2020 PROSE Award Winner, Education Theory Category
2019 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice
In Where Teachers Thrive, Susan Moore Johnson outlines a powerful argument about the importance of the school as an organization in nurturing high‐quality teaching. Based on case studies conducted in fourteen high-poverty, urban schools, the book examines why some schools failed to make progress, while others achieved remarkable results. It explores the challenges that administrators and teachers faced and describes what worked, what didn’t work, and why.
Johnson draws on vivid portraits of schools to highlight an array of school‐based systems and practices that support teachers’ professional growth and effectiveness. These include a rich and interactive hiring process; team‐based curriculum planning and assessment; and informative feedback and ongoing professional learning. Critical to all of these is the role of the principal as an essential agent in a school’s success. Although these elements may vary from school to school, Johnson argues that together these systems provide a comprehensive, mutually reinforcing set of well-orchestrated strategies that can help schools deliver results that exceed the sum of teachers’ individual efforts.
Since 2000, policy makers and education officials have diligently sought to improve schools by improving the quality of individual teachers. However, even if those teachers are skilled and committed, the schools where they work are all too often disjointed, dysfunctional organizations that serve no one well.
Where Teachers Thrive explains clearly how educators within a school can join together to adopt systems of practice that ensure growth and success by all teachers and their students.
About the author
Susan Moore Johnson is the Jerome T. Murphy Research Professor in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she served as academic dean from 1993 to 1999. A former high school teacher who served in an administrative role as a teacher leader, Johnson has an ongoing research interest in the work of teachers and the reform of schools and school systems.
Johnson has written four books and many journal articles about teachers and their work.
Teacher Unions in Schools (1984) focuses on the role of teachers unions in the day-to-day work of schools.
Teachers at Work (1990) examines the school as a workplace for teachers.
Finders and Keepers: Helping New Teachers Survive and Thrive in Our Schools (2006), written with colleagues at the Project on the Next Generation of Teachers, centers on the experiences of new teachers. Subsequent research at the Project focuses on teachers’ careers, alternative preparation, the role of unions, hiring, induction, performance-based pay, teacher teams, and teacher evaluation. Johnson also is coauthor, with John P. Papay, of
Redesigning Teacher Pay (2009).
Johnson has also written and consulted widely about educational leadership and management. Her 1996 book,
Leading to Change: Challenges of the New Superintendency, analyzes the leadership practices of twelve newly appointed superintendents during their first six months in the role. Between 2007 and 2014, Johnson served as cochair of the Public Education Leadership Project (PELP), a collaboration between the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she and her colleagues wrote
Achieving Coherence in District Improvement (2015), which examines the management relationship between the central office and schools in five large urban school districts.
Johnson serves on various advisory boards for organizations and publications. She is an inaugural fellow of the American Educational Research Association and a member of the National Academy of Education.
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