The Fourth Way: The Inspiring Future for Educational Change, Sep/2009

Bestseller!

Awards:
2010 Association of Educational Publishers Distinguished Achievement Award Finalist

“Andy Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley, always one or two steps ahead of the field, have done it again. An extremely balanced and insightful treatment of the first three ways of change, in which the authors clearly display the strengths and limitations of each model. And then they go to town in mapping out the fourth way—a concise and compelling framework for change that integrates teacher professionalism, community engagement, government policy, and accountability. The Fourth Way is itself a powerful ‘catalyst for coherence’ in a field that badly needs guidance. Read the book and rethink your approach to educational reform.”
—Michael Fullan, Educational Consultant, Author, The Challenge of School Change

A compelling approach to lasting educational change informed by lessons learned and new successes worldwide!

In an expressive and absorbing style, this penetrating volume offers a plan for viable and sustainable educational reform that reflects research on traditional methods and new findings from successful school initiatives around the globe.

Beginning with an incisive analysis of the three major educational change efforts of the past 25 years, Andy Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley offer a plan that integrates government policy, professional involvement, and public engagement to create an environment of greater inclusiveness, security, and humanity. Drawing on “Four Horizons of Hope”—examples of promising implementation and practice—the book demonstrates how districts and schools can achieve dramatic improvement built on:

1. Six Pillars of Purpose that support change
2. Three Principles of Professionalism that drive change
3. Four Catalysts of Coherence that sustain change

Written for educators, consultants, and administrators at the school and district level, The Fourth Way represents an innovative vision of educational change for meeting the dramatic problems and dynamic challenges facing educators in the 21st century.

About The Authors:

Andy Hargreaves is the Thomas More Brennan Chair at the Lynch School of Education, Boston College, and the elected Visiting Professor at the Institute of Education, London. He is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Educational Change and serves as leading editor of the first and secondInternational Handbook of Educational Change. Hargreaves is the cofounder and former director of the International Centre for Educational Change at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in Toronto.

Dennis Shirley is professor at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. Shirley's educational work spans from the nitty-gritty micro-level of assisting beginning teachers in complex school environments to the macro-level of designing and guiding large-scale research and intervention projects for school districts, states, and networks. Shirley was the first US scholar to document the rise of community organizing as an educational change strategy, and his activities in this arena have led to multiple long-term collaborations and a steady stream of speaking engagements and visiting professorships in the United States, Canada, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Japan.

Shirley publishes frequently in Educational Leadership, the Phi Delta Kappan, Teachers College Record, and Education Week. With colleague Andy Hargreaves, he recently conducted a study of over 300 secondary schools in the United Kingdom affiliated with the Raising Achievement Transforming Learning network of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust. In addition, Shirley and Hargreaves completed a study of the Alberta Initiative for School Improvement, a network sponsoring lateral learning within and across schools in the world’s second highest-achieving jurisdiction after Finland.

Fluent in German, Shirley recently has spoken at and advised the Free University of Berlin, the University of Vienna, the University of Hildesheim, and the University of Dortmund on topics ranging from community engagement in schools to the reform of teacher education. At home in Boston, MA, Shirley is in the fourth year of leading a teacher inquiry seminar along with teacher leader Elizabeth MacDonald that is described in their recently published Teachers College Press book, The Mindful Teacher.

Shirley has received numerous scholarly awards, including fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Bad Godesberg, Germany, and the Rockefeller