Effective Constructivist Leader

Arthur Shapiro is a professor of educational leadership at the University of South Florida in Tampa with considerable practical experience as a teacher, principal, director of secondary education, assistant superintendent and superintendent of schools K-12 in public, private, inner city, suburban, and rural settings.

• Part 1 So, What's Constructivist Teaching All About?Chapter 1 How Can I Recognize It in Teachers' Professional Practice? Two Case StudiesChapter 2 How to Think Like a Constructivist Teacher in Designing Your Classroom and TeamPart 2 Tools: To Understand Ourselves, Our Kids, Co-WorkersPart 3 More Tools: The Dynamics of Organizations and Constructivist LeadershipChapter 3 What Makes Terry Tick? (Our Needs for Power, Control, Recognition, Safety, Acceptance, Esteem and How Constructivism Helps Satisfy Them)Part 4 A Three (Now Five) Year Case Study of Constructivist LeadershipChapter 4 What Makes Organizations (Read, Schools) Tick? A Quick Guide to How Organizations Work (And How to Create a Healthy Sub-Culture in Them)Part 5 How to Pull Off Morphing Into a ConstructivistChapter 5 What Makes Organizations (Read, Schools) Tick? Hidden Behavior: Images, Cycles, and Pulls - RevealedChapter 6 But First We Need a Purpose: A Case Study: How to Develop Achievable Goals and a Curriculum Structure to Generate Change as a Routine - and, the Crucial Role of Buy-InChapter 7 Your First Priority and Tool: How to Establish Yourself with Teachers, Supervisors, Peers, Kids, and CommunityChapter 8 Power, Empowering, and Constructivist Leadership: How Do We Get It? Use It? Grow It? Lose It? (Which is Pretty Easy to Do)Chapter 9 A Three-Year Constructivist Case Study: Part 1Diagnosing a School's Issues: Getting a Handle on Its Dynamics: EvenUsing a Constructivist Change Strategy to Make It Constructivist (And the Scores Jumped Up)Chapter 10 A Constructivist Case Study: Part 2Southwood School: Three (And Now Five) Years of Constructivism: Spectacular Changes - and, the Scores Jumped UpChapter 11 At Last, What Does a Constructivist School Look Like?What Are Its Essential Elements?What Do Constructivist Leaders Do? - (So That I Can Pull It Off)

Education has been subjected to the latest hula-hoop solutions ever since The Nation at Risk propelled school reform into the national limelight in 1983. While constructivist leadership has been around since John Dewey crafted a lab school at the University of Chicago in the early twentieth century, it has taken someone like Art Shapiro to write a book that unites the work of teachers and administrators in practical ways that produce results in real school settings. Shapiro knows how schools work and he understands the larger theoretical issues that must be addressed without pontificating or losing the reader in unnecessary social science jargon. His case studies and practical suggestions will make constructivist concepts come alive.