Create a flyer for "Developing Expert Learners"

"Teaching for transfer"  - imparting knowledge and skill in a way that makes them really useful, and not just fodder for exams and tests - is the Holy Grail of education. This book is a wonderfully practical guide to how to do it in any classroom.

As educators, we are challenged in preparing our students for college and career readiness as they go into the real world. Developing Student Expertise addresses the intentional moves of the teacher to prepare students for challenging work at their level of learning, resulting in students reaching their fullest potential as expertise in their own learning.

This book is the roadmap to take students from being developing experts to the experts they all have the potential to be. Providing high expectations and valuing all students as learners requires educators to plan instruction that takes students—all students—from their current level, to that place just beyond that level.

As he did in Rigorous PBL by Design, Michael McDowell has once again produced an invaluable resource for educators who are striving to empower students to fully develop their own expertise and self-efficacy. Developing Expert Learners provides the practical means—through planning tools, research-based strategies, teaching practices, and special features—to enable teachers to maximize student learning at the surface, deep, and transfer levels of complexity.

I appreciate and am enthusiastic about the layout of this book. For a coach, team leader, or school administrator, the book lends itself to being a manual for school improvement. It provides excellent questions to reflect on and activities after each chapter for school leaders to collaborate with and work alongside teacher teams in developing efficacy and expertise at their schools—which in the end will impact the achievement of all our learners.

This urgently needed book has the potential to transform schools and experiences for learners and teachers everywhere. Once again, Michael McDowell has written a compelling, practical guide for educators who seek to give their students the skills they need to be successful in our ever-changing world. This book is a must-read for new and veteran educators alike!

Of course, Michael McDowell has once again provided a purposeful and practical guide for teachers and leaders. Teachers, administrators, and even student leaders recognize the importance of focusing on learning through clear learning intentions, success criteria, and now—with this new book—tools and strategies to measure student progress. We have made a fundamental shift in how we address instructional practice, review student work, and more important, build our own efficacy and expertise at all levels of our organization.

In Developing Expert Learners, McDowell harnesses the research on building student self-efficacy, peer-to-peer feedback structures, and student ownership of learning through a handful of focus areas, aligned and actionable learning practices, and tools that have been road-tested. If you wish to build stronger, more invested, and more equipped learners, this book is a must-read.

As a follow up to Rigorous PBL by Design, McDowell continues to write about practical strategies to help teachers build students’ expertise. The book is filled with strategies, tools, and very useful references based on the exciting research of John Hattie and Visible Learning. McDowell shapes this book around 5Cs—promoting clarity, leveraging challenge, consistent checking, cultivating conversation, and tackling contextually rich problems. Michael’s command of lesson design and instruction make this a natural follow up to his very successful Rigorous PBL by Design.

As we move away from the age of pouring knowledge into the brains of learners and, instead, begin handing them the steering wheel of their own learning to develop efficacy and expertise, McDowell's tool kit of sound simplicity, sparked by wisdom and courage, offers clear and do-able courses of action that all educators can put into motion to change the learning lives of their students.

Developing Expert Learners is a practitioner guide for the research-based classroom teacher. McDowell does an exemplary job of providing powerful strategies that can transform any classroom into a learning laboratory.

Michael McDowell provides practical examples in designing learning for students. Developing Expert Learners is a must-read for educators to build student expertise in a meaningful way, with many wonderful thoughts and ideas to support teachers in developing clarity for their students.