Technology plays a vital role in bridging the digital divide and fostering sustainability in educational development. This is evident through the successful use of social media in educational marketing campaigns and through the integration of massive open online courses to reorient learner interactions in higher education environments. Marketing Initiatives for Sustainable Educational Development contains the latest approaches to maximize self-guided, interdisciplinary learning through the use of strategies such as web-based games to elicit collaborative behavior in student groups. It also explores the important role that technology serves in educating students, especially in the realm of technological skills and competencies. This book is a vital resource for educators, instructional designers, administrators, marketers, and education professionals seeking to enhance student learning and engagement through technology-based learning tools.

Critical and creative thinking can make a significant difference to the quality of students' learning. But do we really need to teach children and young people to think, and if so, how should we go about it? The answer to the first part of the question is yes, because the fact of the matter is that although all human beings can think, effective thinking depends on skills and strategies that can be learned. The answer to the second part lies within this book. Schools as thinking communities demystifies thinking and explains how teachers can equip students with the mental tools for success in school and beyond. Schools as thinking communities provides detailed descriptions, illustrated with classroom examples, of the following ways of enhancing thinking: Habits of Mind; CoRT (Cognitive Research Trust) and Six Thinking Hats; P4C (Philosophy for Children); CEA (Cognitive Enrichment Advantage); Thinking Maps; IE (Instrumental Enrichment); TASC (Teaching Actively in a Social Context); and Cooperative Learning. One or more of these might be chosen by a school community as a means to nurture thinking across the curriculum in every classroom, thus encouraging individuals to understand, manage and take responsibility for their own thinking processes, and to value the perspectives of others. Contents include the following: How students and teachers develop as thinkers; The characteristics of a thinking classroom; The process of developing a school as a thinking community; Life skills and inclusion in a thinking community; Challenges facing thinking schools. Schools as thinking communities is aimed at teachers at all levels, curriculum designers, education planners, teacher educators and interested parents.

The Nation's Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are more culturally revered today than ever. As public health and socioeconomic inequity gaps continue to widen between the African American community and other racial groups, the HBCUs embody a shared support system. Since the 1800s, this body of prestigious higher education institutions have represented trusted pathways for the advancement of our community. With these historical accomplishments in mind, it is crucial for HBCUs and their leadership to create a vision for generations to come. Visionary leadership is a must for our storied institutions to advance beyond just surviving into fully thriving. As such, our book project, Imagining the Future: Historically Black Colleges and Universities - A Matter of Survival, offers cutting edge ideas, suggestions and advice from HBCU alumni, proponents, faculty leaders, and researchers for HBCU leadership to cultivate success today and into the foreseeable future. Imagining the Future: Historically Black Colleges and Universities - A Matter of Survival promises timely, relevant and emergent scholarship as well as perspectives for HBCU leadership, HBCU scholars and HBCU supporters.

School-university partnerships have the potential to greatly benefit teaching and learning in PK-12 environments, as well as educator preparation programs. This collaboration is advantageous to teachers, counselors, and administrators. Professional Development Schools and Transformative Partnerships provides a comprehensive look at the design, implementation, and impact of educational initiatives between schools and universities. Including cases and research on existing collaborations, this publication addresses barriers and trends in order to provide direction for successful partnerships in the future. This book is an essential reference source for educational leaders in colleges, schools, and departments of education, as well as leaders of PK-12 schools.

The concept of school turnaround-rapidly improving schools and increasing student achievement outcomes in a short period of time-has become politicized despite the relative newness of the idea. Unprecedented funding levels for school improvement combined with few examples of schools substantially increasing student achievement outcomes has resulted in doubt about whether or not turnaround is achievable. Skeptics have enumerated a number of reasons to abandon school turnaround at this early juncture. This book is the first in a new series on school turnaround and reform intended to spur ongoing dialogue among and between researchers, policymakers, and practitioners on improving the lowestperforming schools and the systems in which they operate. The "turnaround challenge" remains salient regardless of what we call it. We must improve the nation's lowest-performing schools for many moral, social, and economic reasons. In this first book, education researchers and scholars have identified a number of myths that have inhibited our ability to successfully turn schools around. Our intention is not to suggest that if these myths are addressed school turnaround will always be achieved. Business and other literatures outside of education make it clear that turnaround is, at best, difficult work. However, for a number of reasons, we in education have developed policies and practices that are often antithetical to turnaround. Indeed, we are making already challenging work harder. The myths identified in this book suggest that we still struggle to define or understand what we mean by turnaround or how best, or even adequately, measure whether it has been achieved. Moreover, it is clear that there are a number of factors limiting how effectively we structure and support low-performing schools both systemically and locally. And we have done a rather poor job of effectively leveraging human resources to raise student achievement and improve organizational outcomes. We anticipate this book having wide appeal for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners in consideration of how to support these schools taking into account context, root causes of lowperformance, and the complex work to ensure their opportunity to be successful. Too frequently we have expected these schools to turn themselves around while failing to assist them with the vision and supports to realize meaningful, lasting organizational change. The myths identified and debunked in this book potentially illustrate a way forward.

Assaulted takes the reader into a multi-layered set of problems that exists in public and private schools in America. Teachers are being physically assaulted by students and parents, producing lasting, or even career-ending injuries. Violence in schools today has become bullying on steroids, and students are becoming viral sensations amongst their peers. This book details physical and sexual assaults, and verbal and emotional abuses that occur toward teachers, both in person and Online. It contains personal stories, teacher interviews, and national survey data, as it offers reasons why assaults are occurring more frequently today. But the book does not stop there. College professors and their relationships with students also come under scrutiny. The author also challenges the practice of mainstreaming special needs and special education students, social justice and various identity movements, and the impacts these programs have upon classrooms and schools. The reader will realize students have more rights and protections than teachers. However, teachers are standing for themselves. In some cases teachers physically defend themselves, risking their careers. What are the causes of this increase of violence in schools, and what needs to be done? Assaulted provides serious answers to questions unaddressed by many school districts in America.

In its totality, this book explores subjects that are rarely available in primary literature publications and brings diverging fields together that are generally addressed separately in specialty journals. The book argues that past school failures are instructive. The author identifies the structural and emotional triggers that make it difficult for educators' to overcome the social constructs that control the progress of Black students, reproduce inequities, subvert the socio-economic progress of the nation, and threaten the legitimacy of the U.S. public school system. One failure is informative; successive school failures are chock-full of must avoid school policies and instructional practices. The book analyzes the lessons learned from a list of school-imposed policies that have molded and determined the academic progress of Black students. The author argues that much can be discerned from that which undermined the performance of schoolteachers' and public school systems. The quantifiable outcomes of past school practices can better inform educators and future teachers and school leaders. The book carefully analyzes the organic evolution of educators' social constructs that regenerated inequities to reveal the road map for rebuilding genuinely inclusive and equitable public school systems that serve the interests of students and society. The book also provides in-depth analysis of various disciplines that identify the best methodologies to improve the teaching and learning of Black students, homeless students, and all other students. The book aims to offer a unique perspective by carefully unfolding the built in school structures that obstruct the abilities of school administrators and teachers to bridge the student achievement gaps and meet the objectives of consecutive school reform initiatives. The author's distinctive approach stimulates the thinking of the entire field of education, and challenges accepted propositions commonly assumed about African American students. In short, this book offers a perspective that is rarely shared or understood by educators and practitioners in the field of education.

Teachers have faced serious public critique regarding their effectiveness and professionalism in classrooms. At every level, their work is often measured solely against student achievement outcomes, often on standardized tests (Darling-Hammond & Youngs, 2002; Ravitch, 2010). Unfortunately, students who are coming from culturally, economically, and linguistically diverse backgrounds are often occupying the bottom rungs regarding academic achievement (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Milner,2010; Hucks, 2014). What are the obstacles and challenges teachers and students face in their respective school settings and how do they grapple with and overcome them? Finally, what do these teachers and students know that motivates and informs their work? The scholars in this volume will take up these questions and share the findings of their research in the field of leadership, teacher education, and achievement. These concerns are not limited to the geographic boundaries of the United States of America. Engaging purposeful teaching is an imperative that concerns students, teachers, teacher educators, educational leaders, and education policy makers around the globe. There are many educators worldwide who are committed to delivering this type of teaching and promoting learning that is engaged and active. The four sections of the book capture the work of educators in teaching in diverse global settings such as the Australia, United Kingdom, Jamaica, Turkey, and across America. As diverse populations of students enter American classrooms, it is important for their teachers to have relatable examples of purposeful teaching that are culturally responsive and culturally relevant.