Realizing the power of professional learning

Realizing the power of professional learning. Helen Timperley. Maidenhead, Berkshire: Open University Press. 2011. 196 pp.

This is an exciting new book for practitioners highlighting a core element of professional practice and its leadership: the impact of teacher learning on improving student learning. It is the sort of book that should be essential reading for experienced and beginning teachers. It is the sort of book that school leaders need to read and use in promoting teacher learning for motivating improvement in classrooms and schools.

The approach promoted in the book is the model of cycles of teacher inquiry, knowledge-building and problemsolving based on addressing key questions about student knowledge and skills; professional knowledge and skills and the impact of changed actions on student learning outcomes. Coming at a time when international concerns about educational outcomes are being directed to the core issue of improving student achievement, this book is clearly positioned to assist a shift in leader and teacher thinking, placing student learning at the heart of professional learning.

As an academic I have an extremely high regard for the work of Helen Timperley and the research-based advice that emerged from the 2007 Best Evidence Synthesis (BES) -Teacher Professional Learning and Development. This book is grounded in the BES research, brought to life through numerous case examples illustrating the professional learning cycle in action. Keen to share this review with a school practitioner who could judge the worth of what the author proposes and showcases, I invited my student colleague Linda Allen (a primary school deputy principal) to comment from a teacher and leader perspective.

Linda says, "I actually really liked what Timperley has written as...