How can we prepare practicing and aspiring education leaders for the complex, adaptive challenges they face? In Helping Educators Grow, Eleanor Drago-Severson presents a new approach to leadership development.

Too often, she argues, we teach leadership development the same way we teach world history: just the facts. Instead, we need to create professional learning environments that invite educational leaders to experience the conditions that support adult growth, even as they are learning about them.

The book takes as its starting point the premise that adult development is leadership development--that is, the task of school leaders is to develop the capacities of adults as well as students. Drawing on the principles of constructive-developmental theory, Drago-Severson offers a framework for conceptualizing growth based on the core elements of care, respect, trust, collaboration, and intentionality. Richly informed by examples of effective, developmentally oriented learning experiences for aspiring and practicing leaders, the book includes application exercises and reflective questions to help readers engage with the ideas presented.

Widely respected for her groundbreaking work in adult development, leadership, and capacity building in learning communities, Drago-Severson provides the tools and concepts to make any professional learning initiative a developmental opportunity for individuals and groups in a variety of contexts: university-based seminars, professional development workshops, professional learning communities, or peer-to-peer networks.
About the Author: Eleanor Drago-Severson is a professor of education leadership and adult learning and leadership at Columbia University's Teachers College. She earned her master's and doctoral degrees from Harvard, where she taught from 1997 to 2005. Her research and teaching center on leadership for supporting adult development in K-12 schools, adult basic education/English for speakers of other languages (ABE/ESOL), and university contexts. Her work is inspired by the idea that schools must be places where adults as well as children can grow. Ellie is the author of Becoming Adult Learners: Principles and Practices for Effective Development (Teachers College Press, 2004), Helping Teachers Learn: Principal Leadership for Adult Growth and Development (Corwin, 2004), and Leading Adult Learning: Supporting Adult Development in Our School (Corwin/Sage Press, 2009). Helping Teachers Learn was recognized as the 2004 Book of the Year from the National Staff Development Council (now Learning Forward). Leading Adult Learning was awarded Learning Forward's book of fall 2009. She is currently writing Learning and Leading Together (Corwin/Sage).

Ellie has served as teacher, program designer, director, consultant, and professional developer in a variety of educational contexts, including K-12 schools, adult education community centers, and universities. She also was a lead researcher, with Robert Kegan, on the Adult Development Team of the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy (NCSALL) at Harvard University. She consults for coaches, leaders, and educational organizations on matters of personal and professional learning and development for superintendents, principals, and teachers, as well as on leadership supportive of adult growth domestically and internationally. Ellie has been awarded three distinguished teaching awards from Teachers College (2007), the Harvard Graduate School of Education's Morningstar Award (2005) for excellence in teaching, and Harvard Extension School's Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching (1998).

She grew up in the Bronx and lives in New York City with her husband, David.