Drugs, and Relationships.

David Hyerle, EdD, is an author, researcher, seminar leader, and keynote speaker focused on integrating content learning, thinking process instruction, and collaborative leadership across whole schools. He is founding director of the Thinking Foundation, a nonprofit organization supporting research in cognitive and critical thinking development for the purpose of creating thinking schools nationally and internationally. The creation of his Thinking Maps model emerged from his experiences as a teacher at the middle school level in inner city Oakland, California. His development of Thinking Maps was also informed by his work with the Bay Area Writing Project and the Cognitive Coaching model.

Among his numerous professional books and articles based on visual tools research, David wrote the foundational training materials for Thinking Maps and guided the professional development process with Thinking Maps, Inc. The Thinking Maps model is used in thirty states and six different countries. David cowrote the training guide Thinking Maps: A Language for Leadership and edited Student Successes With Thinking Maps, a professional book presenting background research and documenting the professional development outcomes from the implementation of Thinking Maps.