Teaching for Instructional Equity and Cognitive Justice
Building on the popular Ready for Rigor® framework from her bestselling book Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, author Zaretta Hammond offers a practical roadmap for closing the knowing-doing gap, grounded in the science of learning.
This essential resource is for educators, instructional coaches, and school leaders who are committed to moving the needle on academic achievement in their districts.
To understand the achievement gaps that persist in our schools despite years of equity initiatives, we must look to the insidious legacy of segregated schools and the deliberate underdevelopment of diverse students’ cognitive abilities. Uprooting this “cognitive redlining” requires we reimagine instruction for our most vulnerable learners so they can rebuild their brains’ learning muscles.
Rebuilding Students’ Learning Power outlines a five-step process to coach students to strengthen their natural learning abilities while dismantling over-scaffolding of instruction, the number one contributor to cognitive redlining. Additional features include:
“Zaretta Hammond has done it again. Rebuilding Students’ Learning Power is essential reading for anyone committed to justice in education. With clarity and urgency, Zaretta names hard truths with unflinching clarity and gives us a roadmap to radically transform education. This book with unflinching clarity and gives us a roadmap to radically transform education. This book is rooted in research, fueled by love, and full of tools educators can use right away. I’ll be sharing this book with every teacher and leader I work with.”
~ Elana Aguilar
Author
Onward, Arise, Coaching for Equity,
and more.
“Zaretta Hammond’s new book is a more-than-worthy successor to Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. She lays out very practical steps any teacher can use to move from a “pedagogy of compliance” to a pedagogy that values the assets and possibilities of every student. In today’s environment where equity and even learning is being attacked, we all need a guide like Rebuilding Students’ Learning Power to provide the tools we need to fight for our students, their families, and our communities.”
~ Larry Ferlazzo
Teacher Advice Columnist
Education Week & Author of the ELL Teacher’s Toolbox
“Hammond doesn’t just diagnose the problem; she provides a practical and actionable roadmap for change. For individual teachers, instructional coaches, and school leaders, Rebuilding Students’ Learning Power serves as a user manual and playbook. It’s not about adopting ‘silver bullet strategies’ but about a fundamental reorientation around the student as the primary actor in their learning journey. This book is a must-read for anyone serious about dismantling systemic educational inequities and truly empowering all students to reach their full cognitive potential.”
~ Mathew Portell
Principal, Author, and International Speaker
“This book is cogent, clear, and compelling with clarity about how we have relegated many learners to second rate educational experiences and what we must do to change. We have too long ignored our responsibility to be the teachers and leaders our children and youth need. With new language and guidance to change how adults should learn and teach, Hammond reframes what we know about learning and how that knowledge can and should translate to the classroom and the professional experiences that teachers and leaders should have. Through listening to the salient advice about how we learn, we can resurrect our commitment to the Dewey quote: ‘What the best and wisest parent wants for his child, that must we want for all the children of the community. Anything less is unlovely, and left unchecked, destroys our democracy.”
~ Lynda Tredway
EdD Research Advisory
“In Rebuilding Students’ Learning Power, Zaretta Hammond offers us both a mirror and a map. It pushes us to confront the ways a pedagogy of compliance and dependence has become part of the unexamined grammar of schools while offering us a clear, research-informed pathway toward the development of classrooms where students do not just complete unchallenging work—they grow into powerful thinkers and learners. Hammond’s thoughtful, engaging, writing couldn’t be timelier. What Hammond makes so clear is that cognitive justice is not separate from the work of teaching for understanding and the development of thinking dispositions—it is central to it. Her vision aligns powerfully with creation of cultures of thinking: learning environments where thinking is valued, visible, and actively promoted.”
~ Dr. Ron Ritchhart
Director
Worldwide Cultures of Thinking Project
“Drawing on the science of learning and development, Hammond brings to life the kind of teaching that can develop the skills currently required in a fast-changing knowledge-based society. This is a must-read for educators and policymakers who are seeking a path to effective teaching for all.”
~Linda Darling-Hammond
Founding President and Chief Knowledge Officer
Learning Policy Institute and Charles E. Ducommun Professor Emeritus, Stanford University
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