Intentional Interruption
Breaking Down Learning Barriers to Transform Professional Practice
- Steven Katz
- Lisa Ain Dack - Senior Associate, Aporia Consulting Ltd. and Instructor, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto
Instructional Leadership
We interrupt this program to bring meaningful, conceptual change to your team's professional learning!
If you're involved in professional learning, you know that big ideas can sometimes get stuck on the way to becoming real change. Steven Katz and Lisa Ain Dack explain the secret to getting unstuck: interrupting the status quo of traditional activity-based professional development to help educators embrace permanent changes in thinking and behavior. They outline a process—grounded in psychological research—for real professional learning that ultimately leads to improved student achievement.
You can enable true learning by
- Building a focus on learning, collaborative inquiry, and formal and informal instructional leadership in schools
- Recognizing the psychological processes involved in adult learning, and overcoming the psychological biases and barriers to change
- Using tools and strategies such as critical friend relationships, learning conversations, task sheets, and protocols
Illustrated with concrete, school-based examples drawn from real practice, Intentional Interruption shows how rethinking professional learning can lead to the development of a real and sustainable learning culture in your school.
"Few books challenge your thinking of a field to this degree. The authors reveal the secret key to unlocking true professional learning and thus impact for students."
—Terry Morganti-Fisher, Consultant
Learning Forward
"Before your learning team goes much further, it needs to stop, read, and collectively reflect on these insights. This book will identify those sticky challenges and how you can optimize your joint work."
—Mag Gardner, Superintendent of Student Achievement
Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board, ON
"Excuse this important interruption! Before your learning team goes much further, it needs to stop, read, and collectively reflect on Katz’s insights. This book will identify those sticky challenges and how you can optimize your joint work."
"In the work to implement professional learning communities (PLC’s), the practice for many schools and districts has been diluted, misinterpreted, or poorly implemented. [The author(s)] incisively show how effectively to address the professional learning part of PLC’s."
"Few books challenge your thinking of a field to this degree. The authors reveal the secret key to unlocking true professional learning and thus impact for students."
"Intentional Interruption is essential reading for every educator involved in planning or facilitating professional development and professional learning communities. The authors explain why professional development often fails to achieve its purpose, and offer practical suggestions to empower teacher learning. Grounded in research about how humans think, and supported by the authors’ work in schools, this book challenges the status quo of professional learning, and guides educational leaders toward wise choices for addressing the needs of teachers in their community.
"Educators have spent the last several years becoming proficient at discussing student work and student learning. It’s now time to shift our work and thinking to how we, as educators, learn. Intentional Interruption defines true professional learning, identifies the barriers to that kind of learning and offers suggestions for making educator learning the focus of our learning communities. This book will change the way you think of ‘professional development.’"
