This book is an invaluable desk reference for facilitators, leaders, coaches and anyone who wants to engage in more effective learning and decision-making conversations. It offers over 1700 rich questions that you can borrow or adapt to improve your inquiry skills, and provides clear frameworks that point to when, where, and why particular questions are most useful.

This book is an essential tool for facilitators of groups using protocols, or structured conversations, to collaboratively review student and teacher work. A follow-up to Looking Together at Student Work and Assessing Student Learning, this resource considers the purposes for engaging in collborative review and provides some of the most effective strategies for using protocols to support successful group work. The text includes activities that facilitators can use to apply the frameworks and resources provided in this book.

“I have had the good fortune to watch both David and Tina facilitate learning groups and have learned from the power of their modeling. . . . I am delighted that they have gathered their wisdom here in this volume to share with others eager to embark on the journey and experience the joys of facilitating learning with colleagues.” —From the Foreword by Ron Ritchhart, senior research associate, Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education One of the most important shifts in schools in the last two decades has been the growing emphasis on collaboration among teachers and other educators. Whether you are a teacher facilitating a group for the first time or an experienced facilitator seeking to further develop your skills, this book is for you. Organized to be used as both an exploration of the role of facilitating and as a handbook of strategies, this resource covers a range of contexts that include faculty meetings, department meetings, professional learning communities, grade-level teams, and inquiry groups. This book is a perfect companion to the authors’ bestseller, The Facilitator’s Book of Questions, which focuses on the skills needed to facilitate protocols or structured conversations. Facilitating for Learning extends the scope of that work by also examining the facilitator’s responsibilities for supporting a group’s learning during all parts of a meeting, between meetings, and within the larger school context and culture. It is an essential resource for teachers, administrators, coaches, and teacher educators. Book Features: Contrasts facilitating for learning with other professional development roles, including staff development, coaching, and supervision.Outlines the basic responsibilities and tasks of facilitating teacher learning groups, including “moves” the facilitator might employ.Considers challenges related to school culture and leadership, group interactions, and time constraints.Provides resources to help facilitators develop their skills, including tools and references to other works on facilitation.

This updated third edition provides teachers and administrators with strategies and resources for examining and discussing student work, such as essays, math problems, projects, artwork, and more. The authors describe two ways of looking together at student work—The Tuning Protocol and The Collaborative Assessment Conference—including how to choose work to present and examples of groups using each protocol. This new edition also offers suggestions for addressing some of the key challenges that emerge when groups first begin to share and discuss student work, as well as guidance for using protocols once groups have progressed beyond the initial stages. This book will be useful to teachers, administrators, teacher educators, coaches, and others who are involved in the work of improving teaching and learning for all students. New for the Third Edition: The addition of The Microlab Protocol, a relatively quick and easy way to introduce groups to protocol-guided conversation.Facilitation strategies and more detailed notes for presenters about how to select work and prepare for their roles.Updated examples and a new case focused on a school's use of protocols to develop teachers’ understanding and application of the Common Core State Standards.Current research on the effectiveness of practices that involve the collaborative examination of student work. “School leaders looking for systemic strategies to improve student achievement would be well served by Looking Together at Student Work.” —The School Administrator (first edition) “This is a book that is at once brief, elegant, and useful. . . . These authors know as well as anyone on Earth that the practice of collectively accountable teaching is messy, but they also appreciate the fact that people in the midst of it nonetheless need some kind of map.” —From the Forewordby Joseph P. McDonald, New York University “This excellent book will be very helpful to teachers, school leaders, and parents who want to improve teaching and learning, and to researchers who want to understand school improvement.” —David Cohen, John Dewey Collegiate Professor, School of Education, University of Michigan

Some time ago, Ralph Winter brilliantly identified three eras of modern missions: Era 1: William Carey focused on the coastlands; Era 2: Hudson Taylor focused on the inlands; Era 3: Donald McGavran and Cameron Townsend focused on unreached peoples. With all the fast and furious changes swirling around us today in twenty-first century missions, have we entered a Fourth Era? If so, who are the people primarily involved? How are they selected? How are they trained? How long do they serve? Has the Third Era ministry focus--reaching the unreached--changed? If so, to what? Are there any successful case studies out there? Have McGavran and Townsend passed the baton to a new leader(s)? If so, to whom? This book seeks to answer these and related questions. Contributors: Dr. Ben Beckner Dr. Monroe Brewer Dr. Don Finley Mike Griffis Dr. Gary Hipp, MD Jerry Hogshead Kaikou Maisu Judy Manna Kenn Oke Dr. A. Sue Russell Dr. Robert Strauss Peter Swann Bryan Thomas Diane Thomas Dr. Mike Wilson Dr. Sherwood G. Lingenfelter

"Hosts of all kinds, this is a must-read!" --Chris Anderson, owner and curator of TED From the host of the New York Times podcast Together Apart, an exciting new approach to how we gather that will transform the ways we spend our time together—at home, at work, in our communities, and beyond. In The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker argues that the gatherings in our lives are lackluster and unproductive--which they don't have to be. We rely too much on routine and the conventions of gatherings when we should focus on distinctiveness and the people involved. At a time when coming together is more important than ever, Parker sets forth a human-centered approach to gathering that will help everyone create meaningful, memorable experiences, large and small, for work and for play. Drawing on her expertise as a facilitator of high-powered gatherings around the world, Parker takes us inside events of all kinds to show what works, what doesn't, and why. She investigates a wide array of gatherings--conferences, meetings, a courtroom, a flash-mob party, an Arab-Israeli summer camp--and explains how simple, specific changes can invigorate any group experience. The result is a book that's both journey and guide, full of exciting ideas with real-world applications. The Art of Gathering will forever alter the way you look at your next meeting, industry conference, dinner party, and backyard barbecue--and how you host and attend them.