"Intentional Interruption: Breaking Down Learning Barriers to Transform Professional Practice" by Steven Katz and Lisa Ain Dack

This isn't one of those books trying to sell a particular educational idea as much as it is about saying most initiatives don't work.  And they don't.  The slim treatise (93 pages) maintains a few absolutes.  1) Professional Development must create permanent change in order to be considered successful.  2) Human beings are hard-wired not to think deeply and to change how they operate.  3) A significant challenge to PD is that many do not take enough time to understand the problem before jumping into action, which results in a lot of action but not results.


The authors aren't wrong.  They make their point in clear, clean points which are interesting if not incredibly engaging.  The book reads like a TED Talk.  Lots of quick, pithy points with a strong example here and there.  Thankfully, because of the nature of the topic there aren't a lot of graphs, charts, etc.  The one drawback is a lot of repetition.  They tell you what they are going to tell you in the Preface, then they tell you again what they are going to tell you in Chapter 1, then repeat the whole thing at the beginning and end of each chapter.  (It made for fast reading when you realize you can kind of skip the opening and closing section of each paragraph).  Worth the time to read it but could also get the gist from a well-crafted Powerpoint.