ACRE Blog

Allow me to quote the first page of a recently written book:

"Imagine that you received the following announcement from your local physician and hospital:

In a sharp break with tradition, we have decided to start using evidence to make our medical care decisions.  We will evaluate carefully the available data and, in the future, engage in more of the practices that improve health and fewer of the practices that appear to kill people.

 Would you find this announcement reassuring?  Perhaps, on the contrary, you would exclaim, "Isn't that what you have been doing in the past?"  The astonishing fact is that evidence-based decision making in medical care is innovative (Pfeffer & Sutton, 2006).  Moreover, the most detailed medical evidence on the individual level is the autopsy, a procedure that is undoubtedly filled with data but that rarely improves the health of the patient.  There are, of course, exceptions to every rule.  In one famous court-room exchange, the cross-examining attorney asked the medical examiner who had performed an autopsy, "And how did you know that the patient was dead?"  The pathologist replied, "Well his brain and heart had been removed and were in a jar, but I suppose that it's possible that he is out practicing law somewhere."

This quote is from the most recent book written by Richard Reeves, titled, Transforming Professional Development into Student Results.  Although its focus is on one end user--the school student, much of this book can be applied to the field of continuing rabbinic education and its end user--the rabbi. The book is divided into three parts:

1. What's Wrong with Professional Learning?
2. How to Create High-Impact Professional Learning
3. How to Sustain High-Impact Professional Learning

Those of us who work in the field of professional development will easily resonate with some of the chapters in the "what's wrong" section like, "The Law of Initiative Fatigue."  But what makes the book most helpful and hopeful are the last two sections which offer clear guidance based on significant research on "what works."

 I hope you can find the time this summer to read this book and find some important takeaways that can help you improve the field of continuing rabbinic education.