Education in the 21st century is shifting focus from accessing and sharing information to designing active and collaborative learning environments which foster student engagement and critical thinking skills. Active learning features a hands-on, activity-based teaching approach during which students synthesize information and take joy in new discovery. The Handbook of Research on Learner-Centered Pedagogy in Teacher Education and Professional Development presents a comprehensive look into the methodologies and strategies necessary to establish classroom climates in which students feel free to question their preconceptions and express opinions. Featuring chapters from international researchers, this book is ideal for administrators, teachers, policy makers, and students of education.

Achieving College Dreams: How a University-Charter District Partnership Created an Early College High School tells the story of a remarkable 10-year collaboration between the University of California, Berkeley and Aspire Public Schools to develop and nurture the California College Preparatory Academy. Bridging the two cultures-artfully described as "Pac-Man (the charter district) meets chess (the university)"-the school serves as an exemplar in providing low-income and first-generation college youth with an excellent and equitable education. Framed by a longitudinal lens, findings from community-engaged scholarship, and a diversity of voices from students to superintendents, this book charts the journey from the initial decision to open a school to the high school graduation of its first two classes. The book captures struggle, improvement, and success as it takes readers inside the workings of the partnership, the development of the school, and the spillover of effects across district and university. Confronting the challenge of interweaving rigor and support, its authors explore such critical ingredients as teacher-student advisories; school transition; the home-school divide; building a supportive college-preparatory culture; teaching with depth, relational power, and equity; the forging of an academic identity; and scaling up. At a time of sharply unequal schools, glaring disparities in college readiness, and heightened expectations, Achieving College Dreams uniquely extends the knowledge base about how to better prepare underserved students for college eligibility and success. The book also calls for universities to step up to the plate as partners with districts to ensure both excellence and equity in secondary education for all children.

The field of curriculum inquiry has grown rapidly over the last four decades resulting in many new forms of curriculum inquiry to be used as tools to answer unique curriculum-related research questions. There are few texts available that include concise descriptions and elements of curriculum inquiry methodologies and directed at enabling researchers to wisely choose a form of curriculum inquiry most appropriate for their study. Conceptual Analyses of Curriculum Inquiry Methodologies presents chapters that are each devoted to a particular form of inquiry, with a conceptual analysis of the methodology, its purpose(s), its utilization, structure, and organization, all written by scholars with firsthand experience with the form of inquiry. These experts also take the liberty of citing examples of published studies that have utilized the methodology, share the types of relevant data collection instruments and forms of data produced, and also share research questions that can be answered via their form of inquiry. Covering topics such as quantitative methods of inquiry, glocalization, and educational criticism, this is an essential text for curriculum designers, doctoral students, doctoral researchers, university faculty, professors, researchers, and academicians.

While incorporating digital technologies into the classroom has offered new ways of teaching and learning into educational processes, it is essential to take a look at how the digital shift impacts teachers, school administration, and curriculum development. Academic Knowledge Construction and Multimodal Curriculum Development presents practical conversations with philosophical and theoretical concerns regarding the use of digital technologies in the educational process. This book will also aim to challenge the assumption that information accessibility is synonymous with learning. It is an essential reference for educators and practitioners interested in examining the complexity of academic knowledge construction in multimodal, digital worlds.

This volume draws on findings from the Canada-China Nature Notes Reciprocal Learning Program to explore cross-cultural exchanges in science education in and outside of the classroom. Under the collaborative reciprocity perspective, cross-cultural learning needs to go beyond simple comparison in practices, values, and results and moves to a paradigm that emphasizes a two-way learning process in the context of acting together. Through collaborative work between the international teams and partner schools, the program described in this book shows how collaborative efforts between the two sister schools worked to raise awareness about Chinese farming culture and extend students' outdoor learning experiences. In this book, educators from across the research team share their insights and reflect on the cross-cultural collaborative process and how it impacted the learning experiences of themselves and their students.

This volume is concerned with the different schools within the discipline of economics (theoretical pluralism) and the relationship of economics to other disciplines, such as sociology, political science and philosophy (interdisciplinarity). It addresses the important implications of pluralism and interdisciplinarity for teaching economics at both undergraduate and graduate level and argues that the economics curriculum should pay equal attention to these new perspectives rather than concentrate on the traditional neoclassical mainstream. The distinguished contributors highlight the inherent challenges of presenting a combination of mainstream economics with more heterodox approaches in such a way that the student is not confused, but better understands the possibilities and limitations of different schools in economics. They go on to demonstrate how to apply these different approaches and show how a more inter-disciplinary approach can be followed once the boundaries of the economics discipline have been reached. The volume attempts to offer insights into the content of such a revised curriculum and the process of how to achieve this. This book will be required reading for every serious teacher and student of economics. It will also be invaluable to anyone who questions the validity of current economic orthodoxy.

The quality of students' learning experiences is a critical concern for all educational institutions. With the assistance of modern technological advances, educational establishments have the capability to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of their learning programs. Impact of Learning Analytics on Curriculum Design and Student Performance is a critical scholarly resource that examines the connection between learning analytics and evaluations and their impact on curriculum design and student performance in educational institutions. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics, such as academic support, large scale assessment, and educational research methods, this book is geared towards educators, professionals, school administrators, researchers, and practitioners in the field of education.

Curriculum Windows: What Curriculum Theorists of the 1960s Can Teach Us about Schools and Society Today is an effort by students of curriculum studies, along with their professor, to interpret and understand curriculum texts and theorists of the 1960s in contemporary terms. The authors explore how key books/authors from the curriculum field of the 1960s illuminate new possibilities forward for us as scholar educators today: How might the theories, practices, and ideas wrapped up in curriculum texts of the 1960s still resonate with us, allow us to see backward in time and forward in time - all at the same time? How might these figurative windows of insight, thought, ideas, fantasy, and fancy make us think differently about curriculum, teaching, learning, students, education, leadership, and schools? Further, how might they help us see more clearly, even perhaps put us on a path to correct the mistakes and missteps of intervening decades and of today? The chapter authors and editor revisit and interpret several of the most important works of the 1960s by Louise Berman, Jerome Bruner, WEB DuBois, Elliot Eisner, John Goodlad, James Herndon, John Holt, Philip Jackson, Herb Kohl, Robert Mager, A.S. Neill, Philip Phenix, Neil Postman. Joseph Schwab, Hilda Taba, and Sidney Walton. The book's Foreword is by renowned curriculum theorist William H. Schubert.

New tools and technologies are being developed to cater to the e-learning triangle of content, technology, and services. These developments (in technology, needs of students, emergence of new modes of education like MOOCs or flipped classrooms, etc.) have resulted in a change in the approach to teaching. Innovative Applications of Online Pedagogy and Course Design is a critical publication that explores e-learning as a tool for instructional delivery across various kinds of educational institutions and at all levels. Featuring coverage on a wide range of topics such as distance education, cumulative sentence analysis, and primary teacher training, this book is geared toward educators, professionals, school administrators, researchers, and practitioners seeking current and relevant research on instructional design and delivery in online and technology-based courses.