AACTE to Honor Hargreaves–Fullan Book on ‘Professional Capital’

(Feb. 19, 2014, Washington, D.C.) – The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) will present its 2014 Outstanding Book Award to Andy Hargreaves, Ph.D., and Michael Fullan, Ph.D., for their monograph Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in Every School. The award, which recognizes exemplary books that make a significant contribution to the knowledge base of educator preparation or of teaching and learning with implications for educator preparation, will be presented March 3 at AACTE’s 66th Annual Meeting in Indianapolis.

Professional Capital draws on examples from the United States and other countries to offer a vision of a stronger teaching profession, rejecting the current U.S. trend to focus on narrowly defined learning outcomes. In the award nomination letter, Dennis Shirley, Ed.D., professor in the Boston College Lynch School of Education, summarized Professional Capital‘s conceptual contribution: “Professional capital consists of three kinds of capital: human capital of attracting and developing the best talent in teaching through rigorous and practical teacher education, the social capital of teachers collaborating effectively and taking collective responsibility for students’ success together and the decisional capital of retaining teachers long enough and challenging and stretching them so that they will sharpen their powers of judgment over time.”

The AACTE Committee on Research and Dissemination, which reviewed nominations for the award, praised the book for its conceptual richness and its elegant writing.

“This book rises above the ongoing divisive conversation about the affordances and constraints of different pathways into teaching,” said Jennie Whitcomb, Ph.D., chair of AACTE’s committee and associate dean for teacher education at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “The committee values the systemic thinking promoted in the monograph and believes it will spark needed and provocative conversations among AACTE’s membership.”

Maureen Kenny, Ph.D., dean of the Lynch School of Education, commended the book’s “game-changing idea for the future of the teaching profession,” adding, “The central idea of professional capital should shape educational policy, research and teacher preparation around the world.”

Dr. Hargreaves is the Thomas More Brennan Chair in Education at the Lynch School of Education, and Dr. Fullan is professor emeritus at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. The book was published in 2012 by Teachers College Press and the Ontario Principal’s Council.

For more information on AACTE’s 2014 award winners, visit www.aacte.org.

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AACTE: Serving Learners
The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education is a national alliance of educator preparation programs dedicated to the highest quality professional development of teachers and school leaders in order to enhance PK-12 student learning. The 800 institutions holding AACTE membership represent public and private colleges and universities in every state, the District of Columbia, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Guam. AACTE’s reach and influence fuels its mission of serving learners by providing all school personnel with superior training and continuing education.