The Story of the Unlucky Teacher and her Koalas is a must read for any educator who believes that all children have the ability to learn and be successful. The Unlucky Teacher's koalas are representative of the students who attend America's public schools-students who are poor and hungry, students who have learning disabilities or physical impairments, students who have been taught not to believe in themselves. Refusing to allow the stress of high stakes tests and humiliating comments from the community deter her, The Unlucky Teacher leads her koalas and their families to a triumphant victory that defies the societal stigmas that are pervasive in the koala bears' everyday lives.

Learner-Centred Education for Adult Migrants in Europe: A Critical Comparative Analysis contributes to the field of Adult Education by investigating the ways in which Learner-Centred Education (LCE) is being enacted, implemented or neglected in specific settings. The book addresses the lack of research on how LCE is used in adult education as a tool for social change across different national contexts. This comparative approach is crucial for exploring the complex global, regional, national and local dynamics that account for varying implementations (or non-implementations) of LCE in different settings, for appreciating the thin or wide differences in practices of implementation, and for assessing the successes, failures and needs for improvement of diverse LCE programmes. The book's primary focus on migration as a social process, and migrants as active citizens is useful in unravelling the convergences and divergences of different national and urban settings where migrant adult learners live as citizens, or as non-citizens, and how this intersects with their experiences as learners. This research is contextualised in a larger political context. What emerges from the parting reflection is a European scenario marked by ambivalent and contradictory relations with migrants, and an educational intervention that is located somewhere between the assimilationist-integrationist dialectic. The four cases presented (Estonia, Malta, Scotland and Cyprus) generally respond to the learners' needs on the ground while rarely problematising the ideological stance of the state in relation to the educational plight of migrants. The final chapter introduces and elaborates on a new concept, Emancipatory LCE, to help generate a deeper analysis.

Promising Practices for Engaging Families in Literacy fulfills the need from parents and teachers to improve home/school assistance in every child's literacy development. Literacy skills are required and valued in all academic areas and at all levels of education from preschool through adulthood. This volume provides suggestions and support to improve parent/child involvement in literacy activities from preschool through teacher education programs. Research is provided to undergird the documented practices that increase student academic achievement through improved literacy skills across academic areas. Practices include connections between home and school across age groups, developmental needs groups, universities, community groups, and technologies.

Exceptional management skills are crucial to success in educational environments. As school leaders, principals are expected to effectively supervise the school system while facing a multitude of issues and demands. Multidimensional Perspectives on Principal Leadership Effectiveness combines best practices and the latest approaches in school administration and management. Exploring the challenges faced by principals, as well as the impact of new managerial tactics being employed, this book is a comprehensive reference publication for policymakers, academicians, researchers, students, school practitioners, and government officials seeking current and emerging research on administrative leadership in educational settings.

Multicultural education is a construct that has been very useful for many years in harboring sensitivities teachers need in addressing diverse students. Now the discipline needs refreshing. In the global society, the idea of multicultural education, a decidedly Western formation, needs to expand its conceptual boundaries. Salient issues in multicultural education such as individual identities, social justice, and equity are bedrock concerns of multicultural educators. These concepts are considered necessary but not sufficient in shaping an evolving model of multicultural education. The complexity of humans and modern and emerging societies requires a broadened scope of the understanding of contemporary multicultural theory and practice. Evolving Multicultural Education for Global Classrooms addresses multicultural education from a comprehensive viewpoint that acknowledges the historical benefit of multicultural education and recognizes a need to inform the discipline with a broader viewpoint. As most knowledge on multicultural education comes from a Western perspective and the scholarship on the topic is weakening, the chapters in this book present new practices and classroom applications that are internationally transferable. Topics covered include teacher education, social justice, educational equity and inclusion, online education, and cultural sensitivities. This book is ideally intended for teachers, educational theorists, sociologists of education, inservice and preservice teachers, administrators, teacher educators, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students interested in a fresh global perspective on multicultural education.

The Language of Peace: Communicating to Create Harmony offers practical insights for educators, students, researchers, peace activists, and all others interested in communication for peace. This book is a perfect text for courses in peace education, communications, media, culture, and other fields. Individuals concerned about violence, war, and peace will find this volume both crucial and informative. This book sheds light on peaceful versus destructive ways we use words, body language, and the language of visual images. Noted author and educator Rebecca L. Oxford guides us to use all these forms of language more positively and effectively, thereby generating greater possibilities for peace. Peace has many dimensions: inner, interpersonal, intergroup, international, intercultural, and ecological. The language of peace helps us resolve conflicts, avoid violence, and reduce bullying, misogyny, war, terrorism, genocide, circus journalism, political deception, cultural misunderstanding, and social and ecological injustice. Peace language, along with positive intention, enables us to find harmony inside ourselves and with people around us, attain greater peace in the wider world, and halt environmental destruction. This insightful book reveals why and how.

What makes a great leader? Personality? A response to the demands of time and circumstance? Where is leadership located in modern organizations? Has it a place in the management of corporate enterprise? What contributes to a leader's control? These and many other questions are explores in the theoretical background of this work. An examination of twentieth century theories about the sources of personal powers, the social forces that enabled it, the psychological roots of leader relationships, the ingredients of leader style and quality, and the conduct identified as a leader behaviors is directed at identifying the measurable elements of this social phenomenon.

Three chapters document experimental attempts to analyse leader performance, recognizing form, style, and quality in quantifiable detail. The use of descriptive questionnaires as means of labeling leader performance and quantifying its characteristics provides definitive insights into the nature of this social phenomenon.

Finally a unique system for leader appraisal, the Leader Appraisal Questionnaire (LAQ), based upon sound theoretical principles and twenty years of experimental research with the questionnaire methodology, is detailed. This novel system, adaptable to all kinds of organizations and enterprises, provides a unique tool for leadership evaluation and development. Given that leadership is a primary consideration in all kinds o organizational pursuits, this book is a must for every major institutional ans corporate executive office, every government administration, institutions of higher learning and research, and any person who wishes to undertake and make success of a group enterprise.

Put the magic back into reading! Engaging, inspirational, and practical the complete course book and teacher's guide for Reflective Reading. This exciting approach improves attainment and motivation by revamping reading comprehension in the primary classroom. Put the magic back into reading through fun, engaging ideas and activities for the teaching of reading. Create life-long readers with good reading habits, who read for pleasure and appreciate text in all its forms. Ensure higher order thinking skills are embedded within teaching and learning using a new, child-friendly taxonomy - the Comprehension Compass. Teachers and children will enjoy completing and creating Task Maps, Long Reads, Short Reads and TexTplorers activities. Inside you will find: Short Read texts and activities, suitable for whole-class teaching and shared reading Long Read activities and Task Map exemplars, for reading groups and differentiation Advice on assessment, planning, managing reading in the classroom and choosing texts Guidance on 'How to Build a Reader' and identifying reading difficulties Child Friendly Reading Booklets to encourage a learning dialogue about reading to support Assessment is for Learning A 'Cultivating a Reading Culture' self-evaluation to encourage collegiate reflection on your school's current reading practice Also includes photocopiable lesson plans, templates, and downloadable resources so you can get started straightaway!

Leadership in religious schools is a complex and often misunderstood subject. Educational leaders must perform the dual task of encouraging religious identities while relating them to wider issues of citizenship. Religious identity needs to be made relevant to the whole school community - parents, staff, students - and leaders need to take care to expand how human identity is conceived and manifested. Given these challenges, learning and leadership take on a special importance in faith-based and religious schools. This unique volume brings together leading international scholars in the field to explore the many dimensions of leadership: religious, faith, spiritual, ministerial, educational, and curriculum leadership. The contributors demonstrate, through case studies and grounded theory, that these schools require leaders who are conversant with a very wide range of styles and issues. Other issues discussed include styles of leadership, relationships with stakeholders, motivation, satisfaction and stress, school culture, and ethos and charisma. This is an insightful collection of essays that will be of great use to all those studying and researching school leadership.

The purpose of this publication is to provide school leaders and other educators with insight into practical uses of data and how to create school cultures conducive to effective data use. Practicing school leaders can benefit from this publication as well as teachers who use data in their classrooms to drive instruction. Another use of this book is for graduate schools that prepare K-12 school leaders. Because of accountability and the importance of data use in schools, data driven decisions and the effective use of data are critical. In A Guide to Data-Driven Leadership in Modern Schools, the use of data as aligned to educational reform is discussed. Accountability and standardized testing are vital elements of reform. The culture must be created in schools to address multi- facets of data use which is presented in Chapter 2 of the publication. The use of data should guide/inform decisions linked to both management and instruction in schools. In Chapter 3, the use of data to inform management is discussed; and the use of data to inform instruction is presented in Chapter 4. Practices of effective management and instructional leadership are obsolete without effective personnel in schools. The use of data in personnel evaluations is explored in Chapter 5.

Focusing on the partnerships and collaborations between teacher educators and students with regards to faculty members' professional development, contributors from around the world provide insight into professional development opportunities in the context of teaching and collaborating with students. Contributions from these distinguished scholars come from a broad range of countries and cultures to ensure that the presented studies reveal rich information about diverse systems of teacher education. The studies presented in the book demonstrate how these faculty student partnerships can significantly assist faculty members to develop professionally and produce benefits and impacts on their professional identity. Providing ideas and tools aimed at teacher educators around the world, this book explores partnerships and cooperation as a tool to lead to development and ultimately promotion. This book is a must-read for all researchers, teacher educators and lecturers looking to expand their knowledge of partnerships with students in higher education.