Features and Benefits
As you read this book, you will notice that we include pedagogical features designed to support your engagement in inquiry processes, should you wish to take up this model of professional learning (see Figure A). Across chapters, whenever we describe strategies and provide concrete examples, inquiry-oriented activities will assist you in considering how to refine practices, take action, check on progress towards goals, and/or imagine next steps for ongoing practice and learning. For example, tools are provided to support you in scanning for evidence of SRL in action (Chapter 1), focusing on the needs of learners in your context and developing a hunch about what might be needed to support them effectively (Chapter 4), and taking action and reflecting on implications (Chapters 5, 7, 8, & 9).
We also include many pedagogical features designed to support your active learning about SRL and how to support it in your context:
Activities:
Activities will support you to work with and apply key themes from each chapter.
SRL Vignettes
We present extended “SRL Vignettes” to help you imagine SRL in action both within and outside of schools. These boxes are designed to help you make connections between theory and practice.
Starting Small
In our Starting Small feature, we offer examples of how other educators have taken first steps in building SRL–promoting practices into their own teaching.
Food for Thought
Our Food for Thought feature will provoke your thinking about key ideas in relation to your own learning, practice, or inquiry.
SRL Planning Tools
Many chapters contain a “SRL Planning Tool,” a template designed to help you consider how to integrate SRL–promoting practices into your own work with learners.
Links to Resources
Links to Resources will direct you to accessible sources of additional tools, examples or information.
Other Features
- Learning Intentions are listed at the beginning of each chapter to signal what you should be able to do after engaging with the material.
- Key Terms are bolded when first introduced and are defined in the Glossary.
- Margin Notes are provided to help you in focusing and reflecting on key points.
- Recommended Resources are provided at the end of each chapter to identify related readings you can access for further information.
While this book is ideal for supporting educators engaged in inquiry-based professional learning, it is certainly not necessary for you to take that approach to profit from this publication. Whether or not you choose to adopt an inquiry framework, your learning through reading this book will be enhanced if you use it as a resource for learning about something you care about deeply and that you think will make a significant difference for students. Based on overwhelming research evidence coupled with practice-based insights developed in collaboration with teachers, we are convinced that supporting SRL is something worth caring about deeply. SRL is hugely consequential in students’ success, not only during the school years, but into adulthood. Through engaging with this book and the various kinds of learning supports embedded within it, we hope that you too will have the opportunity to appreciate and witness the power of SRL as a framework for advancing students’ learning in classrooms and beyond.