What We're Reading

Education Has Much to Learn From Healthcare Reform Efforts

Clay Shirky evaluates the effect of the Internet on modern group dynamics.

When looking for comparisons, people who want to change education often consider health systems.

In his book The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, scientist and organizational-theory expert Peter Senge describes a learning organization as a place "where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together."

For social scientists starting their careers, creating research models that work is crucial. A new book suggests that they may be unaware of problems they face in part because scholars don't share stories of what didn't work on their projects, and how to deal with particular challenges.

Hot off the press is the Jossey-Bass/Wiley New Directions for Higher Education’s publication, : The First Wave of Carnegie Classified Institutions. Amy Driscoll, who worked with us on this voluntary Carnegie Classification, said that it was “the talk of a recent Association of American Colleges and Universities’ meeting.”

When the economy recovers, things won’t return to normal—and a different mode of leadership will be required. An article in the Harvard Business Review, “Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis,” by Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow and Marty Linsky argue that leadership will require new skills tailored to an environment of urgency, high stakes and uncertainty—even after the current economic crisis is over. This has applications beyond business.

The Board of Science Education at the National Academies has some wonderful resources on the state of knowledge about various undergraduate STEM education strategies.

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Technology is often part of the problem of rising costs rather than part of the solution. But five course-redesign models are realizing the promise of IT to improve the quality of student learning and reduce the costs of instruction.

By Carol Twigg, published in Educause Review, Sept/Oct 2003.

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This book, by Public Affairs Books, reveals how efforts to introduce the concepts of quality improvement used in major corporations and other organizations to the practice of modern-day medicine can transform the American health-care system by promoting the best interests of the patient, eliminating preventable mistakes, reducing infection rates, and allowing doctors to spend more time with patients. It also has lessons for scaling change in education.

By Charles Kenney.