The School Leader's Guide to Student Learning Supports
New Directions for Addressing Barriers to Learning
- Howard S. Adelman - Center for Mental Health in Schools, Dept. of Psychology, UCLA
- Linda Taylor - Center for Mental Health in Schools, Dept. of Psychology, UCLA
This guide for school leaders, and its companion volume for site-based staff, emphasizes frameworks and strategies for dealing with the entire range of learning, behaviour, and emotional problems seen in schools within a context that emphasizes student and staff strengths, resilience, assets, and protective factors.
The authors provide a four-pronged approach to addressing barriers to learning, emphasizing adopting an intervention framework that is comprehensive, multifaceted and cohesive; rethinking infrastructure and policy; and using a sophisticated approach to facilitating major systemic changes.
Built on decades of research, and endorsed by more than 20 professional associations, the authors' approach provides specific tools and strategies for understanding and assessing the gap between what students need and what they are receiving, as well as creating the analyses and implementation frameworks that will lead to new and better directions for addressing barriers to learning.
A series of orienting questions at the start of each chapter will help readers visualize how the content applies to their own specific schools and districts and can also be used to guide discussions with colleagues and community, and as a focus for staff development sessions.
More than 75 figures, guides, and tools for analysis and capacity building are also included in the book, as are cartoons, quotations, and case studies.
“Offers a broad view, and a systemic approach missing from most books on school reform and improving student outcomes, especially for the student who is not achieving.”
-Susan Wooley, Executive Director
American School Health Association, OH
“I have not read any other book that is as comprehensive in explaining how the fragmentation of services limits our ability to service children, as well as provides the 'how to.' In this era of data-based decision making, the authors continue to present well-researched material that perhaps many educators have only read about in isolation.”
-Sandra Screen, Director
Office of Psychological Services, Detroit, MI
“Provides a roadmap for how schools in collaboration with community partners have a role to play and can address barriers to student learning. The book recognizes how difficult this work is, but also provides critical information for undertaking it…I am not aware of any other book that contextualizes the barriers in sweeping system reform, then provides a step-by-step guide on how to effect it.”
