Teacher Training Books

Gordon Donaldson "How leaders learn".

There is surprisingly little written, or known, about how school leaders learn. One suspects that situated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1996) is the norm because most school leaders hold a variety of formal and informal school leadership positions before attaining principalship. The problem for every school leader and educational system is ensuring that school leaders keep learning, and simply don't exist by living off the knowledge and skills laid down during their "apprenticeships".

Professional development (that done to school leaders) and professional learning (that initiated by school leaders) has generally been cognitive in nature. Secondly, many school leaders are thrown in at the deep-end, and the skills of survival mark the high points of their intuitive learning. Gordon Donaldson's book represents a massive leap forwarding in the thinking about leaders' learning. Donaldson, after years of working with school leaders, recognised three domains of leaders' learning, interpersonal, cognitive and intrapersonal (ICI). The three domains are intertwined in every aspirant's Leadership Development Plan (LDP), and together they demonstrate the shortcomings of concentrating on only one domain.

A strong point of Donaldson's approach is that school leaders' learning becomes a sharing-social experience, in a Vygotskian tradition. The claims about the loneliness of leadership then become less of a leadership disincentive.

The strategies used in the Maine Academy for School Leaders/ University of Maine programs are well thought out and their combination through ICI, is their strength. The supporting documents included in the book are extremely useful.

This book is a good read in its own right, and Foreword by the delightful writer Roland Barth is an added bonus.

Our school leaders' professional reading group has chosen this book as our reader for this term, and it will be certain to generate debate and learning.

William Cohen studied with management guru Peter Drucker while working toward his Ph.D. in executive management at Claremont Graduate School (now the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management). The lessons he learned from Drucker, he says, were life-changing, and in this book he aims to transmit to his readers the great man's wisdom. In fact, Drucker took a somewhat different approach with his students from the one in his books and articles. Thus, Cohen builds upon and reinterprets many of Drucker's insights and concepts. getAbstract particularly recommends this book to managers who are already Drucker fans and want to learn more - the book is really more like a CD of unreleased recordings by a great artist of the past than like an album of covers by a lesser artist.

William Cohen is the first graduate of Claremont University's PhD in Management program; Peter Drucker was his lead instructor. The value of the book is that it contains a few good insights from the best known management consultant; the downside is that the book is mostly filler, and the topic's inherent difficulty.

The inherent difficulty in studying the field of management is that it is impossible to create an all-inclusive management control panel for monitoring - a conclusion propounded by Drucker himself. Key variables differ in each situation - eg. an executive's personality, the importance of future products vs. improved current offerings, etc. Drucker's unique contribution was an ability to cut through the morass of each firm's uniqueness at a high level, and offer valued recommendations to various firms, from G.M. to G.E.

Nonetheless, some Drucker generalizations are uniquely applicable. These include:

"The first task of any business management is to decide what business it is in." (Allows focus.)

"What everyone know is frequently wrong." (Drucker illustrated this maxim by relating how Kaiser, lacking knowledge of how the English quickly built transport ships during WWII, developed a much quicker system. On the other hand, history is also replete with examples where ignorance was a serious flaw.)

"Continuing what led to past success will invariable lead to future failure - the environment will eventually change." (Examples include the explosion of energy costs, A.F. drones becoming available, the Internet and computers, new environmental laws, etc.)

"If you weren't already in the business, would you enter it today? If not, what are you going to do about it?"

"Great advances in any field rarely come from a single discipline. Rather, they come from advances in one discipline being transplanted to another sphere." (A likely example will be improving health care costs and quality through application of the Toyota production system.)

"Outstanding performance is inconsistent with the fear of failure."

Watch out for global competitors.

"CEO's are overpaid - should be in the range of 20X the average worker. Unions have become unaccountable for costs and performance."

Recommends written objectives for managers. (MBO)

"Self-development is up to the individual."

"Lead, don't manage. Don't use Theory X, nor a permissive form of Theory Y (creates chaos)."

Author William A. Cohen was a struggling young Air Force officer with no academic experience when he entered Drucker's PhD program in management, becoming the first graduate of Drucker's doctoral program. He used his newfound insights to further career and to gain a deeper insight into Drucker's approach and personality: A CLASS WITH DRUCKER reflects his experiences, expanding upon Drucker's lessons, revealing the teacher's personality through personal anecdotes, and providing fine tips on how Drucker's management tools continue to be applied in everyday business circles. Any business library needs A CLASS WITH DRUCKER.

I became an entrepreneur and business owner after I graduated school, so I never took business courses - especially at the graduate level. My customers have taught me some, I had some mentors and family advice, but mostly I have learned from by either making mistakes or having successes in my stores. And I am a firm believer in learning from books.
Business books seem to be about 80-20. 80% stinkers, 20% valuable. And then every so often that 20% turns out to have real gem. This book from Dr Cohen is a gem, with a lot of good, practical advice I can apply immediately to improve my bottom line. If you believe in continuing your business education with books, get this one. The advice is Peter Drucker's, and Dr Cohen fully credits the ideas to him, but I credit Dr Cohen for making these lessons readable, understandable, and easy to apply. Bravo!

Peter Drucker is revered as a management guru and his books and articles have been a mainstay in business reading for decades. Even if you have read some of his books, don't you think you should read more? But maybe you have read everything and wish there was something more. We see similar market hunger from the devotees of artists and musicians who have died. These folks look for anything not released or some draft versions of works.

William Cohen was working on his executive Ph.D. at Claremont when he studied with Drucker. While most of us know Drucker from his writings, and a much smaller number from presentations, a minuscule number of people were able to sit in his classrooms. Cohen has combed his notes and recollections to put together 19 chapters of what it was like to study with Drucker as a student and the lessons he learned from him.

It is an interesting enough book and Cohen does make contributions of his own. Just don't mistake this for a book BY Drucker and you will be just fine. While I would recommend starting with Drucker's classic works, this is a good supplement to the great man's direct offerings for those who want even more.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

Do whatever you can to find a text that more clearly explains the theories and theories in practice of language teaching. I am currently using as a textbook in an introductory Teaching ESL course. We read out of it, but most of the material is omitted, corrected or adjusted by our instructor.

In this book, Penny Ur has created an indispensable reference on language teaching. This book covers everything from classroom management to testing to presenting vocabulary. Every section is clearly written and easy to put into practice. There is also a list of references for each chapter, for those who want to explore a topic in greater detail. If you were to buy just one book on language teaching, I would make it this one!

I used this coursebook during a TEFL course recently. I found Penny Ur's manual extremely disappointing. The chapters offer very little constructive information regarding the theory of language teaching. Ur's standard format is to list a few one line opinions on a subject and invite the reader to list the theories in order of usefulness or importance. Clearly the book is intended to facilitate group discussion and be used in conjunction with the teachers' manual which provides more concrete answers. However the manual itself does not provide much meaningful information regarding language teaching theory and when it came to applying the methods in my own teaching or writing papers on the subject, I frequently had to look at othe resources.

In the introduction of the book, Ur dedicated a section on the difference between "practice" and "theory", and why the subtitle of the book is "practice and theory", rather than the more conventional "theory and Practice".

However, only in Introduction, I found two places where Ur used "theory and practice", and "theories and practices". What a confused and confusing author!

I wonder if anybody can learn anything out of the book of such confused author.

Haven't really had a chance to use it yet...and hoping to this summer! I'm sure it is sufficient as i have bought others like it that were.

I am unfortunately not able to review this product for it's quality, since I have not used it yet. However, in reviewing the service by amazon, regarding my purchase, etc, i can say that i have no complaints whatsoever. From the initial purchase on line through the timely delivery, the service provided by Amazon was 'good'!
i would be happy to give you a 'product review' at such time that i begin my study program with it, if you want; pls send me a reminder in a few months.
thanks!
dcl

I just received this book and also have the XAM CSET: English study guide. Because the Cliff's Notes one just came out, I used the XAM book to study for the first three parts of the CSET (which I took and passed!). I now am going to take the fourth subtest.

In comparing the two books, I found that the XAM guide provides a LOT more information to study regarding the content. For example, the Cliff's version has two pages (essentially just a list) of major works of literature and the periods in which they were written. The XAM guide lists many of these same works, but also will provide a short synopsis of what the story is about. It also explains features of the different periods. The Cliff's version says that Dryden wrote during the Neoclassic period, but doesn't say what Neoclassism is or who Dryden was. The XAM guide does describe what Neoclassism means and when it was. It also tells you more information about Dryden.

In the Cliff's guide, out of 234 pages, only 23 cover content. 27 pages are on test-taking strategies. The remainder is two practice tests.

The practice tests are very good and, I think, very representative of what the actual tests are like. The answers to the questions are very well-written and are full of useful information. To continue using Neoclassism as an example, an answer to one question defines the period very nicely. If you have the patience and the organizational skills to dig through the answers to weed out the bits of useful information, then I think the practice tests will help you very much. But I prefer to have the information all in one place to begin with, and then use the answers to fill in what's missing. (The XAM version also had a very good answer key.)

The Cliff's version explicitly says that it is not meant to be a complete resource and the XAM version is not complete either. (I needed to supplement my studies with additional information from internet sources.) But I feel that, in terms of content and ease of study, the XAM study guide is a better source. I would probably buy both, however, use the XAM as a base for studying, and take the practice tests in both books because they ask for different skills (especially for subtest IV).

After reading Gebhard's book, I decided to see what others thought about the book. I was quite surprised to see one reviewer give the book only one star. But, then I read the review and realized that this person had not actually read the book. He simply decided that he did not like the book because he thought the author had friends write the reviews. His review without reading the book is like not liking a person because someone told you a few things about her.

I like Gebhard's book because he does not claim to know the best way to teach. Rather, he wants us, as ESL teachers or future teachers, to learn how to make our own decisions about what to do in the classroom. He gives lots of examples of things we can do as teachers. (I especially like his section chapters on teaching skills -- conversation, listening, reading, writing -- and his chapter on culture and teaching.)He also provides real problems that real teachers have, and gives multiple examples of activities and materials that experienced teachers use. But, he does not tell teachers how they should teach.
The book is full of ideas and easy to read. As an ESL teacher, I can highly recommend it.

This is an absoulute work of superb scholarship. Dr. Gebhard is obviously speaking from years of both research and real-life experience. In an area filled with dull and lifeless preachings by secluded scholars tucked away in ivory towers, this work stands out as a testament to thorough reaseach complimented by understandable and readable conclusions. A must read for anyone in this field!

Excellent resource. I teach ESL to the Hispanic Immigrant Population in Anniston AL and have found this book full of useful suggestions and techniques for the classes we teach.

Have you been asked what TESOL is? This book gives you all the keys you need to understand teaching English to speakers of other languages. It works as an introductory texts for those majoring TESOl or will work in the ESL EFL arena.

This is a book on language teaching for language teachers. The book takes the view that language teachers must be responsible for making the ideas in the book real for their own particular contexts. The book starts with self-development as a theme and then moves on to teaching skills. Jerry Gebhard is careful to point out that he is not providing a bag of tricks as each application is backed-up with a sound theoretical perspective. The references in each section are excellent if the busy teacher has some time to read in more depth. Also, each chapter has activities that teachers can explore in order to apply the chapter information to their own particular context. What I especially like is that these activities encourage teachers to talk to other teachers and colleagues. This is where real self-development starts. This book, then, is a welcome user friendly addition to the field of English Language Teaching. If the user is a teacher, you have found the right book!

This book is a must have for anyone who is willing to teach in an urban education setting. Easy to read with common sense terminology.

I used the earlier version of this book with pre-service teachers in their final university practicum. It's an honest, forthright, useful guide for beginning teachers. My students compared what they were reading with their placement experiences. I can only assume that Weiner has done an even more excellent revision, addressing the toughest issues that teachers face.

Lois Weiner's Urban Teaching provides a clear and insightful look into the issues that each urban teacher faces. A well-balanced mix of theory and anecdotes creates a reader-friendly text with suggestions that rookie and experienced educators alike can adopt.

Perhaps the greatest strength of this text is that it provides information that can be easily translated for every classroom. All students face issues similar to those discussed here, and ultimately all teachers will surely benefit from Weiner's discussion.

Definitely a must for teachers, and I cannot wait to put some of the ideas into practice!! With this easy read, Eric Hougan lets the reader understand exactly what teaching is all about!! I told all of my teacher friends about this book as they will not regret it!!

I am student teaching now and struggling a bit with classroom management. This book had good ideas that are relatively easy to implent. I am going to try some of these strategies in my class.

This book gives great, practical advice for those just entering the profession or working toward a teaching degree. As a current teacher, I really like the strategies the author gives--they are realistic and seem easy to implement. I wish this book was around when I was entering the profession!

This book came in handy as a student teacher and when applying for teaching jobs. I appreciated the strategies on how to jump-start my student teaching on a positive note by creating relationships with my students and CT. Even though I have now completed my student teaching, I will continue to use many of the book's classroom management and discipline tips in my own classroom, such as the question & answer box and bellnote activity. I recommend this to any student teacher."

This book was very useful. I would recommend it to anyone interested in teaching. A pretty easy read, with a lot of good information that you can apply to daily life.