Educational inequalities between students begin early, as children enter kindergarten with vastly different sets of background knowledge and experiences that do (or in many cases do not) prepare them to learn successfully in school. Many children enter school with skills and prior knowledge so low that they are unable to overcome this lack during the kindergarten year, leaving them unprepared for first grade. Predictably, these deficits only widen as the children progress on to subsequent grades. Conversely, children who enter kindergarten prepared to learn, and leave kindergarten having mastered key competencies in literacy and numeracy, are more likely to succeed throughout their schooling and later in life. The recent pandemic has only exacerbated this problem of learner variability. Differences in school approaches to remote or hybrid learning and variability in family and home environments have all impacted the performance of children, many of whom are now nearly a year behind. The pandemic has forced us all to consider the ways in which traditional models of schooling have fallen short, and how we might better design programs that leverage all the inputs in a young child's life (the home, parents, school, community, technology, and more) to ensure that their learning needs are met. If we hope to solve this problem at scale, we must re-examine what we know about these formative early years and develop new ways to ensure that children enter kindergarten ready to learn and leave kindergarten with all the competencies they need succeed in later schooling and beyond. We must consider of all the factors that contribute to a child's school readiness, as well as the critical learning must take place during the kindergarten year. It requires the examination of factors that most influence children's development during the first five years, and their lasting effects on the rest of children's lives. More importantly, we must examine the ways that we, as stakeholders, can influence outcomes for young children by creating synergies between and among these various factors. With all this in mind, this book proposes to assemble the most current research and thought-leadership on the ways in which innovative education stakeholders are working together to impact what are perhaps the most critical years in a child's education - the years leading up to and including kindergarten. Ensuring that children enter kindergarten ready to learn and leave kindergarten with all the key competencies required for later success must be pursued with intensity, creativity, and purpose if we truly wish to address learner variability and its impact on achievement at scale. This book will Illuminate the problem of learner variability in early childhood education, its short and long-term effects on K-12 education and life beyond school, and the potential of technological innovations to address this problem at scale.

Teaching genres of fiction, non-fiction, and media need not intimidate new to middle school teachers who may be recent college graduates or veterans transitioning from elementary or high school. Here are strategies for designing culturally relevant lessons that include firm and fair grading guidelines, plans to teach literary terms specific to various genres, and suggestions for selecting appropriate texts that appeal to and expand horizons of diverse students in classrooms across the nation.

This book traces back how male students are currently disadvantaged in school by instruction in an overwhelmingly female environment devoid of male role models, who can inspire the love of learning in male students. Further, teachers are unduly influenced by biases related to compliant behaviors which result in conflating assessments of student academic achievement with compliance. Therefore, males' marks prevent to many from qualifying for courses leading to leading as well as achieving sufficiently high marks in those courses.

Read Out Loud to Your Child!"This book is a must for anyone who is ever around children! Imagine how different the world would be if all parents, teachers, grandparents, and aunties read this book!" -Amazon review Reading aloud is the essential tool for preparing your child for kindergarten and beyond The single most important thing you can do for your child. Longtime elementary school teacher Kim Jocelyn Dickson believes every child begins kindergarten with a lunchbox in one hand and an "invisible toolbox" in the other. In The Invisible Toolbox, Kim shares with parents the single most important thing they can do to foster their child's future learning potential and nurture the parent-child bond that is the foundation for a child's motivation to learn. She is convinced that the simple act of reading aloud has a far-reaching impact that few of us fully understand and that our recent, nearly universal saturation in technology has further clouded its importance. Essential book for parents. In The Invisible Toolbox, Kim weaves her practical anecdotal experience as an educator and parent into the hard research of recent findings in neuroscience. She reminds us that the first years of life are critical in the formation and receptivity of the primary predictor of success in school language skills and that infants begin learning immediately at birth. She also teaches and inspires us to build our own toolboxes so that we can help our children build theirs. Inside discover: Ten priceless tools for your child's toolbox Practical tips for how and what to read aloud to children through their developmental stages Dos and don'ts and recommended resources that round out all the practical tools a parent needs to prepare their child for kindergarten and beyond If you enjoyed books like Honey for a Child's Heart, The Read-Aloud Handbook, Screenwise, or The Enchanted Hour; you will love The Invisible Toolbox from a 21st century Charlotte Mason.

The Theory of Objectification: A Vygotskian Perspective on Knowing and Becoming in Mathematics Teaching and Learning presents a new educational theory in which learning is considered a cultural-historical collective process. The theory moves away from current conceptions of learning that focus on the construction or acquisition of conceptual contents. Its starting point is that schools do not produce only knowledge; they produce subjectivities too. As a result, learning is conceptualised as a process that is about knowing and becoming. Drawing on the work of Vygotsky and Freire, the theory of objectification offers a perspective to transform classrooms into sites of communal life where students make the experience of an ethics of solidarity, responsibility, plurality, and inclusivity. It posits the goal of education in general, and mathematics education in particular, as a political, societal, historical, and cultural endeavour aimed at the dialectical creation of reflexive and ethical subjects who critically position themselves in historically and culturally constituted mathematical discourses and practices, and who ponder new possibilities of action and thinking. The book is of special interest to educators in general and mathematics educators in particular, as well as to graduate and undergraduate students.

Within higher education, there are enormous untapped opportunities for product/services companies, administrators, educators, start-ups. and technology professionals to begin embracing artificial intelligence (AI) across the student ecosystem and infuse innovation into traditional academic processes by leveraging disruptive technologies. This type of human-machine interface presents the immediate potential to change the way we learn, memorize, access, and create information. These solutions present new openings for education for all while fostering lifelong learning in a strengthened model that can preserve the integrity of core values and the purpose of higher education. Impact of AI Technologies on Teaching, Learning, and Research in Higher Education explores the phenomena of the emergence of the use of AI in teaching and learning in higher education, including examining the positive and negative aspects of AI. Recent technological advancements and the increasing speed of adopting new technologies in higher education are discussed in order to predict the future nature of higher education in a world where AI is part of the fabric of universities. The book also investigates educational implications of emerging technologies on the way students learn and how institutions teach and evolve. Finally, challenges for the adoption of these technologies for teaching, learning, student support, and administration are addressed. Highlighting such tools as machine learning, natural language processing, and self-learning systems, this scholarly book is of interest to university administrators, educational software developers, instructional designers, policymakers, government officials, academicians, researchers, and students, as well as international agencies, organizations, and professionals interested in implementing AI in higher education.

The Mediterranean has once again come into its own in global geo-politics, attracting international interest that goes well beyond the typical stereotypes propagated by the tourist industry. Popular movements clamouring for democracy, conflict zones that have a spill-over effect well beyond the region, efforts to engage with globalisation on its own terms-one and all play out in various sectors of society, education included. Educational Scholarship across the Mediterranean: A Celebratory Retrospective brings together in one volume a selection of the best articles that have appeared in the Mediterranean Journal of Educational Studies, whose first issue was published in 1996. Each chapter highlights challenges faced by education systems across the region, seen from the perspective of leading scholars who draw on original empirical data, a broad spectrum of theoretical frameworks, and personal experience to reflect on education-related topics. Among these we find critical considerations of the role of the economy, demography, gender, social stratification, religion, politics, culture and language in shaping educational systems and practices. Much has been achieved in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean over the past 25 years-and yet, a consideration of the continuities as much as of the ruptures is instructive, showing how education remains both a transformative and reproductive force in communities.

Trauma affects the lives of many children who we teach in school. It effects the students, teachers who teach them, the administration, and the school community as it is part of the school environment and culture. Teachers and administrators have great potential to set up an environment and adopt an attitude that can help heal the trauma in the lives of their students. Schools need to become trauma-informed to be able to provide for the growing number of refugee children who have experienced terrorism, crime, war, and abuse, to better help some Indigenous children who due to systemic racism and discriminatory policies have been traumatised and live daily with trauma, and the growing number of all children who have experienced various kinds of trauma during their life span. Trauma informed schools means that all students can feel safe enough to learn, succeed academically and thrive after having undergone a traumatic event. Trauma Informed Teaching demonstrates how Play Art Narrative (PAN) can be instrumental in creating trauma informed schools. The authors provide play, art, and narrative techniques and activities that educators can use to safely work therapeutically with traumatised children and youth.