The defining attributes of the 21st-century economy and fourth industrial revolution are innovation, technology, globalization, and a rapid pace of change. Therefore, an organization's capacity to enhance the capabilities of its workforce and create a culture of continuous learning are vital to remaining competitive. These trends make an effective learning-and-development (L&D) function more critical than ever. This compendium of articles, from L&D professionals at McKinsey & Company, discusses every facet of professional development and training-from ensuring that L&D's efforts are closely aligned with business strategy to elements of advancing the L&D function, designing learning solutions, deploying digital learning, executing flawlessly, measuring impact, and ensuring good governance. For L&D professionals seeking to hone their organization's efforts, Elevating Learning & Development: Insights and Practical Guidance from the Field is the ideal resource.

Get leadership-fit and see results in yourself and others. Leadership and fitness are both journeys of self-discovery. Both require self-awareness, passion, and commitment. Both have the potential to inspire others. And for both, results come only with effort. To achieve great heights, you must be willing to take the first step, put in the work, and overcome the inevitable obstacles. In Peak Leadership Fitness: Elevating Your Leadership Game, leadership coach and fitness expert Timothy J. Tobin invites you to share the lessons he’s learned at the intersection of physical and leadership fitness. With the encouraging style of a trainer-coach, Tobin shares his four fitness principles: You never know what you’re capable of until you take that first step. You must put in the effort. You learn more about yourself when times are tough. What you consume matters. Tobin describes the foundations for leadership fitness, including motivation and mindset, and details his steps to becoming leadership-fit. From taking your pulse to seeking recovery by building endurance, Tobin employs fitness metaphors while remaining aware of the critical difference between personal fitness and leadership—the stakes are much higher with leadership. This book was written for today’s and tomorrow’s leaders facing today’s challenges—time constraints, overcrowded leadership development landscape, and uncertainty about where to start. It is grounded in learning and development and leadership research and illustrated with true-to-life vignettes, sample leadership fitness plans, templates, and tip sheets. Tobin points out the opportunities for leadership development that are all around you—you just need to know where to look and how to integrate the activities into your regular routine. Train smart; train often. Build good habits. Develop yourself and others. You’ve got this!

In this 2nd edition of Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning, Mike Schmoker extends and updates the case that our schools could be on the cusp of swift, unparalleled improvements. But we are stymied by a systemwide failure to simplify and prioritize; we have yet to focus our limited time and energy on the most essential, widely acknowledged, evidence-based practices that could have more impact than all other initiatives combined. They are: simple, coherent curricula; straightforward, traditional literacy practices; and lessons built around just a few hugely effective elements of good teaching. As Schmoker demonstrates, the case for these practices—and the need for them—has grown prodigiously. In every chapter, you’ll find late-breaking discoveries and practical advice on how to simplify the implementation of new state standards in the subject areas; on the hidden pitfalls of our most popular, but unproven instructional fads and programs; and on simple, versatile strategies for building curriculum, planning lessons, and integrating literacy into every discipline. All of these strategies and findings are supported with exciting new evidence from actual schools. Their success confirms, as Michael Fullan writes, that a focus on the best "high-leverage practices" won’t only improve student performance; they will produce "stunningly powerful consequences" in our schools.

New Pedagogies for Deep Learning (NDPL) provides a comprehensive strategy for systemwide transformation. Using the 6 competencies of NDPL and a wealth of vivid examples, Fullan re-defines and re-examines what deep learning is and identifies the practical strategies for revolutionizing learning and leadership.

Examines systemic issues contributing to inequities in early childhood, with ways faculty, teachers, administrators, and policymakers can work to disrupt them.

This essential text unpacks major transformations in the study of learning and human development and provides evidence for how science can inform innovation in the design of settings, policies, practice, and research to enhance the life path, opportunity and prosperity of every child. The ideas presented provide researchers and educators with a rationale for focusing on the specific pathways and developmental patterns that may lead a specific child, with a specific family, school, and community, to prosper in school and in life. Expanding key published articles and expert commentary, the book explores a profound evolution in thinking that integrates findings from psychology with biology through sociology, education, law, and history with an emphasis on institutionalized inequities and disparate outcomes and how to address them. It points toward possible solutions through an understanding of and addressing the dynamic relations between a child and the contexts within which he or she lives, offering all researchers of human development and education a new way to understand and promote healthy development and learning for diverse, specific youth regardless of race, socioeconomic status, or history of adversity, challenge, or trauma. The book brings together scholars and practitioners from the biological/medical sciences, the social and behavioral sciences, educational science, and fields of law and social and educational policy. It provides an invaluable and unique resource for understanding the bases and status of the new science, and presents a roadmap for progress that will frame progress for at least the next decade and perhaps beyond.

Children are natural scientists, artists, mathematicians, authors, and scholars. From the time they are born they seek out information about the world around them in an effort to construct meaning and further their development. While children have an inherent drive to make sense of their reality, parents have a unique opportunity to harness their children’s curiosity and channel it into a love of learning. Playful learning is the magic that takes place when we meld a child’s sense of joy and wonder with thoughtfully planned learning experiences. Through easy-to-implement, hands-on projects you can engage your child in fun and creative ways that encourage learning and impart the joy of discovery. With a little bit of information and forethought, you can play a pivotal role in the cognitive and creative development of your child Mariah Bruehl has worked in the field of education for over a decade. She has taught in the classroom, developed curriculum in many different subject areas, trained teachers, and implemented programs across many grade levels. She is the mother of two girls and the owner of Playful Learning—a retail space and education center in Sag Harbor. Learn more at www.playfulearning.com.