Analyzing Influences: Research on Decision Making and the Music Education Curriculum examines influences on research in music teacher preparation, practices, and policies. These influences include administrators' perspectives, preservice music educators' beliefs, and in-service teachers' practices. Invited essays offer insights into past and present trends in music teacher preparation. This collection of studies represents best thinking in the field and serves as an impetus for further research and action. Each author's analysis on the influences affecting their specific areas provides insights into key issues affecting decision making processes. This volume is a significant addition to the libraries of Colleges of Education and Schools of Music, as well as an important reference for music scholars and educators, researchers, and graduate students who are concerned with advancing both the scope and quality of research in the study of music teaching and learning.

The contributions to this volume aim to stimulate discussion about the role of assessment in the learning experiences of students in music and other creative and performing arts settings. The articles offer insights on how assessment can be employed in the learning setting to enhance outcomes for students both during their studies at higher education institutions and after graduation. An international group of leading researchers offers an exciting array of papers that focus on the practice of assessment in music, particularly in higher education settings. Contributions reflect on self-, peer- and alternative assessment practices in this environment. There is a particular emphasis on the alignment between assessment, curriculum structure and pedagogy.

Educational strategies have evolved over the years due to research breakthroughs and the application of technology. By using the latest learning innovations, curriculum and instructional design can be enhanced and strengthened. Also, as learners move away from traditional scholarly media and toward technology-based education, students gain an advantage in learning about their world and how to interact with modern society. Learning Strategies and Constructionism in Modern Education Settings is a critical scholarly resource that enhances the competencies of educational professionals by providing practical advice on providing an innovative educational process to promote the cognitive growth of individuals, regardless of special needs or obstacles. The book features coverage on a variety of topics including integration approaches of digital media in the teaching/learning process, the role of parents for developing digital literacy in their young children, and the effectiveness of using technology tools to teach mathematics. As a publication focused on education advancements through technology, the book serves as a useful resource for academicians, educators, school administrators, and individuals seeking current research on education technologies.

The Second World War stands as the most devastating and destructive global conflict in human history. More than 60 nations representing 1.7 billion people or three quarters of the world's population were consumed by its horror. Not surprisingly, therefore, World War II stands as a landmark episode in history education throughout the world and its prominent place in school history textbooks is almost guaranteed. As this book demonstrates, however, the stories that nations choose to tell their young about World War II do not represent a universally accepted ""truth"" about events during the war. Rather, wartime narratives contained in school textbooks typically are selected to instil in the young a sense of national pride, common identify, and shared collective memory. To understand this process War, Nation, Memory describes and evaluates school history textbooks from many nations deeply affected by World War II including China, France, Germany, Japan, USA, and the United Kingdom.It critically examines the very different and complex perspectives offered in many nations and analyses the ways in which textbooks commonly serve as instruments of socialisation and, in some cases, propaganda. Above all, War, Nation, Memory demonstrates that far from containing ""neutral"" knowledge, history textbooks prove fascinating cultural artefacts consciously shaped and legitimated by powerful ideological, cultural, and sociopolitical forces dominant in the present.

This book is a comprehensive overview of what is taught in Steiner-Waldorf schools, and why.

As well as describing the content and methods of the Waldorf curriculum, this book provides a clear overview of the ideas behind the approach. It includes:

-- a summary of the ideas underpinning this unique form of education

-- a survey of child development in relation to the curriculum

-- a description of key elements in the Waldorf approach

-- sections on evaluation and assessment

-- self-management

-- Early Years education

-- a horizontal curriculum for Classes 1 to 12

-- a vertical curriculum for each subject

This handbook is indispensable for all Steiner-Waldorf schools and teachers.

Previously published as The Educational Tasks and Content of the Steiner Waldorf Curriculum.

This book explores Singapore's language education system. Unlike previous volumes, which discuss the bilingual requirement for learning, it focuses on Singapore's quadrilingual system, bringing together articles on each of the four languages - English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil - as well as articles that examine more than one language. It highlights past successes, current concerns, and future directions for language education. The book focuses on classroom pedagogy in all four official languages, showcasing how languages are taught and learned in Singapore as a basis for better understanding the system "from the inside out." The authors present empirical, classroom-based studies on language pedagogy in all four languages, as well as updated information on the current socio-political context and how it has influenced attempts at pedagogical innovation. Consideration is given to the dialectical relationship between policy and practice. The chapters also include discussions of pre-school-age learning, influences of language policy, home literacy practices, and commentaries by international language-in-education scholars. This approach also provides a basis for international comparison - especially for those who are interested in fostering English proficiency while maintaining one or more national languages. The volume is particularly important in light of the continuing international efforts to integrate English into national educational systems where it is not the dominant language.

This collection of papers surveys key aspects of the curriculum, investigates the present situation and discusses what improvements need to be made. It is contributed by teachers, educational advisers and researchers and ranges across a variety of different institutional teaching settings and a variety of different subject areas. The approach is empirical rather than theoretical and the book is divided into three sections covering content, methods and evaluation.

This book reappraises the British and American experience in curriculum studies, the curious way in which it has been dominated by certain ideas and introduces the reader to alternative ways of perceiving, defining and approaching its problems. It provides a radical critique of the whole area, presenting both Marxist and phenomenological perspectives on the current dilemmas that teachers face. The book argues that in order to understand the problems teachers face in coping with the curriculum, we must look at the situation from the point of view of the individual rather than prescribing a norm for all teachers. The dynamic relationship between the individual and the collective and the teacher and the state is one of the fundamental issues in solving the present problems in curriculum studies. The book focuses on this central problem and suggests a variety of ways in which new solutions may be found.

Originally written after four years of the National Curriculum, at a time when adjustments and radical changes were being implemented, this book analyses from various points of view what is wrong with the National Curriculum and presents a series of options for putting it right.

This book demonstrates how it is possible to value, respect and utilise cultural diversity and yet achieve a good education' for all. The authors contend that few issues in education can be examined in isolation from the world outside. This must surely apply to the question of cultural, social and economic differences among children, and this book continually emphasises the importance of a healthy social climate as well as mastery of language, literacy and numeracy. The book examines different teaching procedures and advises on curriculum construction and content, especially the relationships between the teaching and learning of language and teaching and learning in a language. In short, the authors have examined the why, the what and the how of schooling to accommodate educational diversity and have suggested an approach that is constructive and stimulating rather than simply therapeutic.

When first published this book was one of the first collections of empirical research in the area of the knowledge transmitted in schools and the responses of students to it. It includes studies of the histories of particular school subjects and of how the knowledge they embody is presented in the classroom. Attention is also given to the effects of gender stereotypes among teachers and pupils, both on pupils' selection of courses to study and on their reactions to particular subjects in the classroom. The other major topic in this collection is the way external examinations shape the nature of the school curriculum and how it is taught. There are studies of how pupils and teachers adapt to the exam system, and of how that system and its role in the accountability of schools, have changed in recent years. The articles collected here throw into relief important aspects of what is taught in schools, and they do this on the basis of a solid foundation of empirical research.

This book explores some of the major processes involved in the definition of school subject knowledge. Using historical ethnographic methods, the contributors to the collection highlight and examine some of the factors involved at national, institutional and classroom levels in the making of school subjects. The first section of the book outlines the theoretical and methodological basis for the study off school subjects, and the reasons for and the possibilities of such a study are considered. In the second section some histories of school curricula are presented from a variety of settings -- colonial schools in Africa, working-class schools of the nineteenth century, nursery schools -- and the conflicting forces of determination and change in school subjects are identified and examined. The third section focuses on the contemporary school situation and the papers isolate and investigate some of the interest groups and social processes which enter into or affect the realization of school knowledge in the classroom.

This book deals with curriculum issues and problems, and one of its aims is to help practising teachers to clarify their own theory and practice in relation to the curriculum. The contributors look at three popular theories or sets of assumptions held by teachers: the child-centred view of education; the subject-centred or knowledge-centred view; and the society-centred view. Each of these views is incomplete on its own, but each has something to contribute in planning a curriculum as a whole, and the authors emphasize that a comprehensive theory of curriculum planning would take into account the individual nature of the pupil and also recognize the social value of education. This kind of comprehensive curriculum planning has been described as the situation-centred curriculum, based on the idea that schools should be concerned with preparing the young for the world as it will be when they leave school. One of the purposes of education is to develop a child's autonomy; he or she must learn to cope with the variety of situations which will face him or her in society. Thus many different approaches must be employed in establishing a basis for the complex task of curriculum planning. The book draws on the disciplines of philosophy, psychology, history and sociology to suggest new approaches to curriculum objectives and evaluation. It considers the theoretical bases of curriculum models, practical issues of planning, evaluation and pedagogy and discusses some urgent contemporary questions about the politics and control of the curriculum.

Teachers are, and always have been seen as agents of respectability in our society, but today this role is far less easily defined than it once was. Now, for most teachers, the whats and hows of moral behaviour, guidance and instruction have become debatable issues. In this book the author gives us a readable and original sociological consideration of the teaching oughts' and ought-nots' which, by providing a valuable analytic framework within which to view moral education, should help the thinking of those who are concerned with some of the most intractable problems of contemporary education.

Written prior to the introduction of the national curriculum, this volume argued for precisely that: a broad framework of a compulsory education at national level for all schools. The author considers the question of the content of his proposed compulsory curriculum in terms of principles derived from a fundamental ethical position and from an analysis of kinds of human activity that seeks to establish important educational priorities. The discussion covers arguments concerning intrinsically worthwhile activities, the need for a practical component of the curriculum and the priority that humanistic studies should have. It puts forward a case for a new concept of voluntary education, partly on the model of the Pioneer organizations of Eastern Europe, to supplement the compulsory curriculum.

One of the educationist's major concerns today is to find effective ways of translating new goals for the curriculum into classroom practices. American and British contributions analyse curriculum change as it actually occurs, with people, institutions and constraints of time and money acknowledged and accepted as a necessary and rightful part of the whole process. Detailed accounts are given of curriculum change in a wide variety of settings: American and English school systems, a college of education, an art curriculum project, Scottish classrooms. Analytic perspectives are employed that help to clarify the underlying forces at work. The contributors probe the adequacy of current theorizing about curriculum development, and suggest new ways of thinking about the problems involved in bringing about change.

As the issue of school reform grows ever more intense, it is imperative that we learn what we can from previous efforts. The new social studies was a 1960s attempt to transform the teaching of history and the social sciences in schools. With origins in the Cold War, the movement sought to develop critical thinkers through "inquiry" and "discovery." Though it led to a veritable treasure trove of innovative materials, the "revolution" envisioned by its proponents never materialized. Engagingly written and drawing on previously untapped archival sources, "The Hope for American School Reform" offers an insightful perspective on current trends.

A rare insider's view of educational development and problems in China since economic reform began in 1978, this volume critically examines the issue of political socialization through curriculum and compares the curriculum used during the Cultural Revolution with that compiled and used throughout China in 1988. Also explored are problems with student dropouts and teacher motivation in rural education and government-supported nonformal education; the tracking system and vocational education development in urban schools; problems that came about with economic and political reform; and the issue of inequality existing between and within rural and urban schools.

Turning to recent decentralization efforts in school administration, Jing Lin analyzes evidence suggesting that educational policy is politically controlled. Additionally, the development of educational research in the 1980s and 1990s constitutes the topic of one chapter, based on hundreds of published books and papers. Finally, Lin reflects on the massive student movement that arose in the spring of 1989 and delineates the social, economic, and political changes that sparked it. This final section treats these educational changes as an interconnected whole that underlay the movement and gave it such distinctive characteristics as nonviolence and a rational, constructive outlook.

This book brings together a group of leading international scholars to examine the paradoxical roles of schooling in reproducing and legitimizing large-scale structural inequalities along the axes of race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and disability. Through critical engagements with contemporary theories of class and cultural critique, the book questions the inherited dogma that underlies both liberal and conservative and also social democraticapproaches to teaching and makes a spirited case for teaching as a critical and revolutionary act.

Integrating Curricular and Co-Curricular Endeavors to Enhance Student Outcomes reports on a variety of innovative approaches taken in universities in a number of nations of their experience in bringing together learning in courses with learning in co- and extracurricular activities. Topics range from study abroad programs to service-learning. Also covered are community-based learning, cross-disciplinary collaborations, and peer-mentoring. This volume will introduce you to research and many interesting contexts, such as the U.S. Naval Academy, where promoting ethical leadership to cadets has been an important focus. Frame-breaking approaches, such as having university business students and circus performers collaborate, are explained within the context of the literature. The leveraging of Somali immigrant education programs for student learning is a stimulating activity that is also covered. Another inventive issue explored is the reformatting of traditional co-curricular transcripts to reflect a wider indication and measure of students' skills and abilities.

Ecological education is becoming a major area of interest worldwide, and schools are increasingly being called upon to address global and local ecological concerns. Unfortunately, most teachers have limited or no training in the knowledge and skills required to support their students' sense of connection to the natural world. Moreover, they have been trained to teach in ways that often marginalize the imagination in learning. This book illustrates how imagination and the development of ecological understanding are closely connected. It offers teachers a practical guide to teaching in ecological and imaginative ways - needed support to establishing more ecologically-oriented education in all classrooms. As imagination takes a central position in schools, all teaching and learning can improve as a result.